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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

#211
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…

where will this data come from and how do you make money off it?

By inserting "enjoy an ice cold refreshing cocktail cola" in the middle of the output?

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

#212
post #52
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

We're going to have a generation of people that are cock sure about things because ... ai, but they won't actually know jack shift. It sort of happened with google. People can figure something out but they don't systematically get things. Shallow explanation. Goldfish attention span

Have you had much to do with young graduates lately? We already have that generation without AI being the cause.

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

#213

I remember when web search engines were new. And boy did they suck. You wouldn’t get what you wanted a lot of the time, and they were very finicky about the input query. These days you can just throw stuff at it like “that movie about the depressed guy with a plane engine that falls on their house” I’m not sure ChatGPT is going to replace search engines, but I’m confident that it is incredibly young and will evolve c…

In 2001-2003, browsers crashed every 5 minutes then and Google's search didn't crash nor freeze nor slow it due to not being covered in ads and popups (having only 1-3 ad results at the top of the page with green text was a massive improvement). On tech forums back then, people would say, "is this even sustainable?" Microsoft search and the other ones were just "there was an attempt" tier and gave complete nonsense r…

Probably the re-boot of The Blues Brothers. Even ChatGPT suggested that :)

>What movie is where police vehicles are dispatched and they all crash for seemingly no reason on the way to a scene

The movie you are describing sounds like "The Blues Brothers". In the film, Jake and Elwood Blues embark on a mission to save the Catholic orphanage where they were raised from foreclosure. In the course of their journey, they lead the police on a high-speed car chase through the streets of Chicago, causing numerous police vehicles to crash. Is this the movie you were thinking of?

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

#214
post #195
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…

> "inurl:reddit.com" site:reddit.com would be slightly better :)

I was wondering about that. Maybe they know something we don't using inurl. To catch subdomaims maybe?

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

#215

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…

Same here. Worked on a lazy list in js for mobile. The component had a nasty array lookup every scroll event. I asked chatgpt if it could optimize the lookup algorithm. I suggested me to implement a binary search solution including the code itself. It worked immediately. I would have taken me probably a day to come up with something similar. I also asked chatgpt to minimize my code including all method names , variables etc. Unfortunately the output of chatgpt is limited to x characters. 200kb of text isnt possible. But it is able to minimize. You can even ask to uglify the code by using animal names or street names in London.

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

#216
The main argument of this article is:

1. ChatGPT gets tripped up in some edge conditions.

2. Search engines provide some interesting features that ChatGPT doesn't.

These are both bad assumptions looking forward:

1. It's evident that ChatGPT or other chat-based text generation will only improve over time. These kinds of quirky edge cases will _always_ exist, but will be harder and harder to contrive.

2. These sorts of features, categorization, images, etc can be discovered via conversation. And there's no reason to think these features are exclusive to a search product. Code snippets embeds are already built into ChatGPT, it's not hard to imagine other useful embeds.

Finally, I'd ask the author to think of it this way:

As more text is generated, and those pages end up at the top of search results, the quality of the search results approaches that of a text generation model anyway. Search will soon be the unnecessary middleman.

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

#217
post #10

If Google search actually searches (find articles or sites with keyword) then yes: ChatGTP or it’s successor would never replace Google search. But Google search so broken (at least for me) so it looks more like broken or badly implemented ChatGTP.

> But Google search so broken (at least for me) Every single time I've seen this claim made and the person shared their methodology for searching on Google, it becomes very apparent that the problem is not Google, but the user.

That’s a bit harsh. Early Google didn’t really require any special skills or knowledge on the user’s part. Current day Google requires hacks and workarounds to avoid both SEO spam and Corporate Google’s attempts to sell you something.

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

#218
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…

I know this thread is about ChatGPT, but if you're still using Google then I suggest giving Kagi a try. It's a paid search engine, but I've been using it for quite a while now and really enjoy it. With Kagi you can rank and downrank domains as well as block them. There's also this think called "lenses" which are basically filters for specific kinds of searches. For instance, I have a "Programming" lens and a "Academi…

Note that Brave Search also has "lenses" / filters, and it has them for free. https://search.brave.com/goggles

There's a copycats removal goggle and a HackerNews-top1000-sites goggle. I use them from time to time, but wish I could automatically include the filter with all searches by default (or maybe there's a way and I don't know how).

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

#219

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…

One note, though: you can't tell whether its statement is true or made up.

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

#220
I am absolutely sure that if Chatgpt created a google like interface on a domain like askme.com. without a required login, it would become immensely popular. Possibly eating away a lot from traditional search engines. Google search is becoming the new Yahoo. Its becoming bloated if not already. And its just time for a new era in which a chatgpt like product perfectly fits.
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