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ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

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Re: ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

#61

Post by localhost »

cs702 wrote: post #6

...But ChatGPT's successors just might . I, for one, look forward to a future in which I can ask a digital assistant to find and summarize information on anything: "Computer, please find out how GPS works and explain it to me like I'm five years old." "Computer, what are the latest Covid-19 infection stats in my city?" "Computer, who is Claude Shannon and why is he important?" "Computer, what are the top three storie…

Another way to think about these kinds of requests in a future AI world is to ask yourself why you're asking these questions? My take:

"Computer, can you write and deliver a message to my kid that explains how GPS works?"

"Computer, can you tell me what risks there are at dining at McDonalds down the street?"

"Computer, can you read this paper [link] and tell me why it's referencing Claude Shannon?"

"Computer, I need to waste some time - please use HN to help me"

"Computer, tell me about any plans that I have for today"

Re: ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

#62

Post by briga »

Au contraire, ChatGPT has already replaced search engines for me, at least for generalized knowledge searches. It provides better and more personalized answers to my questions than Google and is an excellent way to learn about new topics. It's not 100% accurate and can even be misleading, but that is hardly different than other search engines. Once more people catch on to how incredibly useful ChatGPT is its use will become ubiquitous (and we've barely even scratched the surface of what these tools can do)

Re: ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

#63

Post by AlotOfReading »

jakeinspace wrote: post #32
axiom92 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Computer, please find out how GPS works and explain it to me like I'm five years old." ChatGPT: GPS stands for Global Positioning System. It is a way that we can figure out where we are in the world using special satellites. Imagine you are standing outside and you see lots of stars in the sky. Well, GPS works kind of like that, but instead of stars, there are satellites orbiting the Earth. These satellites are way…

The second half of that explanation is completely wrong though, isn’t it? There is no active signal being sent from your GPS antenna, no two-way communication.

GPS doesn't talk to the satellites, but the satellites do send a message that allows the GPS to answer "where am I" for itself. It's not the worst way to explain things at that level, even if it's misleading.

About half the (presumably human) "eli5 GPS" answers I found on Reddit made the same mistake, so chatGPT just copied an apparently popular misconception.

Re: ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

#64

Post by jakeinspace »

ben_w wrote: post #41
jakeinspace wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second half of that explanation is completely wrong though, isn’t it? There is no active signal being sent from your GPS antenna, no two-way communication.

Yes, but unlike most times it gets things wrong, this is probably appropriate for explaining things to 5 year olds. (Also, the UK comedy quiz show QI made the exact same mistake).

I’ll admit it was a decent answer. However, even a somewhat bright person (especially someone with radio / networking experience) could probably have realized that was an issue without any prior knowledge of GPS. They know that their phone has a GPS receiver, and that satellite phones accessing geostationary or high altitude satellites are much bulkier. Clearly, your cell phone isn’t transmitting to each satellite.

How will future LLMs be able to conduct that level of reasoning?

Re: ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

#65

Post by ben_w »

theteapot wrote: post #33
axiom92 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Computer, please find out how GPS works and explain it to me like I'm five years old." ChatGPT: GPS stands for Global Positioning System. It is a way that we can figure out where we are in the world using special satellites. Imagine you are standing outside and you see lots of stars in the sky. Well, GPS works kind of like that, but instead of stars, there are satellites orbiting the Earth. These satellites are way…

Did ChatGPT come up with this, or just rip it off from some place(s) without attribution?

I've seen this sort of response a lot lately, both for GPT and all the image generators.

Google, and all the other search engines, literally show snippets of the original content to display search results, and have had copyright infringement lawsuits over this.

Yet somehow, it's taken these AI, which generally aren't just block-quoting things unless you ask them to (and often getting it wrong if you do), for non-lawyers to start asking that question.

Re: ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

#66

Post by pattyj »

emrah wrote: post #19
cs702 wrote: post #6

...But ChatGPT's successors just might . I, for one, look forward to a future in which I can ask a digital assistant to find and summarize information on anything: "Computer, please find out how GPS works and explain it to me like I'm five years old." "Computer, what are the latest Covid-19 infection stats in my city?" "Computer, who is Claude Shannon and why is he important?" "Computer, what are the top three storie…

That is, if you can blindly trust the answers.. if it could provide the top sources for the information so I could fact-check it if needed, it would work

Is there a way to disuade users from blindly trusting responses? Such as unavoidable caveats, make no attempt to provide depth and instead strongly recommend reliable research?

And as a logical aside: if AI can't be trusted, we shouldn't trust AI's recommendations for reliable sources either.

Re: ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

#67

Post by kyleyeats »

supermatt wrote: post #53
kyleyeats wrote: post #38

Bing announced their ChatGPT deal the next day: https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/04/microsoft_openai_chat...

They havent "announced" anything. It would make cost-per-query and latency go through the roof, so its HIGHLY unlikely.

They announced it to The Information, anonymously, in a leak.

Re: ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

#68

Post by ahstilde »

Personally, I believe the future of search is video. Most of the world uses mobile devices, and video is better on mobile devices than text.

This is why Google and TikTok are shifting to short-form video for search.

At my company, we're seeing significant search traffic through YT shorts, currently ~2500 views per day: https://www.youtube.com/@wyndly/shorts

Re: ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

#69

Post by naillo »

supermatt wrote: post #53
kyleyeats wrote: post #38

Bing announced their ChatGPT deal the next day: https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/04/microsoft_openai_chat...

They havent "announced" anything. It would make cost-per-query and latency go through the roof, so its HIGHLY unlikely.

Why would it make latency go up? It's incredibly parallelizable just copy the weights on more machines.

Re: ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

#70

Post by [deleted] »

ben_w wrote: post #41
jakeinspace wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second half of that explanation is completely wrong though, isn’t it? There is no active signal being sent from your GPS antenna, no two-way communication.

Yes, but unlike most times it gets things wrong, this is probably appropriate for explaining things to 5 year olds. (Also, the UK comedy quiz show QI made the exact same mistake).

[deleted]
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