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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

#201

Post by stocknoob »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #190
notwokeno wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are going to continue to write books and documentation because AI don't replace those (new software won't be explained by AI so it needs documentation and AI hallucinates anyway so you still have to check it. Books are similar but more extreme.) People will also continue to chat with each other in eg IRC because human connection is pleasant on a metaphysical level (AI cannot replace this) so you'll always have…

People will not write books and blogs if they can't pay the bills. If AI xant replace those, you will have no books and blogs. Thats how market works. > People will also continue to chat with each other... so you'll always have that as a data source. Your solution takes us back to before invention of the printing oress? the dark ages?

People won’t just write encyclopedia articles for free, right?

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#202

Post by solarkraft »

cortesoft wrote: post #142
solarkraft wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this to be a huge deal. In no time a huge part of the internet will be AI-generated and we will pollute our data set for research and training AI with things that are subtly or completely false at times and we won't be able to tell. It's a lot like iRobot or other stories in which the robots will start to subtly misbehave, like a program you can't debug.

How is this different than regular intelligence? We grow up trained on a polluted dataset, being taught things that are subtly or completely false, and we often struggle to tell which things we have learned are false.

Once in a while somebody does some actual on-the-ground research and people are convinced to change their minds through evidence and reasoning. So far AI can't do that, it'll just parrot whatever it hears more often, (apparently) with some degree of randomness.

Maybe it'll learn to adopt a new view, but for now it won't be through actual reasoning.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#203

Post by jraph »

The article does not show up without JS, so I'll answer the title.

I agree. In practice, you'll likely need to double check what it says using a search engine anyway. As long as the Chatbot does not provide the sources for whatever it states, I won't trust it. There's no reason to. Unless it produces pure logic that can be checked using reasoning.

… as I have in real life from people unless they are expert in the area / can be trusted to varying degrees for some reason, or from anything on the internet, including Wikipedia. AI-based stuff hasn't changed this fundamental principle.

ChatGPT is trained on Wikipedia (which is mostly fine, though you still need to check the sources!), plus random things where people could have stated random stuff, maybe jokingly, or could have been sarcastic or whatever. So the training set is already not trusty. And even on a trusty set, the process is so opaque that we don't know what plausible but false rehash it's capable of outputting. Actually we know that it produces what has been called "hallucinations", so…

It's easy to get lazy about double checking the overly confident tone or the flawless writing of the chatbot. It's probably a good way to explore, but it can't be fully trusted yet. Even for exploring, I'm afraid of risking being influenced by reading a false piece of information written perfectly, even if I know I should double-check it.

However, the day the chatbot provides the sources, it might change a lot of things.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#204

Post by post-it »

aleeds wrote: post #199
xiphias2 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it was designed for that, and it was top line OKR for a long time. Amit Signhal rewrote the search engine and was a great leader caring a lot about relevancy until he was kicked out for harassment (it was deserved as far as I know, but at the same time Google lost an amazing engineer). In my experience the detoriation came after the change in leadership.

It is important to recontextuilize harassers. They are typically parasites on the organization, destroying others by stealing their work and eliminating others from the work force. Undoubtedly he came off as clever, but being a harasser means that his achievements were outweighed by the benefits.

It's dangerous to say

"he's a harasser => he must be a parasite on the organization"

because then you end up with

"he's provably an excellent worker and hugely productive => he can't be a harasser, you're mistaken/lying"

Some people are really smart and productive and a credit to their profession and also awful to women and/or minorities, and you'd never know if you didn't witness/experience it.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#205

Post by xiphias2 »

aleeds wrote: post #199
xiphias2 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it was designed for that, and it was top line OKR for a long time. Amit Signhal rewrote the search engine and was a great leader caring a lot about relevancy until he was kicked out for harassment (it was deserved as far as I know, but at the same time Google lost an amazing engineer). In my experience the detoriation came after the change in leadership.

It is important to recontextuilize harassers. They are typically parasites on the organization, destroying others by stealing their work and eliminating others from the work force. Undoubtedly he came off as clever, but being a harasser means that his achievements were outweighed by the benefits.

Recontextualizing harassment as stealing someone's work is not just inaccurate, it's degrading to harassment victims and not accepting that somebody can be a bad person in some situations (on offsite when he's drunk) and be an amazing engineer at the same time when he's sober at the workplace.

Harassment is harassment, stealing someone's work is stealing someone's work, let's keep changing the meaning of words to politicians.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#208

Post by hgarg »

AI chatbots(or equivalent AI answering machines) vs Search Engines

Search has 2 kinds of users.

1 trawls through multiple pages of results to find what they are looking for. This is you and me but we are in minority. 2 clicks on the first link(or sometimes 2nd) and that's the end of that particular search. The majority.

2nd will decide the winners

Academics, being the 1st kind are the reasons for arguments like those in the article. They are not wrong but to the majority, it won't matter.

And I am willing to guess the Code Red at Google is about the 2nd type of users. They are the bread and butter.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#209

Post by riku_iki »

silisili wrote: post #174
n0tth3dro1ds wrote: post #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.

I tend to agree for a lot of queries. For example, I just got curious and asked Google how many oranges in a cup of juice. The main result is a conversion of a cup to cubic inches, for no reason. Scrolling down a bit, the first usable answer was a quora blurb. ChatGPT told me it depends on the size and type of orange, but generally 2 to 4. Guess which one I'll use next time?

You are using Google incorrectly. You need to add "reddit" at the end of all your queries.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#210

Post by 22289d »

scarface74 wrote: post #189
22289d wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's awesome, it does seem to be quite good at writing code. But in that case, you can test for it's weaknesses by asking it anything recent. The models are only trained on data through X date. Ask it something after X and it wont have the data to answer you correctly. Like about some new framework or feature.

Hell I work at AWS in Professional Services and you could ask me anything recent to test my weaknesses. I can’t keep up with all of the announcements.

Google can though :)

The context here was comparing ChatGPT and Google.

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