Using AI as a search engine is no different than using Google.
Using AI is like having your friend who may or may not understand what you are looking for provide what they remember off the top of their head and if you get lucky they might have a link to what you are looking for.
Google (not the AI part) is more like using a phone book where you can find the thing you are looking for and get the answers directly.
AI search is fucking terrible and amplifies the problem with ads.
What? Have you used google any time in the last year? Its nothing like a phone book. Its more similar to an infomercial. Completely useless, a waste of time, MALICIOUSLY BAD AT ITS JOB, and leaves you without anything useful for having interacted. Its impossible to use. I don’t know what software you are using, but googles AI is a million times better than its search engine.
Earlier today i googled something and got NO RESULTS AT ALL. Google tried to tell me it doesnt exist. Yet, their AI had the exact info i was looking for and even linked me to its source, which is what i had spent the last hour googling to try and find. I know youre going to downvote because it goes against your narrative, but your narrative is factually inaccurate
I’m not saying that AI is not without many serious flaws, but your simplification is highly inaccurate. If AI was based on getting “lucky” it would not be a marketable product, but rather just a parlor trick. What it is actually is a computer that can search the web much faster than you could, and provides results based on that search. It is not 100% accurate, but using a direct web search or more advanced model is pretty damn close for most purposes (especially something simple like the case in the article). It’s like calling someone who uses a calculator lazy. Ridiculous thing to say.
That’s a misrepresentation of what LLMs do. You feed them a fuckton of data and they, to oversimplify it a bit, put these concepts in a multi-dimensional map. Then based on input, it can give you an estimation of an output by referencing said map. It doesn’t search for anything, it’s just mathematics.
It’s particularly easy to demonstrate with image models, where you could take two separate concepts, like say “eskimo dog” and “daisy” and add them together.
When you query ChatGPT for something and it “searches” for it, it’s either fitted enough that it can reproduce a link directly, or it calls a script that performs a web search (likely using Bing) and compiles the result for you.
You could do the same, just using an actual search engine.
Hell, you could build your own “AI search engine” with an open weights model and a little bit of time.
It depends on the model and who made it, as well as what you are asking. If its a well known fact, like “who was president in 1992”, then it is math as you say, and could be wrong, but is more often right than not, but if it’s something more current and specific, like “what is the best Italian restaurant in my area” then it does in fact so the search for you, using google maps and reviews and other data.
They’re accurate enough for simple questions like “when was Bill Clinton President”? Go ahead and prove me wrong and ask that question to an AI, and show me one that gets it wrong.
“Accurate” and “accurate enough” have completely different meanings. Calculators are not “accurate enough”, they are accurate, and the idea that you’re conflating the two notions is exactly why LLMs are useless for most things people employ them for.
I’m not conflating the two notions. I have said that they are not completely accurate, but they are absolutely accurate enough. It is really very clear the experience of those who actually use AI, vs those who just regurgitate sensationalized headlines. If you think AI is literally “useless”, then you are not living in reality.
You are indeed conflating the two ideas, and I said “useless for most things they’re utilized for”, but if you quoted the entire sentence your argument would fall apart and you realized that.
Google (not the AI part) is more like using a phone book where you can find the thing you are looking for and get the answers directly.
That’s the ideal but the reality today is the list of results aren’t what you searched for but what companies paid for you to see even if it isn’t relevant.
AI doesn’t yet have ads which is why it is useful. They are working hard to enshitify AI but for right now it’s better than Google at search.
Using AI is like having your friend who may or may not understand what you are looking for provide what they remember off the top of their head and if you get lucky they might have a link to what you are looking for.
Google (not the AI part) is more like using a phone book where you can find the thing you are looking for and get the answers directly.
AI search is fucking terrible and amplifies the problem with ads.
What? Have you used google any time in the last year? Its nothing like a phone book. Its more similar to an infomercial. Completely useless, a waste of time, MALICIOUSLY BAD AT ITS JOB, and leaves you without anything useful for having interacted. Its impossible to use. I don’t know what software you are using, but googles AI is a million times better than its search engine.
Earlier today i googled something and got NO RESULTS AT ALL. Google tried to tell me it doesnt exist. Yet, their AI had the exact info i was looking for and even linked me to its source, which is what i had spent the last hour googling to try and find. I know youre going to downvote because it goes against your narrative, but your narrative is factually inaccurate
No I haven’t used Google in years because the results started to suck.
I’m talking about how the results are presented.
🤦
Im notusing the siftware because it looks nice. I dont care how its presented. Im looking for results, which google simply cant do.
Edit: forgot a word
I’m not saying that AI is not without many serious flaws, but your simplification is highly inaccurate. If AI was based on getting “lucky” it would not be a marketable product, but rather just a parlor trick. What it is actually is a computer that can search the web much faster than you could, and provides results based on that search. It is not 100% accurate, but using a direct web search or more advanced model is pretty damn close for most purposes (especially something simple like the case in the article). It’s like calling someone who uses a calculator lazy. Ridiculous thing to say.
That’s a misrepresentation of what LLMs do. You feed them a fuckton of data and they, to oversimplify it a bit, put these concepts in a multi-dimensional map. Then based on input, it can give you an estimation of an output by referencing said map. It doesn’t search for anything, it’s just mathematics.
It’s particularly easy to demonstrate with image models, where you could take two separate concepts, like say “eskimo dog” and “daisy” and add them together.
When you query ChatGPT for something and it “searches” for it, it’s either fitted enough that it can reproduce a link directly, or it calls a script that performs a web search (likely using Bing) and compiles the result for you.
You could do the same, just using an actual search engine.
Hell, you could build your own “AI search engine” with an open weights model and a little bit of time.
It depends on the model and who made it, as well as what you are asking. If its a well known fact, like “who was president in 1992”, then it is math as you say, and could be wrong, but is more often right than not, but if it’s something more current and specific, like “what is the best Italian restaurant in my area” then it does in fact so the search for you, using google maps and reviews and other data.
Calculators are accurate. LLMs are not, per your own admission.
They’re accurate enough for simple questions like “when was Bill Clinton President”? Go ahead and prove me wrong and ask that question to an AI, and show me one that gets it wrong.
“Accurate” and “accurate enough” have completely different meanings. Calculators are not “accurate enough”, they are accurate, and the idea that you’re conflating the two notions is exactly why LLMs are useless for most things people employ them for.
I’m not conflating the two notions. I have said that they are not completely accurate, but they are absolutely accurate enough. It is really very clear the experience of those who actually use AI, vs those who just regurgitate sensationalized headlines. If you think AI is literally “useless”, then you are not living in reality.
You are indeed conflating the two ideas, and I said “useless for most things they’re utilized for”, but if you quoted the entire sentence your argument would fall apart and you realized that.
How many R’s are in strawberry?
Did I say it was 100% accurate?
Found the glue on pizza enjoyer.
How many small rocks should I eat per day?
It depends. Are you a lizard or a bird? How long has it been since you last ate any?
That’s the ideal but the reality today is the list of results aren’t what you searched for but what companies paid for you to see even if it isn’t relevant.
AI doesn’t yet have ads which is why it is useful. They are working hard to enshitify AI but for right now it’s better than Google at search.