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Bard and new AI features in Search

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Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like that, and that's the one thing I enjoy most about ChatGPT, but the problem with this scenario is that it breaks the web. If a search engine can give me all the answers I want, then there’s no point in visiting sites anymore, aside for e-commerce. So if you have a site you wouldn’t want the next AI search engine to crawl your content because you get no traffic back. So either they find a way to give traffic bac…

What traffic are you getting back from commenting on HN. If you're not getting any, why are you wasting your time? Of course you can post online for other reasons, like participating in a debate, building a community, working on a project, or just for hobby. And usually that's the good part of the web. Otherwise why would people be using site:reddit.com in their searches.

Getting on HN doesn't cost me a dime though, aside from spending personal time. Having a web site costs money both to maintain the hardware, and the content. And if someone wants to index the content he should give me back traffic. That's the premise upon which search engines were build. You break that, we end-up with a walled off garden that handles all the information.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#472

I agree this is bland corporate speak. But it reminded me of a question that's been floating around: A number of pundits, here on HN and elsewhere, keep referring to these large language models are "google killers." This just doesn't make sense to me. It feels like Google can easily pivot its ad engine to work with the AI-driven chat systems. It can augment answers with links to additional sources of information, be…

ChatGPT will have a very hard time. If I want to get on ChatGPT I usually google ChatGPT and click the first link. It is a crazy competitive advantage.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#473
post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to retrain the model to access fresh data. You can just tune the model to generate queries to various sources (search engine, etc) to retrieve data.

> You can just tune the model to generate queries to various sources (search engine, etc) to retrieve data. That sounds like a task runner instead of a LLM

Right. The model is already trained to interpret the results. Think of it like automatic prompt creation based on the results of a search.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#474

Question for AI experts out there: ChatGPT is awesome, but it is obviously hamstrung by the fact that it crawled the web at the end of 2021, so all of its data is essentially "frozen" and it doesn't "know" of any topics that occurred after 2021. Seems to me like the next "holy grail" in large language models is building a model that can be continually updated. If Google can achieve that, I think they could leapfrog O…

Broadly, yes. Current AIs (LLMs etc) haves succeeded as brute-force prediction at it's lowest level. Of course there are many refinements here but this basic situation has meant that adaptive learning, updating, doesn't really work for this particular approach (as others mention).

The thing about this is if competition forces Google and Microsoft to offer a full ChatGPT style interface, they are going to be using a vast amount of cpu cycles and thus energy. This is going to be costly and potentially environmentally destructive. And only companies with vast server farms will be in this game.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#475

It used to be that Google would find search results on the web and send you there. They were good at it. Good for content creators, good for users. Then they started scraping the destination pages and present the answer right there on Google's own results page. No traffic for you. Well at least there was a link. Now they take it one step further, and just steal the content and feed it into their gargantuan pattern ma…

"content creator" is a separate category of for-profit online media. As it's designed for mass consumption, the content creators moved off the open web a long time ago to sharecrop on BigCorp's platforms: YouTube, Twitch, Substack, TikTok, etc.

There are lots of non-commercial random blogs out there with useful information on long-tail topics. I agree that those will disappear from search, as AI will put a lower weight on their posts compared to something from a major website.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#476
post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those new language models are "Google killers" because they reset all the assumptions that people have made about search for several decades. Imagine that people start using those chat bots massively as a replacement for Google search. Then the notion of keyword disappears. Google AdSense becomes mostly irrelevant. Of course, Google is a giant today with a history of machine learning innovation. So they have a good c…

Google could ask the llm what products or services would help with the question and show ads for that. Just tried it and it worked pretty well. > Me: 8 year old girl birthday party ideas > Chatgpt: > Me: what products or services could I buy for it > Chatgpt: craft party: craft supplies such as beads, glue, paint, and fabric - scavengerhunt: prizes for the scavenger hunt and decorations - dance party: Hire a DJ or a…

The question becomes will you trust information that is paid for by advertisers or you will trust information that is paid by you, the user?

With ads in link based search engine, you can skip or block them, but if it is a part of a one sentence answer, there is not much you can do about it, so consuming it will be much more frustrating.

Of course, there will still be a lot of people who will choose the free information paid by the advertisers, but there will also be a growing number of users who will prefer not to have advertisers pay for the information they put into their heads (it is already clear that such information will be of higher quality).

My prediction is that in 10 years, all free information paid by advertisers will have 'for entertainment purposes only' label, because by then we will understand as a society that that is its peak value.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#477

> Soon, you’ll see AI-powered features in Search Despite this blog obviously being written for Wall St, this line is key. This is why anyone is going to struggle to compete with Google in AI. Google Search is used so widely and its taxonomy of meaning so vast already that once they flip this on they’ll be unstoppable. (Assuming any rate of improvement whatsoever as we search.) I’m not mentioning all other learning da…

I wonder how long till they open it up to your private data stored in Google? Eg. User: What should I be doing today? AI: You have a court appearance at 9am. Prioritize that, because failing to appear might result in an arrest warrant. Next, prioritize your mums birthday - all the other family will be there, and with your mums cancer results last week, this might be the last. If you travel between them by bus, then y…

Google could do this now. They already have your calendar and your contacts. Do you think that a conversational interface was what was holding them back? Thousands of engineers, but if only they could figure out how to merge Gmail and Eliza!

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#478

AI fact summarization like this will further obfuscate the facts from the summary. People already believe the top 3 posts from Google are the benchmark for truth. Now customers won't even see the sources (e.g. MSNBC, Wikipedia) of the "facts". Google is deliberately biasing results in the name of ML-fairness, which may be laudable. Now the bias will be even harder to distinguish from fact.

you.com gives reference links

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Google phone can instantly translate almost any foreign language, embedded in an image, without an internet connection. Pretty sure that was not a thing 8 years ago. If/when Google embeds an (local and/or lightweight) Bard model into every Pixel phone, that will be a game-changer.

That was a feature of google translate many years ago. Absolutely nothing new.

And was came from a purchase of Word Lens not something in house if I remember right.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#480

Question for AI experts out there: ChatGPT is awesome, but it is obviously hamstrung by the fact that it crawled the web at the end of 2021, so all of its data is essentially "frozen" and it doesn't "know" of any topics that occurred after 2021. Seems to me like the next "holy grail" in large language models is building a model that can be continually updated. If Google can achieve that, I think they could leapfrog O…

I would say continue update LLM isn't a very good idea, the compliance issue will be huge. Also feeding data without quality check seems like a sure recipe for disaster.

For the foreseeable future, LLM will be used for a unique set of queries that are more operational, like a consult, not for stuff that are informational, like what news is published today.

If your query is relying on the model to be update to date with today's news, you can just put it into the prompt.

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