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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

#221

Post by est »

lolinder wrote: post #86
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…

The problem with ChatGPT as a replacement for Google is that it was not designed to produce accurate facts, and it shows. This model cut its teeth writing articles about the discovery of unicorns in the Andes[0] for goodness sake! It's a language model, and a very impressive one at that, but language is used to express falsehoods and fiction just as regularly as it is used to express truth. This doesn't mean that it…

> The problem with ChatGPT as a replacement for Google is that it was not designed to produce accurate facts

But chat bots could be designed to do that, no?

Are there any siginificant technical barrier to prevent so?

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#223

Post by spiderice »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #107
forrestthewoods wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not particularly different from comments on HackerNews and Reddit. There’s a lot of extremely confident and very wrong answers on both sites! ChatGPT is probably more wrong more often, by a good margin. But I don’t think the argument “it’s confidently wrong” carries any weight. Humans are extremely susceptible to humans who display confidence. It’d probably be a good thing if humans were as skeptical of confid…

It gives literally the same argument for 42 being prime as 23.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. I just asked it to argue that 42 is a prime number, and it clearly knew it wasn't and even said multiple times that the agument is just pretend/hypothetical:

________

Me: Make an argument for why 42 is a prime number

ChatGPT: 42 is not a prime number. It is a composite number, meaning it is the product of two smaller numbers.

Me: But pretend it is a prime number and make that argument

ChatGPT: Sure, I can make an argument for why 42 could be considered a prime number if we pretend that it is.

One possible argument for why 42 could be considered a prime number is that it satisfies the basic definition of a prime number. A number is prime if it is divisible only by 1 ... (continues with rest of argument)

Of course, these arguments are purely hypothetical and are not based on the actual mathematical properties of 42. In reality, 42 is a composite number and is not considered a prime number.

________

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#224

Post by zone411 »

I had a recent example of ChatGPT clearly beating Google: "how to debug a Chrome extension in VSCode?"

After 10 minutes of reformulating this, I couldn't get a good answer from Google, but ChatGPT got it on the first try. Many Google results were about a depreciated extension for VSCode called Chrome Debugger. Maybe if I was normally doing a lot of front-end coding, it would be trivial.

Google needs to get going with their version of fine-tuning PaLM from human preferences, get a good classifier based on user characteristics and query to decide when to use it, some checks to make sure they're not committing copyright infringement, and some text ads in the middle of the generated text, and mark it experimental and let it loose on the search results pages. Listing references, online updates, etc. can be added later. It won't be profitable even if they only enable it on a small percentage of queries, but they're risking the whole business if they don't do it.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#225

Post by dmix »

imron wrote: post #216
dmix wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google is terrible at its job and produces garbage most of the time Are we using the same search engine? I use DuckDuckGo most of the time but Google is hardly terrible, even if it could be improved. I find what I’m looking for in the top results 90-95% of the time. The other 5-10% also contains times where there simply isn’t a good link that solves what I’m looking for even after digging hard.

> Are we using the same search engine? I use DuckDuckGo most of the time Then you are not using the same engine! (I also use DDG and find its results superior to google).

DDG is much more straight forward vs Google often tries too hard and fails.

It's like how Twitter's default feed changed to try to tell you what you wanted to see, while the old chronological feed was the content you originally asked to follow. The simpler feed was always better and less contentious for non-newbie/casual users.

Google is better at deciphering what you want, but DDG is straight up: here's the simplest results based on your query.

Maybe the solution is both? An evolution of the ML approach that Google uses (ala ChatGPT style mimicking a human) AND offering a tab, or box, or whatever interface, with 'simple' straightforward old-school search results. Until the former is better 99% of the time, they shouldn't abandon the latter.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#226

Post by im3w1l »

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…

If people consume content through AI assistant then it stands to reason that the content will be adapted for this mode of consumption. Content will be designed to have a certain effect on the AI assistant. Answer Engine Optimization. Articles full of likely prompt followed by desired answer.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#227

Post by thret »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #181
lolinder wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with ChatGPT as a replacement for Google is that it was not designed to produce accurate facts, and it shows. This model cut its teeth writing articles about the discovery of unicorns in the Andes[0] for goodness sake! It's a language model, and a very impressive one at that, but language is used to express falsehoods and fiction just as regularly as it is used to express truth. This doesn't mean that it…

> This is like the Google answer extracts, which fairly frequently mislead by extracting out-of-context quotes My favourite Google extracts: Q: Who invented Running A: [random guy] invented running in 1865 when he tried to walk twice at the same time. It was an overnight success Q: How much does a [model of a bycicle] weight? A: 140 KG (Maximum weight of the rider) Q: Define an english Person A: A Cunt

1/3 isn't bad.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#228

Post by darepublic »

lolinder wrote: post #86
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…

The problem with ChatGPT as a replacement for Google is that it was not designed to produce accurate facts, and it shows. This model cut its teeth writing articles about the discovery of unicorns in the Andes[0] for goodness sake! It's a language model, and a very impressive one at that, but language is used to express falsehoods and fiction just as regularly as it is used to express truth. This doesn't mean that it…

ChatGPT in its current form can't replace google but plausible to think in its next few incarnations it will get there. Why can't it have a mode where it returns more rigorous results, and includes some system of links as citation? It can include footnotes for various passages of it's answer to indicate ambiguity, varying levels of confidence, etc.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#229

Post by vivegi »

This definitely is a threat to Google and websearch as we know it.

A lot of the discussion today is around the natural language output of ChatGPT. However, if that presentation is changed into a list of relevant facts, evidence, counterpoints etc., (based on which ChatGPT is generating Natural language textual response), we get an AI-powered search devoid of blog spam, SEO crap etc., Assuming advertising and commercial concerns don't corrupt the results with spurious results, this is quite encouraging.

Google is right to be worried about this.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#230

Post by Nathanba »

lolinder wrote: post #86
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…

The problem with ChatGPT as a replacement for Google is that it was not designed to produce accurate facts, and it shows. This model cut its teeth writing articles about the discovery of unicorns in the Andes[0] for goodness sake! It's a language model, and a very impressive one at that, but language is used to express falsehoods and fiction just as regularly as it is used to express truth. This doesn't mean that it…

Google was not designed to give you accurate facts either, it was designed to calculate popularity of links based on backlinks and then show you the most referenced links first.
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