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AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

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Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#11

Post by joe_the_user »

n0tth3dro1ds wrote: post #4

I agree that chat bots aren’t the proper modality for replacing search. So what? Currently, Google search results stink. ChatGPT results are way better in a number of domains. Does it need to be a chat bot? No. But Google still stinks now. I’ll take anything that can just find the correct information.

Google certainly sinks for my purposes. But these current results are exactly what happens a company carefully calculates the monetization involved in retrieving information. Open AI isn't calculating the monetization of ChatGPT's answers and doesn't have a real business plan (paid chat won't go further than paid search imo). The thing is, once Open AI engages in the calculations done by Google, having the results seem to come from an "intelligence" can only make the effect worse (though I suspect Google will also tend to look like an intelligence/chatbot too as things progress, the future looks ugly)

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#12

Post by yakattak »

I worked on a chat bot to help solve technical issues. It would parse what the user wanted and then search the already established articles we had that were ingested into Elasticsearch.

At first, we started with a goal of fully conversational AI. So, for example, it would ask a question based on the article and give you a choice, you could then type your choice. This became a nightmare for the model so we added buttons instead.

Then, before we knew it, this “bot” was just a glorified search engine that feigned being a bot. Towards the end of it I scratched my head and said “did we even replace the current knowledgebase? are we spending thousands on something that adds no value?”

I don’t think chatbots are it either. I think we could have just replaced the KB search with Elasticsearch and been done with it, no need for any ML.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#13

Post by megablast »

n0tth3dro1ds wrote: post #4

I agree that chat bots aren’t the proper modality for replacing search. So what? Currently, Google search results stink. ChatGPT results are way better in a number of domains. Does it need to be a chat bot? No. But Google still stinks now. I’ll take anything that can just find the correct information.

Google has ruined the web. Look what they did to recipe sites?? Truly awful.

And there used to be sites that answered the question on the search page. Google pushed them to the bottom.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#14

Post by ArjenM »

It's like putting a dusty book back on the digital shelve, now you need to have a conversation to do a simple search query that's hidden in marketing gibberish?

I'm, still seeing the whole push in this product range hang with the call to make the search functions of most search engines more garbage than the actual chatbot.

As if Marketing is steering this ship.

I'm sticking to my own knowledge and trusted independent sources for now, no need to have something make up an entire world for you, just to trap you in a cage of ones own making for real this time?

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#15

Post by joe_the_user »

lerchmo wrote: post #9
n0tth3dro1ds wrote: post #4

I agree that chat bots aren’t the proper modality for replacing search. So what? Currently, Google search results stink. ChatGPT results are way better in a number of domains. Does it need to be a chat bot? No. But Google still stinks now. I’ll take anything that can just find the correct information.

Google search results are a vortex of perverse incentives and double dipping. The fact that google ranks horrible CPM arbitrage websites for nearly everything AND monetizes these websites... yuck. it doesn't take a rocket scientist to imagine how some of these AI Models could leverage a search index + something like wolfram alpha to generate a much more targeted and valuable search result.

it doesn't take a rocket scientist to imagine how some of these AI Models could leverage a search index + something like wolfram alpha to generate a much more targeted and valuable search result.

Sure but the problem with the rocket scientists is they think about how good things can be, not how evil they can be. Sure, a chat bot could be made to give very valuable-to the end user results but as it will free like Google, results yielding-profits-to-company will be given, in the fashion you describe Google doing.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#16

Post by williamtrask »

n0tth3dro1ds wrote: post #4

I agree that chat bots aren’t the proper modality for replacing search. So what? Currently, Google search results stink. ChatGPT results are way better in a number of domains. Does it need to be a chat bot? No. But Google still stinks now. I’ll take anything that can just find the correct information.

This is a great point.

Followup question - is LLM tech more or less likely to end up replacing search when those same incentives really saturate the LLM product itself.

One big difference seems to be attribution. LLMs don’t tell you where their info comes from. They just say what is (but can be asked to cite works - with mixed results).

Will LLMs get good at citing sources and if not will people care or will they give in to LLMs as a source of information that’s “good enough because it mostly works”

From a product placement / ads perspective, being able to persuade people to fully accept everything an ad-infused LLM says because it’s good enough seems like an incredibly lucrative product bundling opportunity if they can get it right. Esp. If they can use that to convince regulators they can’t annotate the difference between ads and non ads.

Seems pretty dystopian from a disinformation perspective though.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#18

Post by thexumaker »

yakattak wrote: post #12

I worked on a chat bot to help solve technical issues. It would parse what the user wanted and then search the already established articles we had that were ingested into Elasticsearch. At first, we started with a goal of fully conversational AI. So, for example, it would ask a question based on the article and give you a choice, you could then type your choice. This became a nightmare for the model so we added butto…

Yep had the same realization a while back building something similar for our internal docs on notion for a hackathon. I realized that if notion just had a better search engine we wouldn’t need anything else built on top

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#19

Post by nunodonato »

yakattak wrote: post #12

I worked on a chat bot to help solve technical issues. It would parse what the user wanted and then search the already established articles we had that were ingested into Elasticsearch. At first, we started with a goal of fully conversational AI. So, for example, it would ask a question based on the article and give you a choice, you could then type your choice. This became a nightmare for the model so we added butto…

Can you elaborate on what the problem was? What became a nightmare for the model?

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#20

Post by christmaspizza »

nomel wrote: post #6

A chat bot isn’t allowed to use external APIs or present things besides conversational text? Seems short sighted. Todays chat bots should be considered dumb prototypes, when thinking about even the near future.

Yeah this is a weird take. Chat bots are improving rapidly, increasingly used in real applications. With more targeted applications, like a "search engine" for coding, I could see these being very powerful. It's weird to write an article discounting that based on how the current ChatGPT application, a research beta, operates and throwing out some fear-based morality.
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