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Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#161

No, I find it unwilling to produce factual information. For example Jeep consistently lands at the bottom of the reliability ratings. Try asking GPT if Jeeps are reliable. The response reads like Jeep advertising.

LLMs are like humans. They don't know what you mean, only what you say. They can't tell you what you want to know, they can only answer the question you actually ask! The question you asked is broad and phrased in a way that begs a simplistic answer about the entire brand . Obviously an answer to that question will do a worse job of laying out the relative reliability of current jeep models than would a report which…

Actually, you hit the nail on the head, they are _not_ like humans because they only know what you say, not what you mean. A human would understand that when you ask a broad question, you want a broad answer. Broadly speaking, Jeeps are bad.

Our current LLM are kneecapped because they are very reluctant to be negative.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#162
I use a search engine 99% of the time. Occasionally i use an LLM, but even for checking the most simple information I am not able to have any confidence that the answer it gives is correct. It seems to lie to me every time i use it and contradicts itself when i tell it that it made an error. It provides no citation to where it got its information and that seems completely essential. I very rarely see any use for it. Even if a search engine is much slower i will not compromise on knowing where the information is sourced from so I can judge its accuracy, bias, etc. I feel disturbed by all the people that have lower information standards

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#163

Search is primarily a portal - you know a particular resource exists, you just don't know its exact URL. You hear about this new programming language called "Frob", and you assume it must have a website. So you google "Frob language". You hear that there was a plane crash in DC, and assume (CNN/AP/your_favorite_news_site) has almost certainly written an article about it. You google "DC plane crash." LLMs aren't ever…

If you wanted to know more about a new programming language named “Frob” or a plane crash that happened today, couldn’t you use an LLM like grok? Or any other LLM that’s continuously trained on trending news?

It's just a different kind of data. Even without LLMs, sometimes I want a tutorial, sometimes I want the raw API specification.

For some cases I absolutely prefer an LLM, like discoverability of certain language features or toolkits. But for the details, I'll just google the documentation site (for the new terms that the LLM just taught me about) and then read the actual docs.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#164
I use a variety of mostly search engines that get me an answer much faster. Google/Bing frequently point to sites/articles written by AI anyway. Using a LLM directly often gives too much garbage and doesn't often stick to just answering my question, so it becomes as useless as a modern google search. I prefer old style searching of just using key words and refining my query opposed to having it (miss)interpreted.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#165
post #3

Not really, no. My peers and I were constantly opening ChatGPT when probing new topics. But now, with Gemini integrated within Google and the hallucinations of LLMs, seeing the SEO result along with the AI summary has become my goto choice. The one thing I find extremely frustrating (which I hope Google fixes) is not being able to continue the conversation with Gemini if I have follow-up questions. I think this also…

You may have to enable it, but their experimental 'AI Mode' does basically what you are saying (I think). I can hit 'dive deeper with AI mode' at the bottom of the 'AI Overview', and it just becomes an interactive search session...sort of.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#166

Search is primarily a portal - you know a particular resource exists, you just don't know its exact URL. You hear about this new programming language called "Frob", and you assume it must have a website. So you google "Frob language". You hear that there was a plane crash in DC, and assume (CNN/AP/your_favorite_news_site) has almost certainly written an article about it. You google "DC plane crash." LLMs aren't ever…

If you wanted to know more about a new programming language named “Frob” or a plane crash that happened today, couldn’t you use an LLM like grok? Or any other LLM that’s continuously trained on trending news?

Yes, you can use grok but you could also use a search engine. Their point is that grok would be less convenient than a search engine for the use case of finding Frob's website's homepage.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#167

Search is primarily a portal - you know a particular resource exists, you just don't know its exact URL. You hear about this new programming language called "Frob", and you assume it must have a website. So you google "Frob language". You hear that there was a plane crash in DC, and assume (CNN/AP/your_favorite_news_site) has almost certainly written an article about it. You google "DC plane crash." LLMs aren't ever…

Except when search engines bury the thing you're obviously looking for under an entire page of sponsored ads, then that convenience argument starts to not hold up as well...

And most of the actual results from said search are nothing but LLM generated slop content that provide zero utility to the user and only exist to capture as many clicks and traffic as possible so they can shovel as many ads as possible. The current web is practically unusable.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#168

Search is primarily a portal - you know a particular resource exists, you just don't know its exact URL. You hear about this new programming language called "Frob", and you assume it must have a website. So you google "Frob language". You hear that there was a plane crash in DC, and assume (CNN/AP/your_favorite_news_site) has almost certainly written an article about it. You google "DC plane crash." LLMs aren't ever…

If you wanted to know more about a new programming language named “Frob” or a plane crash that happened today, couldn’t you use an LLM like grok? Or any other LLM that’s continuously trained on trending news?

How do I know the LLM isn't lying to me? AIs lie all the time, it's impossible for me to trust them. I'd rather just go to the actual source and decide whether to trust it. Odds are pretty good that a programming language's homepage is not lying to me about the language; and I have my trust level for various news sites already calibrated. AIs are garbage-in garbage-out, and a whole boatload of garbage goes into them.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

#170
I use mixture of solutions for Web browsing

- I use RSS to see 'what's new', and to search it. My RSS client support search

- I maintain list of domains, so when I want to find particular place I check my list of domains (I can search domain title, description, etc.). I have 1 million of domains [0]

- If I want more precise information I try to google it

- I also may ask chatgpt

So in fact I am not using one tool to find information. I use many tools, and often narrowing it down to tools that most likely will have the answer.

[0] https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database

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