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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

#401

Post by mrkramer »

anothernewdude wrote: post #71
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…

I'll take the links many times over a generated document. I can't buy from a storefront generated by ChatGPT. I can't cite a document written by ChatGPT, I can't trust news generated by ChatGPT, I can't comment on a forum generated by ChatGPT, I can't watch videos that ChatGPT describes, the recipes ChatGPT creates may not be possible to cook, and will probably still contain a fake life story before it.

It seems like ChatGPT-like solution can supplement and assist the user in searching the Web not completely replace the search engine itself(at least not for now).

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#402

Post by jchmrt »

astrange wrote: post #374
jchmrt wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's really problematic to use the word "reason" to describe what GPT does. As others have commented in this thread, GPT is a language model , which in no way reasons about anything it writes. It is simply writing whatever fits statistically to the prompt and context. Attributing reasoning or too much intelligence to this could prove quite dangerous.

> As others have commented in this thread, GPT is a language model, which in no way reasons about anything it writes. It is simply writing whatever fits statistically to the prompt and context. Those people are wrong; statistics are a kind of reasoning (intuition) and if you try it, it obviously does the other kinds of reasoning too. I have all kinds of answers from it that are logically coherent and can’t possibly h…

Just because some of its answers are logically coherent due to it following statistical patterns, does not mean that the model is reasoning. Reasoning implies some type of discipline which prevents nonsensible arguments (even in uncommon situations).

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#403

Post by jvm___ »

dragonwriter wrote: post #149
jvm___ wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is currently unpolluted by GPT results. What happens when Google gets swamped with AI generated SEO content. Probably why they called a code red.

> Google is currently unpolluted by GPT results. This is self-evidently false; there is plenty of indexed content on the web generate by publicly available LLMs, including OpenAI’s GPT series, and open source implementations of similar technology. Maybe even more generated by the non-publicly-available ones some firms have for their own use.

Do you think the public release of GPT will increase the volume to unmanageable levels?

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#404

Post by prox »

godelski wrote: post #298
prox wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we want is not what we get unless it makes bank. Nobody (generalizing here) works to better humanity, they work to get money. if it aligns well that’s just shear luck. The world needs a lot more people who want see the world to succeed.

I think this is a highly pessimistic view. While I know many that are profit motivated and I won't argue that this isn't the majority, I know many people that just want to pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge. I'll tell you that personally my dream is to just be able to research and not worry about constraints like publishing (I'd rather open blog) or computational constraints (don't need a data center. A few d…

While I see what you are saying and there are people doing the good work, when I read of companies circumventing the Russian embargo knowing full well their stuff gets turned into weapons, and people without thought buying the cheapest shit from amazon and alibaba made in dire circumstances, I am not so sure, or at least, do not see enough awareness for a treshold changing outcome. Some play the economic game on a criminal level, and some profit without giving back and without scruples.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#405

Post by gdy »

post-it wrote: post #204
aleeds wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Some people are really smart and productive and a credit to their profession and also awful to women and/or minorities"

But if they are awful only to white straight males, they are ok?

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#407

Post by Valakas_ »

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…

I can't wait for a few years, when ChatGPT is replaced by something 10^x more powerful, and then comments like this look like nonsense of someone who lived in a past era just like we now similarly make fun of comments from people that made in past eras about how certain technologies, criticized in their current state without the ability of the person to look ahead. Even though the person you're replying to mentioned ChatGPT, ChatGPT is just the FIRST of many. Imagine somebody saying in 1803 "Car is unusable because you have to keep filling the coal, it's just not convenient, and a horse will always have a future."

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#408

Post by 082349872349872 »

janalsncm wrote: post #267
lolinder wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that a hybrid could work, although ChatGPT struggles to keep context with more than a dozen paragraphs, so I doubt it could summarize millions of results. And in either case, you're not solving the problem that commenters here are trying to solve: Google's bad results will still affect your search, so ChatGPT will be fed largely by dubious blogspam.

Even in a small number of paragraphs language models hallucinate. For example Barack Obama, it’s not hard for me to trick it into saying he was born in Chicago. He was not. But there’s a ton of text about Barack Obama in Chicago. Plus, Michelle was born there. When predicting the most likely next token for “Barack Obama was born in ______” there’s a lot of confounding text. No, there’s a fundamental issue in that sta…

So LLM's are pretty much Mark V Shaney at heart, only with enough weights to get to the far side of Eliza?

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#409

Post by astrange »

jchmrt wrote: post #402
astrange wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As others have commented in this thread, GPT is a language model, which in no way reasons about anything it writes. It is simply writing whatever fits statistically to the prompt and context. Those people are wrong; statistics are a kind of reasoning (intuition) and if you try it, it obviously does the other kinds of reasoning too. I have all kinds of answers from it that are logically coherent and can’t possibly h…

Just because some of its answers are logically coherent due to it following statistical patterns, does not mean that the model is reasoning. Reasoning implies some type of discipline which prevents nonsensible arguments (even in uncommon situations).

No such thing as “is reasoning”, only “does reasoning”. Are you an unreasoning being if you make a math mistake?

You can see it “does” reasoning if you say “think step by step” after a question. It can attend over its steps then.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#410

Post by elicksaur »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #289
elicksaur wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you are probably right. It has no guardrails for generating a true citation. When you ask it for citations, its programming generates the form of citation. As the authors of the article discuss, it has no model of reality to understand that citations are not just a form of words and symbols put together.

It’s really good at showing what types of scientific books and papers should exist. GPT5 will just write them, so it isn’t lying.

It has no concept of lying.
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