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AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

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Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#3

But they have the potential. We'll see if it breaks into public. People at some point were even saying Tikto will replace search engines. Both of which can still happen.

I don’t think they do. At least not in a safe way. The AI doesn’t understand meaning or the underlying material and concepts. I’m sure filters will be put into a pipeline but it will never be as good as letting the human sniff out the correct answers.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#4
I agree that chat bots aren’t the proper modality for replacing search. So what? Currently, Google search results stink. ChatGPT results are way better in a number of domains. Does it need to be a chat bot? No. But Google still stinks now. I’ll take anything that can just find the correct information.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#5
Google is more "chatty" than it was a few years ago and ChatGPT is a quickly moving target it seems - it's answers seem more "search-like" than they seemed when I started playing with it just a few weeks ago (more caveats and more likely to give multiple options, etc). It seems like we'll have fusion soon.

I agree the results will be unpleasant. I already despise Google's fucking "looks like there aren't many results" message and there will be more to hate down the road. But still, appearing to give "an answer" rather than reporting information seems like a winning quality to bring in the masses. As someone pointed out, Google's target audience is inherently those credulous enough to be valuable targets for their advertisers.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#7

But they have the potential. We'll see if it breaks into public. People at some point were even saying Tikto will replace search engines. Both of which can still happen.

I don’t think they do. At least not in a safe way. The AI doesn’t understand meaning or the underlying material and concepts. I’m sure filters will be put into a pipeline but it will never be as good as letting the human sniff out the correct answers.

Today I asked chatGPT what Einstein's favourite food was. It gave a reasonable answer about him liking simple foods. The worrying thing is that I was satisfied with the result. It was plausible. It could well be true. There is a good chance that this kind of AI might provide the right kind of response that a large percentage of the public find convincing enough to not bother with additional research.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#8

But they have the potential. We'll see if it breaks into public. People at some point were even saying Tikto will replace search engines. Both of which can still happen.

I don’t think they do. At least not in a safe way. The AI doesn’t understand meaning or the underlying material and concepts. I’m sure filters will be put into a pipeline but it will never be as good as letting the human sniff out the correct answers.

Are we talking about chat bots, or their implementations in 2022?

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#9

I agree that chat bots aren’t the proper modality for replacing search. So what? Currently, Google search results stink. ChatGPT results are way better in a number of domains. Does it need to be a chat bot? No. But Google still stinks now. I’ll take anything that can just find the correct information.

Google search results are a vortex of perverse incentives and double dipping. The fact that google ranks horrible CPM arbitrage websites for nearly everything AND monetizes these websites... yuck. it doesn't take a rocket scientist to imagine how some of these AI Models could leverage a search index + something like wolfram alpha to generate a much more targeted and valuable search result.
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