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Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately

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Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately

#301

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

tarsinge wrote: post #284
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #243

You know, whatever the merits (and it sounds as if there were very few) of Google's presentation (or Pinchai's recent non-statement) might be, I would have expected the commentariat here at HN to display way more skepticism about language models as a replacement for search. If there's a crowd anywhere in the world large enough to leave 200+ comments on a post like this, you'd think thatg the one at HN would understan…

That thread is mostly about Google completely messing up their response to what Microsoft announced yesterday. I don’t see that unanimous acceptance, there are a lot of interesting discussions about the shortcomings. There are many comparisons between Google results for examples, with also potential solutions to problems you cite like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34709883 It’s not about replacing search overn…

If it takes even 10% of search volume (in its current technological form) then those of us working in this domain have failed, miserably.

I have no idea what Microsoft is thinking. It's like a state hiring a known liar to be its star witness in some notable number of court cases.

[ EDIT: OK, so one thing they might be thinking is to just this sort of technology to generate readable/listenable summaries of search results obtained by other means. I can see much less wrong with that, but it's also not really the same technology at all as ChatGPT et al. ]

Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately

#302

Post by throwawayapples »

yao420 wrote: post #261
rchaud wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, so GPT is good at parsing technical documentation. What about the other 95% of search volume that isn't tech-related?

TikTok believe it or not. I had a 19yr old cousin tell me that she almost uses TikTok exclusively for tutorials and when I pushed back and said why/how the other teens in the family heavily agreed. I’ve since asked ~5 gen z (I don’t interact with many!) and they told me the same.

I almost hate to ask, but are these makeup or clothing tutorials?

Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately

#303

Post by MaxDPS »

visarga wrote: post #250
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but I think they're correct a lot more often than ChatGPT. And they give the source!

Search "What is the world record for crossing the English Channel entirely on foot" and see precision Zero. None of the responses match the query. It should say - not found. Or actually find that people attempted to illegally cross through the Channel Tunnel. Usually when I search for error messages for a specific version of software it will respond with other versions. That is useless. That's not what 24 years worth…

I think that is till better than ChatGPT's answer which was:

"The fastest recorded time for crossing the English Channel entirely on foot (without the aid of swimming or any other means of transportation) is 16 hours and 34 minutes, achieved by British endurance athlete Damian Hall in August 2021."

So, it seems like it made up an answer instead, which I think is much worse that Googles response.

Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately

#304

Post by labrador »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #243

You know, whatever the merits (and it sounds as if there were very few) of Google's presentation (or Pinchai's recent non-statement) might be, I would have expected the commentariat here at HN to display way more skepticism about language models as a replacement for search. If there's a crowd anywhere in the world large enough to leave 200+ comments on a post like this, you'd think thatg the one at HN would understan…

Microsoft is doing it right. They display search results on the left and ChatGPT results on the right. It's up to you to decide what is accurate knowing the results on the right are supposed to be a summary of what is on the left.

Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately

#305

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

jozvolskyef wrote: post #298
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #243

You know, whatever the merits (and it sounds as if there were very few) of Google's presentation (or Pinchai's recent non-statement) might be, I would have expected the commentariat here at HN to display way more skepticism about language models as a replacement for search. If there's a crowd anywhere in the world large enough to leave 200+ comments on a post like this, you'd think thatg the one at HN would understan…

The disruption isn't hypothetical. People like me are excited about the technology because it already has disrupted search for us. My brother has been using it for the majority of his queries because he doesn't speak English and ChatGPT is a gateway to the knowledge that only exists on the English-language internet.

I wasn't disputing that the disruption exists. I was questioning whether it should exist, given the technological limitations of LMs at this time.

Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately

#306

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #288
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #243

You know, whatever the merits (and it sounds as if there were very few) of Google's presentation (or Pinchai's recent non-statement) might be, I would have expected the commentariat here at HN to display way more skepticism about language models as a replacement for search. If there's a crowd anywhere in the world large enough to leave 200+ comments on a post like this, you'd think thatg the one at HN would understan…

Assuming that Google is in a panic over ChatGPT, as suggested the HN commentariat and the "tech" news media, then arguably this only highlights how little confidence Google has in the quality of its search engine and the trustworthiness of the web as a source for information. For example, instead of trying to match or beat ChatGPT, whatever that would entail, Google could instead focus on illustrating the shortcoming…

Absolutely. In part, my comment targets Google itself as much as the HN commentariat, since the corporate communications, as you note, suggest a distinct lack of confidence in what they already do, and a great deal of over-confidence in what LM's might bring.

Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately

#307

Post by penjelly »

onion2k wrote: post #181
rchaud wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google is going to bleed credibility for every month that they don't have a lamda/llm enabled search integrated into the home page. I don't know that end-users really care about having a GPT-written paragraph accompanying their search results. Is there some other kind of output AI search currently provides that I'm missing?

I don't know that end-users really care about having a GPT-written paragraph accompanying their search results. For 90% of my searches I don't want any search results. I want a definitive, authoritative answer to a question. In the olden days of the web I had to figure out what to search to give me a website that would give me that answer as the first result, and in the mid-90s that was really hard because search was…

echo this. traditional search will take backseat, most people seek "answers" when they search, not sources which they can derive "answers" from. This will enable the power search for less tech savvy folks, while improving the feedback loop for experienced searchers. Feels like search has changed forever.

browsers are left with challenges, particularly legitimacy of results, and ensuring a viable ad model. No doubt we'll see those soon.

Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately

#308

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

potatolicious wrote: post #299
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #243

You know, whatever the merits (and it sounds as if there were very few) of Google's presentation (or Pinchai's recent non-statement) might be, I would have expected the commentariat here at HN to display way more skepticism about language models as a replacement for search. If there's a crowd anywhere in the world large enough to leave 200+ comments on a post like this, you'd think thatg the one at HN would understan…

Agreed heavily - and I work with these technologies regularly. There is a mania around it much like there was for crypto (though I would maintain there's more merit here than there ever was with crypto - orders of magnitude more). There are a litany of problems that surround LLMs that are solvable, but are highly non-trivial. The present hyped demos all seem to involve mainlining the unfiltered output of LLMs directl…

Great comment, thanks. However:

> but a mainstream audience I suspect will be less forgiving.

Less forgiving, perhaps, but also, I suspect, less discerning.

Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately

#309

Post by penjelly »

gwright wrote: post #238
onion2k wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that end-users really care about having a GPT-written paragraph accompanying their search results. For 90% of my searches I don't want any search results. I want a definitive, authoritative answer to a question. In the olden days of the web I had to figure out what to search to give me a website that would give me that answer as the first result, and in the mid-90s that was really hard because search was…

> I want a definitive, authoritative answer to a question In the real world we don't have any agreed upon general notion of "definitive, authoritative" sources. A certain amount of skepticism is important to avoid all sorts of abuses of authority and "appeal to authority" is a recognized logical fallacy. Be careful what you wish for. I'm pretty sure I don't want to live in a world where everyone behaves as if the res…

if chatgpt cited its sources and gave you the links, wouldnt that change things? You can always dive deeper.

Re: Google's live from Paris event private/deleted immediately

#310

Post by [deleted] »

uoaei wrote: post #271
rchaud wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there any indication real attribution is coming? I wouldn't hold my breath. Showing attributions allows people to reverse engineer how the prompt was made, and identifies weaknesses in the model. Bad for business!

What viability are top execs seeing in a business model that is so fragile as to be defeated by reverse-engineering these prompts...? There is obviously no competitive advantage here for very long. The systems must provide an additional service on top of these models, something beyond "attaching it to a publicly-available input form". It needs to aid in reasoning, not act as a god.

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