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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?

#401

Post by lurking_swe »

tremarley wrote: post #156
wavemode wrote: post #69

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?

i can also use my human brain to read a webpage from the source, as the authors intended. not EVERY question on this planet needs to be answered by a high resource intensive LLM. Energy isn’t free you know. :)

Other considerations:

- Visiting the actual website, you’ll see the programming languages logo. That may be a useful memory aide when learning.

- The real website may have diagrams and other things that may not be available in your LLM tool of choice (grok).

- The ACT of browsing to a different web page may help some learners better “compartmentalize” their new knowledge. The human brain works in funny ways.

- i have 0 concerns of a hallucination when readings docs directly from the author/source. Unless they also jumped on the LLM bandwagon lol.

Just because you have a hammer in your hand doesn’t mean you should start trying to hammer everything around you friend. Every tool has its place.

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

#402

Post by pizzly »

GuB-42 wrote: post #398

I only use LLMs when I don't know what I am looking for. Otherwise, search engines all the way. LLMs can't be trusted, you have no way to tell between a correct answer and a hallucination. Which means I often end up searching what the LLM told me just to check, and it is often wrong. Search engines can also lead you to false information, but you have a lot more context. For example, a StackOverflow answer has comment…

I use LLM for almost everything from summarizing, finding out terminology in very different fields that I have no knowledge of, initial research of any field, coding (no more google searching of stack overflow anymore), pretty much everything. I use search engine only for searching for companies/products due to some mistrust that it would find all the products or companies including very small companies/products. But I am very open to removing search engines completely if this last point is satisfied.

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

#403

Post by deevus »

The trend of using LLMs for everything feels like a "when all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail" situation.

People should do what makes them feel good, but I think we're all going to get a bit dumber if we rely too much on LLMs for our information.

I personally still use search engines daily when I know what it is that I am searching for. I am actually finding that I am reaching less for LLMs even though it is getting easier and cheaper (I pay for T3 Chat at $8USD p/m).

Where I find LLMs useful is when I am trying to unpack a concept or I can't remember the name of something. The result of these chats often lead to their own Google searches. Even after all this development, the best LLMs still hallucinate constantly. The best way that I've found to reduce hallucinations is to use better prompts. I have used https://promptcowboy.ai/ to some success for this.

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

#404

Post by atonse »

telchior wrote: post #389
wruza wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's time to bind "Please be concise in your answer and only mention important details. Use a single paragraph and avoid lists. Keep me in the discussion, I'll ask for details later." to F1.

You've just made me realize that I actually do need that as a macro. Probably type that ten times per day lately. Others might include "in one sentence" or "only answer yes or no, and link sources proving your assertion".

If you’re using ChatGPT, add it to your memory so it always remembers that you prefer that.

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

#405

Post by wolrah »

This thread is yet another thing that makes me fear for the future of humanity.

No, I don't use the hallucination machines to search, and I never will.

I use search engines to search. I use the "make shit up" machine when I want shit made up. Modern voice models are great for IVR menus and other similar tasks. Image generation models have entirely taken over from clipart when I want a meaningless image to represent an idea. LLMs are even fun to make up bogus news articles, boilerplate text to fill a template, etc. They're not search engines though and they can't replace search engines.

If I want to find real information I use a search engine to find primary sources containing the keywords I'm looking for, or well referenced secondary sources like Wikipedia which can lead me to primary sources.

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

#406

Post by [deleted] »

esperent wrote: post #387
caseyy wrote: post #385

I was among the first to champion AI search, even before Perplexity rose to fame. You.com was the first AI search to quote sources well, and I used it extensively. But now, the veracity of most LLMs' responses is terrible. They often include “sources” unrelated to what they say and make up hallucinations when I search for what I'm an expert in. Even Gemini in Google Search told me yesterday that Ada Lovelace invented…

> The trust is completely gone I mean, for everyone else it was never there to begin with. Hallucinations are constantly raised as the biggest issues with AI. According to the tests, and my experience, newer AI models are objectively better, not worse than the ones from a few years ago. They still have a long way to go/may never be fully trustworthy though. What I have lost trust in, and what I and many feel has beco…

[deleted]

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

#407

Post by AbraKdabra »

wolrah wrote: post #405

This thread is yet another thing that makes me fear for the future of humanity. No, I don't use the hallucination machines to search, and I never will. I use search engines to search. I use the "make shit up" machine when I want shit made up. Modern voice models are great for IVR menus and other similar tasks. Image generation models have entirely taken over from clipart when I want a meaningless image to represent a…

Wow u mad bro, chill, OP just made a simple question.

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

#409

Post by rstuart4133 »

jfim wrote: post #375
rstuart4133 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd go further, and say I use search when I'm pretty confident I know the right search terms. If I don't, I'll type some wordy long explanation of what I want into an LLM and hope for the best. The reason is pretty simple. If the result you want is in the first few search hits, it's always better. Your query is shorter so there is less typing, the search engine is always faster, the results are far better because you…

It depends. Sometimes webpages are useful, but at the same time navigating the amount of fluff on webpages nowadays takes longer than asking a LLM. I asked Claude to give me a recipe that uses mushrooms and freezes well and it give me a decent looking soup recipe. It might not be the best soup ever, but it's soup, kinda hard to mess up. The alternative would be to get a recipe from the web with a couple dozen paragra…

> I asked Claude to give me a recipe that uses mushrooms and freezes well and it give me a decent looking soup recipe.

It didn't suggest adding glue? I imagine it would freeze real well if you did that. /s

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