The problem isn't AI. It's us. Every day, developers ask ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity for code samples, architecture patterns, and technical explanations. We copy the answer. We ship it. We move on. But here's what we don't ask: Where did that come from? AI generates answers that sound authoritative —fluent, confident, well-structured. It does not tell you where the information originated. And when you ask for citations, it confidently generates ones that don't exist. This isn't a bug in AI. It's a feature of how language models work. They predict the next most likely word based on patterns in training data. When they don't have a fact, they guess. And they guess so convincingly that MIT research in 2025 found they're 34% more confident when lying than when telling the truth. The stakes are real. In 2025, Deloitte submitted a $440,000 report to the Australian government—complete with fabricated academic sources.…