Why does Elicit provide a different answer when I ask the same question again?

Some possible reasons:

You asked Elicit to do something different, even though your question was the same. For example:

You added a column once in standard mode, then again in high-accuracy mode
You searched once without filters, then again with filters

We show these differences in the Elicit app, but it can be hard to pick up on all of them!

We updated Elicit. We're constantly updating Elicit to make it work better. If you asked once before the update and once after, you might get 2 different answers from 2 different versions of Elicit. Usually the newer answer will be better, but as we make changes that are improvements overall, it's inevitable that some individual answers will get worse.

There was a random difference. The large language model APIs that we use display some inherent randomness in their responses, due to how the models are deployed. We also sometimes intentionally introduce randomness in order to get a wider array of answers to your query.

Given these factors, you can't count on Elicit giving the same answer if you ask a question more than once. Instead, think of Elicit like a human research assistant -- they might give somewhat different answers depending on the day, but you can generally rely on them to be accurate, and they get better over time!