Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

Yes, I use search engine(s) constantly - namely Kagi, which really does feel like Google used to. I tried using LLMs for a recent project of mine when I was trying to figure out if something was possible, and they were actively misleading, every time. My issue for this project was that what I was asking for did end up not being currently possible, but LLMs wouldn't tell me that and would make up incorrect ways to solve my problem, since they didn't want to tell me it couldn't be done.

Really, these days, either I know some resource exists and I want to find it, in which case a search engine makes much more sense than an LLM which might hallucinate, or I want to know if something is possible / how to do it, and the LLM will again hallucinate an incorrect way to do it.

I've only found LLMs useful for translation, transcription, natural language interface, etc.

Google for quick searches (as a doorway to reddit and SO)

Perplexity for anything complex

Yandex for pics (Google pics got ridiculously bad)

> it seems like youve internalized the query syntax of search engines

If by syntax you mean "words related to what I want to find" then I suppose.

> youre fine with erroneous results.

Because AI is famously correct all the time. And there are no "erroneous" results in my method, only ones not closely enough related to what I wanted, so that's feedback my search terms should be refined.

Any answer I get from AI I’m going to have to verify anyway so I just skip the AI step.

GPt models have a people-pleasing bias and positivity bias. If you want factual information, you have to modify your prompt. I imagine you would get very different results if you asked "are Jeeps more reliable than Toyotas", or "how do Jeeps compare to the median car in terms of reliability"

My impression is that different llms are more or less people pleasing. I found grok is more willing to tell me something is a bad idea.

I use search for things where factual accuracy is critical (i.e. the address of a specific store, a speech by a specific person, the lyrics of a song).

I use LLMs for things where an explanation where accuracy ranging between 0% to 100% is not a problem. When I need to get a feel for something, a pointer to some resource