Live data from Hacker News

ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

algolia.com

281–290 of 427 posts

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

#281

For any chatbot I will ask only 2 questions, one is about myself (since I placed an easter egg in software AOL took and used back in the day) and what time is it? ChatGPT thankfully may or may not be connected to the internet @ prompt but that is usually a good giveaway. IMO Google blew it when they took away Google via SMS, this is the hole ChatGPT(x) can fill.

> IMO Google blew it when they took away Google via SMS, this is the hole ChatGPT(x) can fill.

This is curious. What is the use case for this?

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

#282

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…

ChatGPT hallucinates facts fairly consistently if the prompt is not worded correctly. IMO the prime benefit of search engines over LLM is the ability to provide validated information and opinions that are directly cited to experts. This is unlikely achievable in a differential landscape, so LLM are useful but will probably be best used in combination with standard search engines.

Let's check back on this in a few years. The idea that a search engine can cite experts but a LLM cannot sounds wrong to me.

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

#283
post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I asked many questions and it usually fail to answer the tougher or very specific situational ones.

Give some examples? I use ChatGPT for 200-300 queries per day and it’s astonishingly accurate. I’ll double check with Google if I’m unsure but it’s almost always been correct.

Asked it a situation with examples where I’d use type erasure in swift. It looked good but was a mesh mash off various related things

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

#284

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…

I think the LLMs are better if you want knowledge synthesized, assuming it can be done correctly (it is very confidently wrong a lot of the time). But if you’re trying to find something specific, often you want the complete work published by a human as is.

Do you have any reason to think LLM cannot reference published work?

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

#285

I think folks are really underestimating Google in this space. They have: 1) access to way more data than what ChatGPT was trained on 2) access to data freshness through their crawlers 3) knowledge graph for a source of truth https://blog.google/products/search/about-knowledge-graph-an... 4) their own large language model LaMDA, that is apparently so good it convinced a senior AI researcher that it was sentient https…

They clearly have the ability to compete -- STRONGLY -- in this space. The only question is if they want to, or if they'll act like the carmakers did 10 years ago when EVs were heading toward feasibility. They felt like they wouldn't be as profitable as gas cars, so they mostly ignored the concept and forfeited the chance to be first movers. Then when Tesla finally started moving significant numbers they were caught with their pants down and are still playing catch-up. If Google treats AI as a threat to their ad business, that's what might cause them to screw this up and squander the massive early lead they could have taken.

Eventually every business model is upended. If Apple hadn't killed the iPod juggernaut by making the iPhone someone else surely would have. You have to be the one to kill your own cash cow before someone else does.

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

#286
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…

Back when Kagi was free by invitation, I tried about 10 or 20 queries on both Google and Kagi, and Kagi was equal or worse in all of them. It lacked crucial features like showing how old each result was. YMMV.

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

#287

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…

as soon as it needs to bring money it wont improve anymore.

Maybe. But that doesn't mean it wont be a lot better than current-gen search by then.

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

#289

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…

How did you do #1) ? I am curious. Did you past the code and ask GPT to analyze it ?

Yep, provided as much detail as possible with code samples. Pretty much as if you were emailing someone for help.

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

#290
This isn't a binary (yes/no) answer.

ChatGPT already replaced search engines for some (about 3-8%) of my questions.

Search engines really suck at answering complicated questions that use the same word in >1 context. For example ChatGPT answers this with ease (whereas google doesn't get close):

> Are there any currencies which have two or more units of currency and whose major unit is comprised of more than one hundred subunits?

Post reply on HN