Comment by SeanAnderson
2 years ago
Gemini Ultra isn't released yet and is months away still.
Bard w/ Gemini Pro isn't available in Europe and isn't multi-modal, https://support.google.com/bard/answer/14294096
No public stats on Gemini Pro. (I'm wrong. Pro stats not on website, but tucked in a paper - https://storage.googleapis.com/deepmind-media/gemini/gemini_...)
I feel this is overstated hype. There is no competitor to GPT-4 being released today. It would've been a much better look to release something available to most countries and with the advertised stats.
> Bard w/ Gemini Pro isn't available in Europe and isn't multi-modal, https://support.google.com/bard/answer/14294096
It's available in 174 countries.
Europe has gone to great lengths to make itself an incredibly hostile environment for online businesses to operate in. That's a fair choice, but don't blame Google for spending some extra time on compliance before launching there.
> It's available in 174 countries.
Basically the entire world, except countries that specifically targeted American Big Tech companies for increased regulation.
> Europe has gone to great lengths to make itself an incredibly hostile environment for online businesses to operate in.
This is such an understated point. I wonder if EU citizens feel well-served by e.g. the pop-up banners that afflict the global web as a result of their regulations[1]. Do they feel like the benefits they get are worth it? What would it take for that calculus to change?
1 - Yes, some say that technically these are not required. But even official organs of the EU such as https://europa.eu continue to use such banners.
As a former EU citizen, yes it was great. Most of the dirty tricks pulled when you register or buy something online were off by default, and even if I somewhat got ropped in some stinky mailing list a litteral single click would get me out of it. Even killing your account could be done in one legally binding email. No 50 pages "do you really want to quit ?" and no "Do you not not not not not refuse to to not let us delete your account ?" last question.
Now I'm feeling how bad it is on the other side of the fence, and the funny thing is people don't seem to give a shit because they never experienced decent regulation and being fucked by brands is just the way of life.
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I think that having the right to ask companies to tell you what personal data they're storing on you and asking them to delete it is well worth the minor annoyance of dealing with cookie banners, which are largely the result of the industry trying to discredit that regulation, btw (until they became something that can be de facto considered part of the law through adopted practice).
As regards the lesser availability of American tech, I'm sure that's much more limited in China, which coincidentally happens to have the most notable domestic AI industry outside of the US. It's something that economists can be reluctant to admit, but for which there's solid evidence by now afaik, that at least temporary import barriers, if done right, can be a boost to industrial development. The thing that is weird about the EU regulation is that they're putting the same shackles on their domestic tech industry, which is dwarfed by the giant US incumbents who have more resources to invest in compliance than startups (apart from the bits that apparently only target said encumbants that some posters have mentioned here, which I don't know anything about).
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EU citizen - I love it. Couple clicks to tell a website not to profile me is nothing. You already are rejecting mailing lists and offers everywhere, what's one more thing.
I don't get spam mailing lists or robocalls. I can safely sign up to services knowing I will be able to unsubscribe easily. I can buy things online knowing they can be easily returned.
Yes, some of my clients lament the inability to use those patterns. I politely smile and nod.
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As an EU citizen, yes I feel well-served. Having been burned by companies refusing to delete my personal information before when trying to close accounts, I appreciate having some regulations and basic rights in this respect. I also feel safer shopping online and not getting "stalked" by personalized ads everywhere is nice.
It was a bit of a pain to manually reject all the _purposefully_ annoying cookie consent banners that companies started pulling, but now there's plugins for that, which rejects everything for me by default.
The banners drive me absolutely crazy. And I don't care if the authors of the law never intended the banners, policy is judged on is consequences (not it's intent).
Is it possible for the law to be amended so that non-EU citizens can use a browser flag that just says "I'm fine withe the cookies"? That way Europeans can enjoy all the cookie consent clicking and the rest of us can go back to how the web was before?
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Being able to tell a webpage that they can't share my data to their 780 data partners in a legally binding way with a click is priceless.
> I wonder if EU citizens feel well-served...
Yes, because I can tell them to fuck off from harvesting all my data and have an easy, legally enforceable way to tell them to delete whatever data they've harvested off me. I've reported a few websites that have done shady shit with the cookie banners and even saw them get some fines, so I'm perfectly happy that companies can't hoover up any and all data about me that they want to feed the pockets of some rich assholes an ocean over.
If a company can't exist without massive privacy violations and personal data exfiltration then they deserve to die.
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I think the cookie banners didn't work as intended and they're a good example of the lack of insight in the web and how web designers tick by people writing the laws. Other than those though, I like most of the regulations including Digital Markets Act that is (probably) behind this delay. They give us much better control over where and how our data is handled, give us leverage to have corporations delete said data. Microsoft even built a better version of Windows 11 for us* (but only for us) and that was awesome to watch happen. The difference will probably be even greater in Windows 12. Without the EU, very little of this would have happened and that's simply too much power to corporations.
Yes, "you chose to use them so you decided to follow their terms of use and privacy clauses" but key here is how you're more and more often required to use certain services online or you're put at significant disadvantages ranging from keeping in touch with your family or friends to being disadvantaged in the job market.
* https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2023/11/16/preview...
Yes, I feel well served and we should regulate even more.
And even though I tend to complain about UNIX like OSes, maybe they are the key to free Europe from US corporations operating systems, like a few other countries are already doing as well.
We should stick to international regulated programing languages and OSes, that free us from dependencies on export technology regulations.
Simple solution: Do not use cookies which are not strictly necessary and you don’t need a banner.
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> This is such an understated point. I wonder if EU citizens feel well-served by e.g. the pop-up banners that afflict the global web as a result of their regulations[1]. Do they feel like the benefits they get are worth it? What would it take for that calculus to change?
Absolutely. It goes far beyond cookie management, it's a fundamental thing about what you're allowed to do with my data without my consent.
You know you can block them right? Ublock origin has "annoyances" in the lists, just tick that.
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The EU is preventing a wholesale sellout of the continent. It’s great.
"pop-up banners that afflict the global web as a result of their regulations"
It is very annoyous but it is also the choice of the sites, you can put a discret banner at the bottom and not disrupt the reading if you want to not annoy people.
These "regulations against us giants" may also have positive effects. They forced Microsoft to offer a choice of browsers on Windows, something requested by Firefox and Opera and that killed Internet Explorer and permitted modern browsers including Google Chrome to florish.
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Absolutely. We got a usb c iPhone, apple will have to allow sideloading in the very near future, there’s some repairability stuff in the works, etc. All in all, as an EU citizen I very much feel like the regulation has been a big benefit for consumers.
I challenge you to point out the specific paragraphs of GDPR you object to as somehow unreasonable or targeting american tech companies.
The cookie banners are a bad outcome for sure, but GDPR does not mandate them. They are an indirect result of the bureaucracy installed by GDPR which does not incentivize user-friendly design of privacy-aware features. I don’t want GDPR rolled back, even as a software developer, because I think it creates the kind of protections everyone in the world should have. But I would like a rule clarification on how to build compliant websites without cookie banners, so I blame the administration (the EU commission) but not the legislation.
The digital markets act similarly is the kind of regulation we need everywhere. It’s only hostile to online businesses because other places don’t have those kind of guard rails on the abusive behavior of big tech.
Now, as far as the EU AI act. I think that in its original intent when it was specifically targeting things like public face recognition by governments it was a very good idea, but it has been hijacked and in its current form it would be very harmful if passed. I don’t think it particularly targets american tech companies, because the biggest victims would be EU AI startups like Mistral.
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Yes I do feel. I have no invested interest in the online advertising industry as to not be.
Yes, I'm very happy the the EU is trying to protect the privacy and data of its citisense. I prefer this much to the "friss oder stirb" mentality of other countries regulations.
And also let me mention the unified usb-c atpater regulation, the opening of messenger protocols and app shops! I honestly believe the EU is making tech better for the whole world!
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The banners (in their annoying form) are illegal under gdpr and sites are pivoting away. The DNT header will replace it, as it entirely suffices to signal my opting out: I tell the site owner in a machine readable form that I don’t wish to be tracked. There was no legal basis for this to mean anything before. It feels pretty good to not be sold out by my government to the highest bidding tech company and if the price I’m paying is having no access to wildly overhyped AI toys, I’ll manage.
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There is no hope to redeem the Web of these banners :(
if "hostile environment for online businesses" means they aren't free to do as they please without repercussions and do have to implement at least the simplest and most basic consumer protection rules then yes, i absolutely feel well served.
you're picking out the cookie banner (which is annoying mostly because companies aren't implementing it properly) which is just a small part of a wealth of regulations which give us control over our data. and then you're ignoring all the other extremely valuable regulations that protect customers. and online shops are still able to make a profit here. they just can't completely abuse their customers as they please. yet. for the most part.
As a EU citizen; The intentions are good, some of GDPR is great, and some of the huge fines have been welcome in a world where corporations usually gets tiny fines.
That said, as with most heavy bureaucracies there's just not enough internal organisational tech education so lobbying and misunderstandings end up diluting the process.
Example is the cookie banners leading people away from smaller competitors strengthening monopolies, and teaching people to click at 100 banners a day because no one has time to read so much.
Another is GDPR policies which are great but a huge hassle for smaller orgs and companies, and not really targeted them in the first place.
Everything always ends up a win for the largest players, while the smaller ones struggle to maintain legality.
That has been my experience with a few GDPR processes.
Another annoying thing is the forced Public Procurements of software solutions if you're more than 50% publicly funded in EU.
Again good intentions but it just makes the big players hire huge amounts of lawyers and sales people to game the process to win then create bad software.
That's the problem with regulation. The free market is definitely not free after consolidation and monopolisation but if you're going to regulate you need the absolute best consultants to guide the process and somehow that step always gets bungled.
As an American living in Europe now, yeah it's great.
Also, you see how hostile some stuff in the US is to non-US visitors. Lots of local US news sites, for instance, just throw a plain HTTP error at you because they don't want to mess with GDPR.
A lot of people in the large EU countries basically want their countries to be museums - so keeping new things out is fine with them.
As an EU citizen I hate it (cookie popups). I think the stupid regulation achieved nothing and essentially "broke the Internet" by normalising popups that obscure content while anyone that tracks can do so using alternatives.
Sadly the EU is being led by a clique of unelected beaurocrats (commisars - like in the USSR) and the most democratic of institutions - the EU parliament as well as national parliaments have very little influence on what is being proposed and bulldozed in. For example, let's say in a given country literaly everyone is opposed to ACTA and the country has the balls to veto it (despite the beaurocrat's usual tricks of rolling in together things everyone wants and needs with absolute crap like ACTA). The same idea is brought back again 2 years later (ACTA v2). It is vetoed again, it is brought back again 2 years later and this time bypasses the veto by being "voluntary". "Countries that don't want it don't need to implement" - great on paper. Until you realise most people in the EU oppose it, including in the countries that implement it and by the fact of implementing it in the majority they make it a de-facto standard which increases the cost of doing business affected in the countries that now have differing regulations.
Same thing is being done with the "EU constitution". No one, other than it's rulers, wants the EU to be a country. The idea got shot down immediately in a popular vote. So they are essentially implementing it anyway bit by bit by stretching the law and outright breaking it (especially against countries that vote in parties that are not in the EPP club).
I'm a big fan of the idea of EU as it was before the treaty of Nice. It was a group of countries with similar values creating an open market and agreeing to make decisions affecting it together. Sadly the institutions that were created to oversee that structure have the priorities of their own (increasing their own power) and using both the method mentioned above and simply doing things "extra legally" (as lawyers say) they do whatever they want and if the extremely corrupt "court" tied to them decides it's OK there is no way to question it. These bastards say they are "strenghtening the EU". They are destroying it. Anti EU sentiment is increasing especially amongst younger voters in many countries and guess who will be very happy when it all goes tits up? One guy called Putin who has been financing a lot of the corruption we see (through countries like Qatar etc).
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But Bard already complied to EU laws? I mean. Bard has already gone through this and it was opened in EU.
I really wonder how changing an LLM underpinning a service will influence this (I thought compliance had to do with service behavior and data sharing across their platform -- not the algorithm). And I wonder what Google is actually doing here that made them suspect they'll fail compliance once again. And why they did it.
My guess is what data centers they can run this out of. If bard + palm2 is running in eu data centers but gemini is only US for now due to the use of their TPUv5(then a letter?) big machines.
If by businesses you mean 'companies exploiting user's private data against their wishes', you are correct.
That's a very weird take. In many aspects, Europe is largely business friendlier than the rest of the world.
Excuses.
ChatGPT available in Europe.
OpenAI before ChatGPT (or even now) isn't even in the same ballpark with Google, MS etc as far as regulatory oversight goes.
Google has far too many services and products which are always touching the boundaries defined by the EU privacy laws. they trip the line with anything and the regulators can make it much harder/costlier for Google to do business in EU.
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When the EU wrote the law targeting American Big Tech companies for compliance, OpenAI wasn't on their radar. Google was. So Google has to comply with a more onerous regime than OpenAI (for now).
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Funny enough, OpenAI to this day violates EU requirements on price advertisement by charging VAT on top of the advertised price. They still owe me and every other customer in the EU ca. $3 VAT for every month I've had the ChatGPT subscription.
Gemini Ultra is the model claimed to be superior to GPT-4. I'd put Gemini Pro on par with GPT-3.5 or maybe slightly better.
"Hostile?" That's quite a loaded word. How about just "tougher?"
Come on, OpenAI launched gpt4 in EU in sync.
Laws are not the issue, their model being crap at non-english languages is.
They also haven't released in the UK and they have released in a huge range of other countries, so language can't be the reason.
Agreed. The whole things reeks of being desperate. Half the video is jerking themselves off that they've done AI longer than anyone and they "release" (not actually available in most countries) a model that is only marginally better than the current GPT4 in cherry-picked metrics after nearly a year of lead-time?!?!
That's your response? Ouch.
Have you seen the demo video, it is really impressive and AFAIK OpenAI does not has similar features product offering at the moment, demo or released.
Google essentially claimed a novel approach of native multi-modal LLM unlike OpenAI non-native approach and doing so according to them has the potential to further improve LLM the state-of-the-art.
They have also backup their claims in a paper for the world to see and the results for ultra version of the Gemini are encouraging, only losing in the sentence completion dataset to ChatGPT-4. Remember the new Gemini native multi-modal has just started and it has reached version 1.0. Imagine if it is in version 4 as ChatGPT is now. Competition is always good, does not matter if it is desperate or not, because at the end the users win.
If they put the same team on that Gemini video as they do on Pixel promos, you're better off assuming half of it is fake and the other half exaggerated.
Don't buy into marketing. If it's not in your own hands to judge for yourself, then it might as well be literally science fiction.
I do agree with you that competition is good and when massive companies compete it's us who win!
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I can use GPT-4 right now. Until I can use Gemini, I wouldn't believe Google a thing.
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I would like more details on Gemini's 'native' multimodal approach before assuming it is something truly unique. Even if GPT-4V were aligning a pretrained image model and pretrained language model with a projection layer like PaLM-E/LLaVA/MiniGPT-4 (unconfirmed speculation, but likely), it's not as if they are not 'natively' training the composite system of projection-aligned models.
There is nothing in any of Google's claims that preclude the architecture being the same kind of composite system. Maybe with some additional blending in of multimodal training earlier in the process than has been published so far. And perhaps also unlike GPT-4V, they might have aligned a pretrained audio model to eliminate the need for a separate speech recognition layer and possibly solving for multi-speaker recognition by voice characteristics, but they didn't even demo that... Even this would not be groundbreaking though. ImageBind from Meta demonstrated the capacity align an audio model with an LLM in the same way images models have been aligned with LLMs. I would perhaps even argue that Google skipping the natural language intermediate step between LLM output and image generation is actually in support of the position that they may be using projection layers to create interfaces between these modalities. However, this direct image generation projection example was also a capability published by Meta with ImageBind.
What seems more likely, and not entirely unimpressive, is that they refined those existing techniques for building composite multimodal systems and created something that they plan to launch soon. However, they still have crucially not actually launched it here. Which puts them in a similar position to when GPT-4 was first announced with vision capabilities, but then did not offer them as a service for quite an extended time. Google has yet to ship it, and as a result fails to back up any of their interesting claims with evidence.
Most of Google's demos here are possible with a clever interface layer to GPT-4V + Whisper today. And while the demos 'feel' more natural, there is no claim being made that they are real-time demos, so we don't know how much practical improvement in the interface and user experience would actually be possible in their product when compared to what is possible with clever combinations of GPT-4V + Whisper today.
If what they're competing with is other unreleased products, then they'll have to compete with OpenAI's thing that made all its researchers crap their pants.
What makes it native?
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I’m impressed that it’s multimodal and includes audio. GPT-4V doesn’t include audio afaik.
Also I guess I don’t see it as critical that it’s a big leap. It’s more like “That’s a nice model you came up with, you must have worked real hard on it. Oh look, my team can do that too.”
Good for recruiting too. You can work on world class AI at an org that is stable and reliable.
https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt-can-now-see-hear-and-speak
I think it's app only though
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Google is stable and reliable?
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I worked at Google up through 8 weeks ago and knew there _had_ to be a trick --
You know those stats they're quoting for beating GPT-4 and humans? (both are barely beaten)
They're doing K = 32 chain of thought. That means running an _entire self-talk conversation 32 times_.
Source: https://storage.googleapis.com/deepmind-media/gemini/gemini_..., section 5.1.1 paragraph 2
How do you know GPT-4 is 1 shot? The details about it aren't released, it is entirely possible it does stuff in multiple stages. Why wouldn't OpenAI use their most powerful version to get better stats, especially when they don't say how they got it?
Google being more open here about what they do is in their favor.
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where are you seeing that 32-shot vs 1-shot comparison drawn? in the pdf you linked it seems like they run it various times using the same technique on both models and just pick the technique which gemini most wins using.
This reminds me of their last AI launch. When Bard came out, it wasn't available in EU for weeks (months?). When it finally arrived, it was worse than GPT-3.
Still isn't available in Canada.
Silicon Valley hates Canada.
maybe they are trying to project stability (no pun intended)
Google are masters at jerking themselves off. I mean come on... "Gemini era"? "Improving billions of people’s lives"? Tone it down a bit.
It screams desperation to be seen as ahead of OpenAI.
Google has billions of users whose lives are improved by their products. What is far fetched about this AI improving those product lines?
Sounds like it's you that needs to calm down a bit. God forbid we get some competition.
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The Greybeards Of AI...
Why do they gate access at country level if it's about language. I live in Europe and speak English just fine. Can't they just offer it in English only until the multi-language support is ready?
Could be a legal issue, privacy or whatnot.
Yep, there is a big reason why Europe has so few successful big tech companies, it is a regulatory hellscape. They have so many pointless privacy regulations that only the “big” companies can even hope to compete in many markets like ad tech.
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Shouldn't be hard to just say so instead of claiming it's multilingual readiness?
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The UK is both in Europe and not on the list, which would be even more of an oversight, so I don't think it's that.
There must be mountains of legal concerns which vary by jurisdiction. Both in terms of copyright / right of authorship as well as GDPR/data protection.
Litigation is probably inescapable. I'm sure they want to be on solid footing.
Launching anything as a big tech company in Europe is an absolute nightmare. Between GDPR, DSA, DMA and in Google's case, several EC remedies, it takes months to years to get anything launched.
It's only a nightmare if you are an adtech company whose revenue relies on tracking users, and have a history of violating their privacy.
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That and the labor laws and very strict compared to the US. We have an office in Poland due to regulations most "employees" want to be contractors, this is due to a tax advantage / national healthcare I think. That said the offices in the US don't say it out loud, but in the EU seem to take a week off every other month for something.
At the end of the day, the employees have a much cushier life-work balance. You can argue (rightfully) that that's better for the people and society, but it also means it's harder for companies to succeed.
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Two sad things:
1. This stuff is available in like Angola and Thailand but not in Germany or France. Oh how the European giant has fallen.
2. ... but it's also not available in the UK. So the long shadow of EU nonsense affects us too :-(
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OpenAI somehow managed to do a release worldwide.
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Launching a small company is an even bigger nightmare, and that's actually the bigger problem.
The legal cost of dealing with a few _mistaken_ (or fake) GDPR complaints can wipe you out.
The bigger company will have inhouse or retainered lawyers who'll deal with it.
Almost all regulation acts as a barrier which protects bigger companies who can pay lawyer fees without blinking.
It's amazing how much of the HN crowd sides with the bureaucracies which are basically pals of the guys with deep pockets.
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"raping and pillaging intellectual and privacy domains are harder where protected"
Investors are getting impatient! ChatGPT has already replaced Google for me and I wonder if Google starts to feel the pressure.
> "ChatGPT has already replaced Google for me"
Would you mind elaborating more on this.
Like how are you "searching" with ChatGPT?
Some of my searches aren't really searches, they're questions which Google has the information to be able to sum it up. A few weeks ago I was trying to remember the name of a site that put up two movie posters and you pick which one you liked more.
Googled "What was the website that showed two movie posters and you picked the one you liked more?" and I got links to reddit, lots to letterboxd, some quora, and a lot more, all irrelevant to my question.
Asked ChatGPT that same question verbatim and
> The website you're referring to is probably "Flickchart." It's a platform where users can compare and rank movies by choosing which one they like more between two movie posters or movie titles. Please note that my knowledge is up to date as of January 2022, and the availability and popularity of such websites may change over time.
Another time I was looking for the release dates of 8 and 16-bit consoles. With Google I had to search for each console individually, sometimes offered a card with the release date, sometimes didn't and I'd have to go do more digging.
So I asked ChatGPT and got a nice formatted list with dates
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You've got a lot of examples, but for example I recently thought: "How many weekdays are there between Jan. 11th 2023 and Mar. 11th, 2023" and got GPT to write the python code and run it to get the answer. It worked first try, I could inspect the code it generated and saw it looked correct, it was within my original estimate. Took less than one minute.
I had a question about adding new RAM to my computer, about what things I should take into account since the original brand no longer makes paired dimms that match my current spec. It gave me a big bullet list of all of the things I should compare between my current ram, my current motherboard and any new ram I would choose to buy to ensure compatibility.
Both of these are things I might have gone to Google (or even reddit) for previously but I believed I could get faster answers from ChatGPT. I was right in both cases. I didn't have to construct a complicated query, I didn't have to filter SEO spam. I just asked the question in natural language as it appeared in my mind and ChatGPT gave excellent answers with very little delay.
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Personally, I don't "search" with ChatGPT. I ask and talk with it, and that's the big deal and the reason why the current query based search is dead. Think about your typical stackoverflow question. With Google you have to came up with a good query then start the tedious process of looking at the results. With ChatGPT you can directly ask for results, redirect the conversation, etc.
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I'm not OP, but happy to answer.
GPT4 has plugin support. One of the plugins is Internet access via Bing. It automatically chooses which plugins to call upon based on the context it infers from your question - you don't have to select anything.
Here's an example: https://chat.openai.com/share/be3821e7-1403-44fb-b833-1c73f3...
It correctly finds a texture atlas example by discovering it nested inside of Bevy's github.
Note that it didn't summarize when I didn't say to conditionally consider summarizing. I consider this poor behavior, but I'm confident it would elaborate if I followed up. The initial seed prompt by OpenAI encourages concise answers (likely as cost saving measure but also for brevity)
I realize this is just a glorified "I'm Feeling Lucky" search, but I find it to be a much better UX, so I default to it over Googling. It's nice to be able to seamlessly transition from "search" to "brainstorm/discuss" without losing context.
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I also use ChatGPT for most things I used to use Google for. Just formulate your search query as a question and type it into ChatGPT; it's not much more complicated than that. Looking over my ChatGPT history over the last week or two, I've asked it for stuff like what I should eat if I have certain fitness goals, how to improve meals, how to work out more effectively, lots of coding-related questions, which types of heating for a house are most cost-efficient, etc. For almost all those questions (minus the coding ones) I know Google will return blogspam, so I didn't even bother.
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I wouldn't say it's replaced search for me (Kagi in my case) but for anything where I'm looking for an answer with a bit of background ChatGPT takes the cake. It completely removes the need for me to click through to multiple websites and sum it up myself manually.
In the same way google/search made it possible to answer a question in real-time in a group of friends, ChatGPT does that but better in most cases. Yes, you have to deal with hallucinations and while they happen less often they do happen but you have to deal with crap in web searches as well.
Search is a super-power (most people suck at searching) and being able to grab information via ChatGPT feels very similar.
For search likes "how do I", "what is" and similar I'm asking gpt instead of Google, saves me from having to scan a lot of blogspam and referral tables and gives me direct access to well formatted information. It's got to the point I disable web searches so the AI is not influenced by the same. For example try asking for a restaurant with good food type with and without access to internet and chances are the collective knowledge summarised in the non internet answer is going to be way better than the marketing regurgitated to whatever is the big first response, albeit not as actual.
I’m not OP but I do much fewer Google searches now as well.
Prior to ChatGPT, the majority of my Google searches ended up on either Wikipedia (for direct information), Reddit (for opinions/advice), or StackOverflow (for programming questions).
Now all those use cases can be done by ChatGPT, and it’s faster, especially because it requires less skimming to find useful data.
In addition to the other response, you can ask ChatGPT to search for you (via Bing) and provide a cited answer, or you can ask it to curate a set of results that might match your search query.
Here’s a humorous example from a recent GPT-mediated search: https://chat.openai.com/share/ec874cd5-7314-4abc-b169-607601...
I ask quick coding questions exclusively to chatgpt. it's extremely direct and quick compared to stackoverflow (or god forbid any other website with 3 pages of someone's life story first) and if i paste in the segment of code im working on it'll even show me with my own code.
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1. Most coding and documentation questions now go straight to GPT-4
2. Most quick general purpose questions like "What is 4-month sleep regression in babies?" go to GPT-3.5
3. If I want to deep dive on a topic, I find myself either using one of the custom GPTs (Grimoire is great for coding), or increasingly, talking to it via voice chat. It's particularly great if I'm walking around the house doing chores and want to learn something I would otherwise turn to Wikipedia for (say, the successors to Genghis Khan and the various Khanates).
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Not the OP but ChatGPT has not replaced Google for me just yet, but I use it increasingly to find stuff online now and it's really intuitive and helpful with much less 'noises' as you normally get from Google search. But as for now the online service is far from smooth (intermittent), not as fast and seamless as Google search.
Granted I use ChatGPT-4 with subscription but if later the online RAG browsing feature is opened for free to the public I can see more people abandoning Google for casual searching (i.e most of the Internet users). They keyword here is 'casual' and what LLM provided us is the intuitive nature of searching using it even with miss spellings or missing words.
I think Google is realizing this and before this exodus really happened it needs to do something otherwise the adage of "nothing last forever" will come true sooner or later for Google. The main thing for Google now is how to monetize this technology assuming that they have similar product because all this while they are struggling with Deepmind to generate income and, voila ChatGPT just shows them how to do it. Now it seems they are taking a page from Apple (highest ranked company by market value) by providing tiers of service Ultra, Pro and Nano, and me think the Ultra will be most probably subscription based.
I've had dozens of moments over the past few months where I got frustrated at the lack of answers from a Google search, remembered ChatGPT, pasted the exact same query into its chatbox, and got an immediate answer (which was also way clearer than any answer from Google, or any blogspam site Google could have sent me to).
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Searching is frequently a means to the end of answering some question. I find myself more often asking the question directly with both Google and chat, GPT. ChatGPT comes to mind sooner for a question that requires two or more searches.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Perplexity yet. It uses ChatGPT and a public web searching API to provide answers. For cases where you absolutely do not want hallucinations, but you also want information that requires a search and reading a few web pages, it is far superior to a Google search alone.
I use Kagi’s AI stuff for search all the time. Just type in a question and add !fast… it’ll search the web, write a response based on what it finds, and gives you the links. It’s not perfect, but it’s at least as good as Bing with much less annoying UX.
Simple: you don't (have to) because searching was a means to an end. And now that end is served through a different product; a conversational agent.
I just did this responding to another comment. My late night / slightly drunk brain wanted to know:
"What is that annoying thing where I have to click on on all the websites. Because of cookies and Europe"
Google: Links to things full of SEO and ads and maybe answer the question eventually.
ChatGPT: The "annoying accept" button you often have to click on websites, particularly in Europe, is related to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The GDPR is a regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy in the European Union and the European Economic Area. It also addresses the transfer of personal data outside the EU and EEA areas.
Websites are required to get your consent before they can store or retrieve any information on your device, such as cookies. Cookies are small data files used to remember your preferences, login information, and browsing history. The GDPR mandates that websites must inform users about the cookies they use and obtain their consent before placing these cookies on their devices.
This is why you see those cookie consent notices – websites are legally obligated to ask for your permission to use cookies, and you must actively agree to it, usually by clicking an "Accept" button. This process aims to protect your privacy and give you more control over your personal data online.
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ChatGPT does Bing searches automatically then consumes the results for you.
A lot of people on HN were very dismissive of chatGPT. I think you missed the boat. It's way beyond a stochastic parrot right now.
Whatever you call it, this thing is the closest to a human that a machine has ever been. Talking to chatGPT is quite close to talking to a human being that has the knowledge of all of google inside his brain.
If you're a developer and you're not paying for chatGPT or copilot you are literally operating at a disadvantage. Not a joke.
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I got some unbelievably better results searching in bing + chatgtp the full page newspaper ad that Trump bought in the 80s on the NYT and other newspapers to shit on nato (or something similar). With google I got absolutely nothing even rephrasing the search in multiple ways, with bing + chatgtp the first link was a website with the scanned newspaper page with the ad. I think that google search dominance is pretty much gone. The results are full of SEOd to the death websites rather than anything useful.
I wonder what advertising will look like with this. Will they suggest products in the response? Like “Top ideas:…” and the LLM’s response.
The bing version of ChatGPT already does this. It might be specific to USA, but try asking it for a recommendation of a 1500w space heater for a small room. Every suggestion will have a link to an affiliate page that says [Ad] next to it.
Embedding search of the nearest products most applicable to the LLM response. Prompt augmentation: "Rewrite your response to include promotions of the following products without being obvious that you are promoting them."
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People will have problems they want to solve, and GPT can provide solutions that may or may not have a price tag.
In this case, it's just directing to the service you would have best fit with.
This can be highly profitable, because you are solving the problem for the customer with the products you are suggesting based on what they are looking to solve.
For you, maybe, for absolute most of the ppl - not really, you can compare both nr of users and nr of searches
probably not. their "free" search don't make money
Not just Europe: also no Canada, China, Russia, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Norway, Iceland, etc.
United Kingdom, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Norway and Iceland are all part of Europe.
United Kingdom voted to leave Europe and there was a years long ugly divorce. UK is a North Atlantic state alongside the US.
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The UK may have left the EU, but it definitely didn't leave Europe.
> Not just Europe, also no [mostly European countries]
EU is not Europe.
Also, Bulgaria is part of EU
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This looks like a list of countries that:
- have digital partnerships with the EU where the DMA or very similar regulation is/may be in effect or soon to take effect (e.g. Canada, Switzerland).
- countries where US companies are limited in providing advanced AI tech (China)
- countries where US companies are barred from trading, or where trade is extremely limited (Russia). Also note the absence of Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, North Korea, etc.
Cough, a couple of those countries are in Europe..
I bet that it will land on Google's graveyard before it gets released worldwide.
Google is playing catchup while pretending that they've been at the forefront of this latest AI wave. This translates to a lot of talk and not a lot of action. OpenAI knew that just putting ChatGPT in peoples hands would ignite the internet more than a couple of over-produced marketing videos. Google needs to take a page from OpenAI's playbook.
Google has lawyers.
I think it’s so strange how Pro wasn’t launched for Bard in Europe yet. I thought Bard was already cleared for EU use following their lengthy delay, and that this clearance wouldn’t be a recurring issue to overcome for each new underlying language model. Unless it’s technically hard to NOT train it on your data or whatever. Weird.
I suspect this is because inference is very expensive (much like GPT-4) and their expected ARPU (average revenue per user) in Europe is just not high enough to be worth the cost.
See disposable income per capita (in PPP dollars): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per...
They are releasing Bard with Gemini in many countries with a much lower income per capita than the average European country: https://support.google.com/bard/answer/14294096
My guess is the delay is due to GDPR or other regulatory challenges.
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Yup. My guess is they only released it to get usage data over the holiday season.
And give a heads up for those that were about to purchase a ChatGPT Pro subscription as Xmas present, to wait one more month.
Fortunately Google isn't very strict about geofencing Bard. I can get Gemini Pro by just using a common VPN.
This is something that always bugs me about Google, bragging about something you can't even use. Waymo was like this for a while, then it actually came into existence but only in two cities as a beta run.
It's like the supposed amazing Stable Diffusion killers that nobody can use, or the music generation platform.
From a quick test, it is not as good as GPT4-turbo at this leetcode problem: https://leetcode.com/problems/calculate-money-in-leetcode-ba...
Of the three answers Bard (Gemini Pro) gave, none worked, and the last two did not compile.
GPT4-turbo gave the correct answer the first time.
I agree that it is overstated. Gemini Ultra is supposed to be better than GPT4, and Pro is supposed to be Google's equivalent of GPT4-turbo, but it clearly isn't.
GPT-3.5 is similar to Pro