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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

#101

Post by labster »

krisoft wrote: post #61
WJW wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kills it for me (so far, perhaps they can fix it in the future) is that there is no way to know if you've actually asked ChatGPT correctly and it has given you a perfect document with the answer you seek, or if your question was slightly off and it has given a wrong answer, or even if your question was correct but it still confidently gives the wrong answer. It famously asserted numbers like 42 were prime early…

> It famously asserted numbers like 42 were prime early on Oh it tried to convince me that four is not larger than one. :) It went like this: At first I asked ChatGPT to summarise J.C. Owen’s contribution to geometric constraint solving. It gave me an answer which might be even correct. It sounded correct anyway. Then I have asked for a worked example of his method used on a toy geometric constraint system. It run in…

In SQL, SELECT 'four' > 1; returns true as well.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#102

Post by pleb_nz »

asimpletune wrote: post #99

I think this article misses the point. I don’t imagine ChatGPT as is to be a replacement for a search engine. I do however see the interface of talking to an AI in a REPL sort of way, where the context is carried through the conversation as a massive improvement with tons of potential that is yet to be realized.

Not sure if you mean talking literally, but imo offices a noisy enough now. I'd hate to work in an office full of people like me talking to an AI all day to get things done. I guess it would be like working in a call center.

I'm guessing there will have to be changes in communication methods or work place setups or we'll continue to type?

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#103

Post by MuffinFlavored »

lolinder wrote: post #86
gukov wrote: post #22

The way I see it: - Today's search engines will give you links to millions of documents - ChatGPT, if asked correctly, will instead generate one perfect document based on millions of the documents To me, that's a clear evolution of the search engine, especially with all the SEO & ad spam that's plaguing Google and others currently. I wasn't ready to pay a monthly fee for an ad-free Google. I am ready to pay for somet…

The problem with ChatGPT as a replacement for Google is that it was not designed to produce accurate facts, and it shows. This model cut its teeth writing articles about the discovery of unicorns in the Andes[0] for goodness sake! It's a language model, and a very impressive one at that, but language is used to express falsehoods and fiction just as regularly as it is used to express truth. This doesn't mean that it…

devils advocate, but Google wasn’t designed to make sure the links it aggregates at the top are accurate/isn’t just blog spam designed to cater to specialized SEO tricks

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#104

Post by echelon »

lolinder wrote: post #86
gukov wrote: post #22

The way I see it: - Today's search engines will give you links to millions of documents - ChatGPT, if asked correctly, will instead generate one perfect document based on millions of the documents To me, that's a clear evolution of the search engine, especially with all the SEO & ad spam that's plaguing Google and others currently. I wasn't ready to pay a monthly fee for an ad-free Google. I am ready to pay for somet…

The problem with ChatGPT as a replacement for Google is that it was not designed to produce accurate facts, and it shows. This model cut its teeth writing articles about the discovery of unicorns in the Andes[0] for goodness sake! It's a language model, and a very impressive one at that, but language is used to express falsehoods and fiction just as regularly as it is used to express truth. This doesn't mean that it…

These are early days. Everything is going to move faster than you can keep up. You'll see head-turning headlines on a daily basis.

Next year will see AI begin to disrupt so many businesses you'd thought were absolutely impenetrable. I don't think anything is safe anymore.

By the end of the decade, I think even manufacturing and robotics will be automated. Everyone from McDonalds to Apple and Ford will feel the pressure.

I've got a mind-blowing demo coming out soon that will put even more fields on notice. And that's just my team. There are so many people working on AI-first products now. Incumbents will be overwhelmed and washed away.

(If ever there was a cue for a career change or opportunity to make a whole lot of money, it's this. Don't ignore this one! You're still early enough to take advantage.)

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#105

Post by dinkumthinkum »

m_mueller wrote: post #40
type4 wrote: post #26

It seems the only thing that's missing is some type of fact-checking function. The interaction, from a user perspective, is much nicer than sorting through Google results.But the results can be confidentially wrong and if you're not familiar with the subject matter already, you won't really know that. That said, I'm basically using it as a replacement for Google for stuff that isn't up-to-date (code, philosophy) then…

and by extension: the ability and expression of doubt / humility. knowing what you don't know is when you reach a certain maturity, which so far all these AIs seem to lack.

They seem to lack the ability to think, which seems kind of important.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#106

Post by lolinder »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #103
lolinder wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with ChatGPT as a replacement for Google is that it was not designed to produce accurate facts, and it shows. This model cut its teeth writing articles about the discovery of unicorns in the Andes[0] for goodness sake! It's a language model, and a very impressive one at that, but language is used to express falsehoods and fiction just as regularly as it is used to express truth. This doesn't mean that it…

devils advocate, but Google wasn’t designed to make sure the links it aggregates at the top are accurate/isn’t just blog spam designed to cater to specialized SEO tricks

I agree that Google is terrible at its job and produces garbage most of the time. That's the only reason why an LLM chatbot is seen by anyone as a viable replacement.

But at the very least Google always gives you the source, which allows you to read it for yourself and judge its trustworthiness. No such option for ChatGPT.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#107

Post by dinkumthinkum »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #52
m_mueller wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and by extension: the ability and expression of doubt / humility. knowing what you don't know is when you reach a certain maturity, which so far all these AIs seem to lack.

That’s not particularly different from comments on HackerNews and Reddit. There’s a lot of extremely confident and very wrong answers on both sites! ChatGPT is probably more wrong more often, by a good margin. But I don’t think the argument “it’s confidently wrong” carries any weight. Humans are extremely susceptible to humans who display confidence. It’d probably be a good thing if humans were as skeptical of confid…

It gives literally the same argument for 42 being prime as 23.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#108

Post by lolinder »

echelon wrote: post #104
lolinder wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with ChatGPT as a replacement for Google is that it was not designed to produce accurate facts, and it shows. This model cut its teeth writing articles about the discovery of unicorns in the Andes[0] for goodness sake! It's a language model, and a very impressive one at that, but language is used to express falsehoods and fiction just as regularly as it is used to express truth. This doesn't mean that it…

These are early days. Everything is going to move faster than you can keep up. You'll see head-turning headlines on a daily basis. Next year will see AI begin to disrupt so many businesses you'd thought were absolutely impenetrable. I don't think anything is safe anymore. By the end of the decade, I think even manufacturing and robotics will be automated. Everyone from McDonalds to Apple and Ford will feel the pressu…

I'm not questioning the AI revolution, I'm questioning the applicability of large generative language models to information retrieval. We need a different kind of model for that, not just a few tweaks here and there to this one.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#109

Post by Gigachad »

charcircuit wrote: post #73
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.

How does Google stink? I've never had an issue with. What query does it struggle with?

It sucks for things that can be monetised. Searching info on products for example. Just because SEO spammers are too good. text generators will make this problem so much worse because the spam will look exactly like the hand made content.

Re: AI chatbots are not a replacement for search engines

#110

Post by bg24 »

williamtrask wrote: post #35
dilap wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT can give you websites, too, if you ask: "What's a good social website for people of a technical bent" It recommended: Reddit, Hacker News, Stack Exchange, Quora, LinkedIn, ResearchGate, GitHub That's a pretty good list! Tried the same search on Google, and the first result was some spammy site "15 top social networks," #1 being facebook. Not very useful. I definitely think chatbots will replace many uses of s…

It’s not that google can’t do this. It’s that the incentives prevent it. Chatbots may be worse because there’s a plausible way to only give you one answer and to really make it feel real.

When the incentives are 70% of your revenue, very difficult to change track in 1-2 years.
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