Live data from Hacker News

ChatGPT Search

openai.com

211–220 of 1001 posts

Re: ChatGPT Search

#211
post #108

One thing that is quite unfortunate with the state of SEO and the web in general today is that when I asked "what are the latest versions of common programming languages and when were they released?" a large amount of the sources were "13 Tools You Should Learn Now" and the like. This might be a solvable problem within the search API they provide to the LLM, but for now I wouldn't trust current LLMs to be able to fil…

For Java I got: As of October 31, 2024, the latest version of Java is Java 23, released on September 17, 2024. The most recent Long-Term Support (LTS) version is Java 21, released on September 19, 2023. Which all seems correct and accurate.

This is because it is referencing and regurgitating Wikipedia articles.

Re: ChatGPT Search

#212
post #108

One thing that is quite unfortunate with the state of SEO and the web in general today is that when I asked "what are the latest versions of common programming languages and when were they released?" a large amount of the sources were "13 Tools You Should Learn Now" and the like. This might be a solvable problem within the search API they provide to the LLM, but for now I wouldn't trust current LLMs to be able to fil…

For Java I got: As of October 31, 2024, the latest version of Java is Java 23, released on September 17, 2024. The most recent Long-Term Support (LTS) version is Java 21, released on September 19, 2023. Which all seems correct and accurate.

Yeah I did also find it to be mostly accurate. However, seeing the sources I felt like I kind of have to check all the languages just in case it picked up information from a random "X ways to do Y" article that might not have been prioritizing accuracy. And for this search query I did see several languages' actual websites, but I did another very similar query earlier where 9 out of 12 results were all numbered list articles clearly intended for SEO. 2 of them were actual official sites. And 1 was what appears to be a decent attempt at talking about programming languages (i.e. not SEO only).

Re: ChatGPT Search

#213
post #142

Genuine question: is there a present or planned value proposition for people like me who already have decent search skills? Or are these really for children/elders who (without making any normative claim about whether this is a good thing or not) can't be arsed to perform searches themselves? Does someone else have good search skills but mingle traditional search engines with LLMs anyways? Why? I use LLMs every day b…

For searches that remain inconclusive, I sometimes double-check with LLMs to see if I have missed anything. It rarely gives relevant new insights, but it’s good to get the confirmation I guess.

Re: ChatGPT Search

#214
post #142

Genuine question: is there a present or planned value proposition for people like me who already have decent search skills? Or are these really for children/elders who (without making any normative claim about whether this is a good thing or not) can't be arsed to perform searches themselves? Does someone else have good search skills but mingle traditional search engines with LLMs anyways? Why? I use LLMs every day b…

I find myself being unable to search for more complex subjects when I don't know the keywords, specialized terminology, or even the title of a work, yet I have a broad understanding of what I'd like to find. Traditional search engines (I'll jump between Kagi, DuckDuckGo, and Google) haven't proved as useful at pointing me in the right direction when I find that I need to spend a few sentences describing what I'm look…

[deleted]

Re: ChatGPT Search

#215
post #142

Genuine question: is there a present or planned value proposition for people like me who already have decent search skills? Or are these really for children/elders who (without making any normative claim about whether this is a good thing or not) can't be arsed to perform searches themselves? Does someone else have good search skills but mingle traditional search engines with LLMs anyways? Why? I use LLMs every day b…

It seems good at finding relevant research papers. e.g.

> "Can you provide a list of the ten most important recent publications related to high-temperature helium-cooled pebble-bed reactors and the specific characteristics of their graphite pebble fuel which address past problems in fuel disintegration and dust generation?"

These were more focused and relevant results than a Google Scholar keyword-style search.

However, it did rather poorly when asked for direct links to the documentation for a set of Python libraries. Gave some junk links or just failed entirely in 3/4 of the cases.

Re: ChatGPT Search

#216
not sure what my use case for this would be if it's expecting me to type full descriptive sentences to check something quick or find a picture, and then read a whole paragraph of a useless reply. No results. No reddit posts (which aren't even what I want but understand a lot of content is buried in user-generated content) They seem to be implying this is the replacement for Google. This just isn't it.

Edit: ohh, only Pro users? Right. ok. They made it seem like this was the big search launch and to go to chatgpt.com to get into it. Moving on.

Re: ChatGPT Search

#218
post #142

Genuine question: is there a present or planned value proposition for people like me who already have decent search skills? Or are these really for children/elders who (without making any normative claim about whether this is a good thing or not) can't be arsed to perform searches themselves? Does someone else have good search skills but mingle traditional search engines with LLMs anyways? Why? I use LLMs every day b…

I don't overuse LLMs for now; however when I have a complex problem that would require multiple of searches and dozens of tabs opened and reading through very long docs, asking LLM allows me to iterate order of magnitude faster. Things that were previously "log a jira and think about it when I have a full uninterrupted day" now can be approached with half an hour spare. This is game changer because "have a full day u…

This. Not having to open two dozen tabs and read through so much is a gamechanger, especially for someone who has had trouble focusing with so much open. This is especially true when learning a new technology.

Re: ChatGPT Search

#219
post #142

Genuine question: is there a present or planned value proposition for people like me who already have decent search skills? Or are these really for children/elders who (without making any normative claim about whether this is a good thing or not) can't be arsed to perform searches themselves? Does someone else have good search skills but mingle traditional search engines with LLMs anyways? Why? I use LLMs every day b…

I find myself being unable to search for more complex subjects when I don't know the keywords, specialized terminology, or even the title of a work, yet I have a broad understanding of what I'd like to find. Traditional search engines (I'll jump between Kagi, DuckDuckGo, and Google) haven't proved as useful at pointing me in the right direction when I find that I need to spend a few sentences describing what I'm look…

> I find myself being unable to search for more complex subjects when I don't know the keywords, specialized terminology, or even the title of a work, yet I have a broad understanding of what I'd like to find.

For me this is typically a multi-step process. The results of a first search give me more ideas of terms to search for, and after some iteration I usually find the right terms. It’s a bit of an art to search for content that maybe isn’t your end goal, but will help you search for what you actually seek.

LLMs can be useful for that first step, but I always revert to Google for the final search.

Also, Google Verbatim search is essential.

Re: ChatGPT Search

#220
post #147
post #108

One thing that is quite unfortunate with the state of SEO and the web in general today is that when I asked "what are the latest versions of common programming languages and when were they released?" a large amount of the sources were "13 Tools You Should Learn Now" and the like. This might be a solvable problem within the search API they provide to the LLM, but for now I wouldn't trust current LLMs to be able to fil…

SEO spam is always going to focus on the biggest market, and by doing so they can be completely transparent and obvious to whoever they're not trying to fool. I'd assume right now the SEO target is still mainly Google rather than ChatGPT, but that's only an "I recon" not a citation. If and when ChatGPT does become the main target for SEO spam, then Googling may start giving good results again.

Wouldn't it be "I reckon"? :-)
Post reply on HN