How an artificial intelligence (as in large language model based generative AI) could be better for information access and retrieval than an encyclopedia with a clean classification model and a search engine?

If we add a step of processing – where a genAI “digests” perfectly structured data and tries, as bad as it can, to regurgitate things it doesn’t understand – aren’t we just adding noise?

I’m talking about the specific use-case of “draw me a picture explaining how a pressure regulator works”, or “can you explain to me how to code a recursive pattern matching algorithm, please”.

I also understand how it can help people who do not want or cannot make the effort to learn an encyclopedia’s classification plan, or how a search engine’s syntax work.

But on a fundamental level, aren’t we just adding an incontrolable step of noise injection in a decent time-tested information flow?