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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

#61

Post by krisoft »

WJW wrote: post #41
gukov wrote: post #22

The way I see it: - Today's search engines will give you links to millions of documents - ChatGPT, if asked correctly, will instead generate one perfect document based on millions of the documents To me, that's a clear evolution of the search engine, especially with all the SEO & ad spam that's plaguing Google and others currently. I wasn't ready to pay a monthly fee for an ad-free Google. I am ready to pay for somet…

What kills it for me (so far, perhaps they can fix it in the future) is that there is no way to know if you've actually asked ChatGPT correctly and it has given you a perfect document with the answer you seek, or if your question was slightly off and it has given a wrong answer, or even if your question was correct but it still confidently gives the wrong answer. It famously asserted numbers like 42 were prime early…

> It famously asserted numbers like 42 were prime early on

Oh it tried to convince me that four is not larger than one. :) It went like this:

At first I asked ChatGPT to summarise J.C. Owen’s contribution to geometric constraint solving. It gave me an answer which might be even correct. It sounded correct anyway. Then I have asked for a worked example of his method used on a toy geometric constraint system. It run into problems with that. Chiefly that the system is selected was under constrained.

When I asked about that it insisted that it is well constrained. It even volunteared the info that for a system to be well constrained it needs as many variables as constraint equations. Then it told me that the system it generated has 4 variables and 1 equation.

As a last question I asked if “Is four larger than 1?” and it resolved the seeming contradiction by telling me that in the context of geometric constraint solving four is not larger than one. One does learn a new thing every day. :)

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#62

Post by kewrkewm53 »

Right now I find ChatGTP excellent for certain technical topics I'm familiar with, but can't recall the details. It saves me the time of looking for an example from stackoverflow/tutorial blogs/official documentation, and gives me just the piece I want - things like syntax, which libraries/modules to use etc.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#63

Post by RBerenguel »

WJW wrote: post #41
gukov wrote: post #22

The way I see it: - Today's search engines will give you links to millions of documents - ChatGPT, if asked correctly, will instead generate one perfect document based on millions of the documents To me, that's a clear evolution of the search engine, especially with all the SEO & ad spam that's plaguing Google and others currently. I wasn't ready to pay a monthly fee for an ad-free Google. I am ready to pay for somet…

What kills it for me (so far, perhaps they can fix it in the future) is that there is no way to know if you've actually asked ChatGPT correctly and it has given you a perfect document with the answer you seek, or if your question was slightly off and it has given a wrong answer, or even if your question was correct but it still confidently gives the wrong answer. It famously asserted numbers like 42 were prime early…

Or you have asked correctly (or not, that's hard to tell from the onset) and has given you a non-factual answer. For example, I asked ChatGPT for what would be the best introductory book for a subject (added some more conditions to make it pretty clear-cut). It recommended me a book that sounded reasonable in title, with existing authors in the field… but the book didn't exist, at all.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#64

Post by dpkirchner »

permo-w wrote: post #58
dpkirchner wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish ChatGPT would give you the score(s) of the results it returns, so you could understand how correct it "thinks" the response is. I wonder if those confidently wrong answers are also low scoring.

you could probably ask it

I'd considered that -- in some cases it says it's absolutely confident, like with basic arithmetic, and in others it says:

> Without more information, I cannot estimate the accuracy or reliability of these claims. It is important to note that there may be conflicting or inaccurate information available online, and it is always a good idea to verify information from multiple sources before accepting it as fact.

which seems pretty reasonable.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#65

Post by forrest2 »

gukov wrote: post #22

The way I see it: - Today's search engines will give you links to millions of documents - ChatGPT, if asked correctly, will instead generate one perfect document based on millions of the documents To me, that's a clear evolution of the search engine, especially with all the SEO & ad spam that's plaguing Google and others currently. I wasn't ready to pay a monthly fee for an ad-free Google. I am ready to pay for somet…

There is flywheel issue with generative search: content producers, information curators or outlets, etc need to get paid.

People are okay-ish with Google in part because it drives traffic and traffic can be profitable. Fancy features that snatch website content and show them in Google's result pages are already not appreciated by indexed websites.

If generative search becomes the dominant interface, we will eventually see severe public info stagnation until alternative business models can grow around it or avoid it altogether. I suspect we'll see more platforms like Spotify for X and a continued shift toward subscription platforms and youtube.

Of course, what's to stop the bots from watching all of Netflix, listening to every podcast, etc? It will be an interesting decade for law / regulation / licensing.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#66

Post by geoffreypoirier »

kewrkewm53 wrote: post #62

Right now I find ChatGTP excellent for certain technical topics I'm familiar with, but can't recall the details. It saves me the time of looking for an example from stackoverflow/tutorial blogs/official documentation, and gives me just the piece I want - things like syntax, which libraries/modules to use etc.

Completely agree. It's my fast rust remover for when diving back in, plus gives me the strong leads on docs, syntax, modules.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#67

Post by kyleyeats »

asimjalis wrote: post #38

Eventually Chatbots will start inserting product placement ads as well. So comparing the ads on Google with the ad free ChatGPT experience is detracting from the real value of ChatGPT. Google results are mostly ok. But I have to do the synthesis. ChatGPT does the synthesis for me saving me time and mental bandwidth. This is the part that I find valuable.

"Have you tried Bing? It's great for questions like this."

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#68

Post by geoffreypoirier »

dpkirchner wrote: post #48
WJW wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kills it for me (so far, perhaps they can fix it in the future) is that there is no way to know if you've actually asked ChatGPT correctly and it has given you a perfect document with the answer you seek, or if your question was slightly off and it has given a wrong answer, or even if your question was correct but it still confidently gives the wrong answer. It famously asserted numbers like 42 were prime early…

I wish ChatGPT would give you the score(s) of the results it returns, so you could understand how correct it "thinks" the response is. I wonder if those confidently wrong answers are also low scoring.

I had a long requirements chat last night and did just that:

There are many self-hosted solutions that could potentially meet the requirements you have listed for your RSS aggregator and reader project. Here is a list of some popular options, ranked in order of their approximate percentage of compatibility with the features you have specified:

RSS Aggregator

| Percentage Score | URL |

| --- | --- |

| 90% | https://tt-rss.org/ |

| 85% | https://miniflux.app/ |

| 80% | https://newsboat.org/ |

| 75% | https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters |

| 70% | https://github.com/noahcoad/feeds |

| 65% | https://github.com/ssut/py-googlenews |

| 60% | https://git.gnome.org/browse/feedreader/ |

RSS Reader

| Percentage Score | URL |

| --- | --- |

| 90% | https://tt-rss.org/ |

| 85% | https://miniflux.app/ |

| 80% | https://newsboat.org/ |

| 75% | https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters |

| 70% | https://github.com/noahcoad/feeds |

| 65% | https://github.com/ssut/py-googlenews |

| 60% | https://git.gnome.org/browse/feedreader/ |

Please note that these percentages are approximate and are intended only as a rough guide. You may want to consider other factors such as the user interface, performance, security, and integration with other tools when choosing a solution for your project.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#69

Post by EGreg »

forrest2 wrote: post #65
gukov wrote: post #22

The way I see it: - Today's search engines will give you links to millions of documents - ChatGPT, if asked correctly, will instead generate one perfect document based on millions of the documents To me, that's a clear evolution of the search engine, especially with all the SEO & ad spam that's plaguing Google and others currently. I wasn't ready to pay a monthly fee for an ad-free Google. I am ready to pay for somet…

There is flywheel issue with generative search: content producers, information curators or outlets, etc need to get paid. People are okay-ish with Google in part because it drives traffic and traffic can be profitable. Fancy features that snatch website content and show them in Google's result pages are already not appreciated by indexed websites. If generative search becomes the dominant interface, we will eventuall…

Why just public info stagnation? It will be dwarfed by believable content generated by swarms of internet bots.

Once a stable diffusion like open source GPT-3 appears, it will be used to create fake news all the time. Like imagine 70 different outlets all with relatively large clout on social networks suddenly announce that Elon Musk is running for president. Nevermind that he wasn’t born in the USA… somehow mysteriously none of them address it:

Yes it is here and it’s already being spread but that is just a tiny sliver of what will happen in the next 5 years: https://youtu.be/LSlv4AsChwg

Such stuff can be used to move markets, pump and dump assets and even start new wars!

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#70

Post by rtkwe »

enlyth wrote: post #57
userbinator wrote: post #34

They are not a replacement, but unfortunately search engines are turning into AI chatbots too. When I think of a search engine I want a "grep for the Internet", not an "AI". Looking up part numbers for ICs and other electronic components is the most prominent application where search engines like Google have gotten far worse in recent years, and AI ain't going to work there either.

A grep for the internet is what most of us technical users want, but they are optimizing for the more common user who structures queries more like natural language (e.g. "How can I tie my shoelaces so they don't get untied easily") instead of what me or you would query ("secure shoelace knots") I'm surprised there hasn't been a separation of some sort of more technical search engine for developers and the classic Goo…

We used to have just Internet grep but it was awful because sites just slammed tons of keywords into invisible text to get fake traffic. That's what spawned the original innovation at Google of PageRank and thus the SEO wars started. Going back to that wouldn't solve the issue with modern search.
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