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ChatGPT Search

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Re: ChatGPT Search

#451

Post by umvi »

whizzter wrote: post #300

This is probably Google's Altavista moment, by making their results crappier by the year in search of Ad dollars everyone has felt that there is a potential for search to be better and once that becomes available they'll be in a continious game of catch-up. Yes, Google has their own AI divisions, tons of money and SEO is to blame for part of their crappiness. But they've also _explicitly_ focused on ad-dollars over a…

At some point it seems like Google switch to ML-based search instead of index based search. You can search for very specific combinations of lyrics and scenes: "eyes on me pineapple bucket of water house of cards chess time loop" and you won't surface a link to the music video featuring all of those things (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlzgDVLtU6g), you'll just get really generic results of the average of your query.

Re: ChatGPT Search

#452

Post by astrange »

tempusalaria wrote: post #192
spunker540 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s pretty clear that LLMs can process a document/article/web page faster than any human in order to answer a given question. (And it can be parallelized across multiple pages at once too). The main hard part of searching isn’t formulating queries to write in the Google search bar, it’s clicking on links, and reading/skimming until you find the specific answer you want. Getting one sentence direct answers is…

Only if it is reliably correct. Google does offer an AI summary for factual searches and I ignore it as it often hallucinates. Perplexity has the same problem. OpenAI would need to solve that for this to be truly useful

IME Google's summary is not actually hallucinating, the problem is they are forcing it to quote the search results, but they're surfacing bad/irrelevant search results because Google's actual search hasn't worked in years. It's a RAG failure.

For instance I searched for the number to dial to set call forwarding on carrier X the other day, and it gave wrong results because it returned carrier Y.

Re: ChatGPT Search

#453

Post by kristopolous »

whizzter wrote: post #300

This is probably Google's Altavista moment, by making their results crappier by the year in search of Ad dollars everyone has felt that there is a potential for search to be better and once that becomes available they'll be in a continious game of catch-up. Yes, Google has their own AI divisions, tons of money and SEO is to blame for part of their crappiness. But they've also _explicitly_ focused on ad-dollars over a…

There's this tech pattern of letting the cash-cow stagnate and deteriorate while focusing on high risk moonshots.

This especially happens after they dominate the market.

Take for example IE6, Intel, Facebook, IBM, and now Google.

They have everything they need to keep things from going off the rails, management however has a tendency to delusionally assume their ship is so unsinkable that they're not even manning their stations.

It becomes Clayton Christensenesque - they're dismissive of the competition as not real threats and don't realize their cash-cow is running on only fumes and inertia until its too late.

Re: ChatGPT Search

#454

Post by asah »

I turned on search the web to compare vs google search + AI labs, and ran a battery of typical tests. Google was instantaneous vs gpt-4o which wrote out each letter.

Subjectively, I'm not switching for quick searched - google remains lightning fast and is good enough. But I already use gpt/claude/etc for conceptual searches and deeper analysis.

---

[used leica q3] ==> google (product listings and website; Chatgpt told me about the Leica q3 and mentioned ebay)

[value of mac air m1] ==> neither!! (google was useless videos and crap; chatgpt gave me a price range and useful explanation... which made no sense - used was the same price or higher than new!)

[vogue lyrics] ==> google wins (gave me the lyrics; Chatgpt whined about copyright restrictions and sent me to a youtube video)

[weather in nyc] ==> tie (both provided correct, rich detail about the current weather)

[root causes of ww1] ==> tie (both identified Militarism, Alliances, Imperialism, Nationalism, explained each and then mentioned the assassination of the Archduke as the triggering event)

[bohemia to midtown] ==> equally bad (both figured out that it's a request for local directions, but neither just gave me directions until I gave a specific destination)

[bohemia to penn station] ==> ??? (chatgpt correctly gave me bohemia ny where google picked some obscure local listing; otoh chatgpt wrote out directions where google gave me a nice map)

[btc to usd] ==> tie (both got today's price)

[what time is it in stockholm] ==> tie (both got it right)

[iphone 16 vs 14] ==> chatgpt wins (nice comparison; google didn't pop search labs and just gave me websites)

[ffmpeg to clip the last 3 secs of a video] ==> chatgpt ?! (I didn't love either answer TBH)

[456+789] ==> google (both gave the answer, but google included a nice calculator)

...and the stuff people really want:

[porn] ==> google (gpt whined about policy violations; google gave pornhub and other "useful" results)

Re: ChatGPT Search

#455

Post by janandonly »

Very silly question, no doubt, but why don't we train LLM's language skills on internet fluff, and actual knowledge only on some reputable sources like Wikipedia and Britannica?

Re: ChatGPT Search

#456

Post by LeoPanthera »

jaybna wrote: post #440
LeoPanthera wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solving this problem will require us to stop using the entire web as a source of information. Anyone can write anything and put it up on the web, and LLMs have no way to distinguish truth from fantasy. Limiting responses to curated information sources is the way forward. Encyclopedias, news outlets, research journals, and so on. No, they're not infallible. But they're infinitely better than anonymous web sites.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

I get your point. But the current situation is clearly not tolerable.

Re: ChatGPT Search

#457

Post by astrange »

unnouinceput wrote: post #140
Liquix wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the FAANG giants have been government assets for ~15+ years [0]. they don't have to turn a profit every quarter, innovate, or make their search any better because they no longer play by the rules a normal business does. they are a critical "too big to fail" component of the state's global surveillance system. [0] https://static1.makeuseofimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/upl...

OpenAI is Microsoft. Microsoft is a FAANG giant.

Microsoft is literally not in "FAANG". But they are in MANGA.

Re: ChatGPT Search

#458

Post by alfalfasprout »

freedomben wrote: post #436
freediver wrote: post #241

Been thinking about this a lot [1]. Will this fundamentally change how people find and access information? How do you create an experience so compelling that it replaces the current paradigm? The future promised in Star Trek and even Apple's Knowledge Navigator [2] from 1987 still feels distant. In those visions, users simply asked questions and received reliable answers - nobody had to fact-check the answers ever. C…

I genuinely think Kagi has led the way on this one. Simplicity is beautiful and effective, and Kagi has (IMHO) absolutely nailed it with their AI approach. It's one of those things that in hindsight seems obvious, which is a pretty good measure of how good an idea is IMHO. Google could have done it and kind of tried, although they're AI sucks too much. I'm very surprised that OpenAI hasn't done this sooner as well. T…

Yep, I was incredibly skeptical about Kagi but I tried it and never looked back. Now my wife, friends, and several coworkers are customers.

The chatgpt approach to search just feels forced and not as intuitive.

Re: ChatGPT Search

#459

Post by astrange »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #96
qwertox wrote: post #64

Makes me question why Google never bothered to create something like search sessions which could be enriched with comments/notes and would be located in a sidebar just like the chats in ChatGPT/Claude/Mistral are. They really had the potential to do something interesting, but were just focused on their ad metrics with the "good enough" search box. What have they been doing all the time?

Collecting people's data and making money from that.

Google doesn't make money from "collecting people's data", they show you ads.

If they're collecting data it doesn't even work; I make no effort to hide from them and none of their ads are targeted to me. Meta, though, they're good at it.

Re: ChatGPT Search

#460

Post by drilbo »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #49
Xcelerate wrote: post #12

How long until advertisements are subtly introduced? I didn’t notice any specific brand of limoncello recommended in their demo.

Honestly, if I can disable ads by paying them, then I'm ok with it. Google will suck all your data even if you pay, and link the entire earth of services to your identity. For now, chatgpt doesn't care, and I already pay for what they provide. May they kill Google. 20 years old me would freak out hearing me that, they used to be my heroes.

They're definitely still using your data though
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