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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

#171

Post by mfDjB »

For me, Google Search just doesn't seem to be getting better over the years, if anything its getting worse. I honestly feel like its hard to get what I want half the time with all the SEO spam, most of the time I have to input "inurl:reddit.com" just to get good results.

At the same time, ChatGPT has frequently impressed me, not with everything (my expectations are reasonably low) but it has performed amazing work for me (typing out form letters, code language conversions).

For what it's worth I wouldn't use ChatGPT for search like I do with Google, but what it has done is taken away time I would be Googling for things like "how to write X form letter". I expect as it matures, it will take more time away from me Googling.

All these takes underestimate the following:

1) How quickly ChatGPT and its ilk will advance to solve relatively low hanging fruit like "ChatGPT is wrong about this one thing". The delta is extremely important here.

2) How slowly the Google bureaucracy will grind when releasing anything remotely like ChatGPT. All the committees and the burdensome processes in place in Google will keep this new technology locked up for years, and ensure that the final result is a camel (horse designed by committee). It doesn't matter if they have superior technology if they never use it or release it.

3) How much Search means to Google will mean they will treat any product changes to it extremely carefully while Microsoft will be willing to experiment with Bing like they have with Co-Pilot and GitHub.

Personally, I wouldn't go long on search engines that don't have a strong ML component to them in the future.

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

#173

Post by ravenstine »

With maybe one exception, search engines are already replacing themselves. They're "answer" engines now, but that's really a pretense for stealing content and telling the user what their interests are. While that might line someone's pockets, turns out that's not really useful for much other than the casual normie trivia question.

ChatGPT is an actual question engine. Even if ChatGPT doesn't live on in its current form, the institution of ChatGPT is the future of asking the internet a question and getting an answer. That and many other things, including (non)human relationships.

I hope it succeeds in making The Google's questionable value proposition all that much more clear. Yet if it goes down the road that The Google went, things can become much worse. I can't imagine governments are going to just sit back and relax while the next generation of manufacturing consent is manifesting before them.

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

#174

Post by qwertox »

Sometimes I just want to know something, not search for something. Up until now I've used Google for both, but lately I've just asked ChatGPT on things I want to know about, as if it were a conversation partner. It still lacks knowledge and one must distrust the information, but this is the beginning of something very big, like a new age.

I enjoy the ability to be able to ask questions without having the other party feeling either attacked due to their lack of knowledge or my corrections, but just be able to focus on the topic, even if it starts getting weird like it telling me about "clockwork energy" as if it were a thing which existed, without being able to name me scientists which have dealt with the analysis of this topic (it started with my question "could time a form of energy?" after we were talking about the different energy forms which exist. It had the idea that in thermodynamics there exists the concept of "clockwork energy" which isn't mainstream, but wasn't able to offer me additional information about it). It's fun, 100%.

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

#175

Post by elboru »

mfDjB wrote: post #171

For me, Google Search just doesn't seem to be getting better over the years, if anything its getting worse. I honestly feel like its hard to get what I want half the time with all the SEO spam, most of the time I have to input "inurl:reddit.com" just to get good results. At the same time, ChatGPT has frequently impressed me, not with everything (my expectations are reasonably low) but it has performed amazing work fo…

Same feeling, the other day I spent just too much time trying to find a chart comparing Messi against Ronaldinho. I mean two of the greatest players ever, how is it possible that I couldn’t find a good page, tons of SEO garbage pages.

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

#177

Post by throwawaymaths »

benmorris wrote: post #162

ChatGPT is already chipping away at my Google searches. I'm more and more just starting there for coding related questions. I've had chatgpt help me with the following just this week among other things. - solved a complex issue with scaling and transformations using pixijs upon providing a code example. The solution was 99% there and saved me hours of debugging. - refactored JavaScript to the async/await pattern - si…

ChatGPT struggled to tell me how to pin the bottom of a div to the bottom of its parent when scrolling (like a chat window does). It gave me the first thing that I tried (which is wrong). Eventually I figured it out, then confronted ChatGPT about it and it insisted on the wrong answer, and blithely dismissed the correct answer.

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

#178

Post by hourago »

I wrote in the input: What is the name of that Nintendo game with animals and they live their life and do stuff?

ChatGPT: It sounds like you're thinking of the game "Animal Crossing." In Animal Crossing, you play as a character who lives in a village inhabited by anthropomorphic animals, and you can do a variety of activities such as fishing, bug catching, and decorating your home. Is this the game you were thinking of?

Google: Animal Crossing is a social simulation game, dubbed a "communication game" by Nintendo. It is open-ended, and the player's character can live a separate life with very little set plot or mandatory tasks. Animal Crossing (video game) - Wikipedia

ChatGPT-like question analysis is already integrated into Google search engine, for the good and for the bad.

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

#179

Post by charcircuit »

naillo wrote: post #69
supermatt wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>It's incredibly parallelizable

No, it isn't. It generates 1 token at a time in a loop until the response is finished. It's a highly serialized task. Parallelization increases the throughput of how many queries can be processed simultaneously, but you wouldn't be able to speed up a single query.

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

#180

Post by andsoitis »

ranting-moth wrote: post #144
wizofaus wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious, the second result for me was aboutmechanics.com, which said it was a coil clamp. But I agree Google seems to be interpreting the question as "what's a spring clamp".

Interesting. aboutmechanics.com is not in my top 10 results. But even aboutmechanics is wrong, it's not coil spring. It's torsion spring.

My understanding is spring clamps typically use a helical spring, which is a compression spring coiled into a cylindrical shape. Other types of springs, such as leaf springs and torsion springs, may also be used in some spring clamps, depending on the specific design and intended use of the clamp.

In your first post you also equated tension and torsion springs, but they’re very different from each other. The former stores and releases linear energy while the latter stores and releases rotational energy.

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