Comment by EZ-E
2 years ago
Investors are getting impatient! ChatGPT has already replaced Google for me and I wonder if Google starts to feel the pressure.
2 years ago
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
Very similar to your second example, I've been using ChatGPT to calculate the total calories in a recipe. Before, I would consult a database like the USDA food database for nutrition info and do measurement conversion manually. I've tried asking ChatGPT for the same recipe and the total amount was within 1% of what I calculated. It runs into a couple snags I've noticed though.
First, it always gives a calorie count for cooked meat, but it should assume the meat is uncooked since I said it was for a recipe.
Second, it seems to struggle with the concept of uncooked rice. If you ask it to work with 1 "rice cooker cup" of rice, it refuses because that isn't a standard measurement. If you swap in the converted standard measurement (3/4 cup), it still is way off. It told me 3/4 cup uncooked rice is about 150 calories when cooked. That's a third of what the USDA database gives. When you point out that 3/4 cup uncooked rice is a large serving after being cooked, it changes its answer to 375 calories, still about half of what the USDA database gives. But this is fine for me because rice is not typically part of my recipes since it doesn't usually require special preparation.
Overall it reduces a 10 minute task to 10 seconds, but you need to know enough about the ingredients to spot obvious problems in its result. In my case I could see the calories given for meat was way too high, and way too low for rice. It gave a better answer after telling it to fix the former and ignore the latter.
I tried a second recipe and the total it gave was 2% under my calculation, but I did not see any obvious error in its result so I could not correct it further.
It is unfortunate that you kind of have to trust the numbers are correct, but this is no different than the nutrition details on sites like MyFitnessPal which are often wrong when you closely examine it.
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Google is kind of becoming a "System for double-checking if GPT is hallucinating".
IMO Google should convert their search box to a Bard chat input, and you get a hybrid of Bard conversation with real links from their search engine.
It's actually astounding that, in the face of rapid GPT rise, that search box is still an old-school search box, looking dumber and less attractive each day.
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The first is maybe a good example of where an LLM integrated search engine makes sense. Because "compare two movies" has flickchart as the third option for me. But it is nowhere to be seen for "compare two movie posters" which is how I read your search originally (and indeed flickchart is about ranking movies not the posters themselves ... Obviously).
Anyways an LLM clearly teased that out whereas if you misremember or misread something a straight search is going to be bad.
Most of my searches are the opposite. I was to know about an obscure movie from the 80s with a toy helicopter. Google very neatly suggests Defense Play (correct) but most LLMs I've tried end up just suggesting very popular films with a helicopter and it ends up being quite difficult to get it to give me information about obscure stuff. Also with that same search the LLM suggests a bunch of incorrect films since (and I figured this out later) it turns out that it was all sourced from a single forum thread from the 90s where a bunch of the posts suggested movies that don't have toy helicopters in them. Go figure.
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These (I call them) "reverse-dictionary" searches are absolutely amazing on ChatGPT! I've asked it several times things like "what's the word you use to describe a situation that's <like this> but slightly <like that>?" and ChatGPT consistently "gets" what I'm looking for. What a time to be alive.
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> So I asked ChatGPT and got a nice formatted list with dates
I might be an outlier here, but to me this wouldn't be useful at all. I wouldn't trust ChatGPT to get it right, so I'd go to wikipedia to double check, at which point the amount of effort saved is little to zero.
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> I was looking for the release dates of 8 and 16-bit consoles
this is a case where search has taken a step backward. The old Google would have worked for a simple search like that, "NES (or sega, whatever) + 'release date' " and simply return the best results that had those two parameters in them. Today we can't have that because they make more money intentionally fuzzing your search parameters so you accidentally click on sponsored content.
I think we're going to see a lot more of this: renewed excitement and enthusiasm when A.I. "discovers" things that plain old imperative algorithms figured out 20 years ago.
> What was the website that showed two movie posters and you picked the one you liked more?
Google Bard now answers this with the first suggestion being Flickchart
I also got a clean list of release dates for the console question: https://g.co/bard/share/ceb0eac6c69f
I asked Bard, verbatim. Its first response was that there were many sites that fit that description, and it asked me to narrow it down. Since I didn't have any idea how to do that, I just asked it to list them. It listed 4 (top was Flickchart), but also notes there are many more websites like that.
https://g.co/bard/share/b58043d8aca0
How do you determine whether or not ChatGPT just made up whatever answer it gives you?
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yeah it's really good for those kinds of "i'm trying to remember a thing here's a bunch of random details i remember about it what is it?" kinds of queries.
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.
FYI, Wolfram Alpha is good for this type of query too: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=How+many+weekdays+are+t...
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Why write python code for that (through any means) when there are already simple services to do it for you?
https://www.timeanddate.com/date/duration.html
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Google Bard replies with: "There are 43 weekdays between January 11th, 2023, and March 11th, 2023."
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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.
Oh it's even better than that.
I literally had my cursor in my config file the other day and didn't know the option for disabling TLS verification (it's for an internal connection between two private certs), and i literally just put my cursor in the right place and then asked Copilot what I needed to disable verification, and it returned me the correctly formatted elixir code to paste in, 2-3 lines. And it was correct.
And I then googled for the same thing and I couldn't find that result, so I have no idea how Copilot figured it out.
Same here. And unlike stackoverflow or any other forum, if you have any additional questions, you don't have to wait for an answer (which could take seconds, years, or never).
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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.
I searched for "github bevy rust texture atlas code" and the first link is what ChatGPT provided as well. There are 9 other links in Google search. Why would you type such an elaborate prompt when you can just Google the keywords and get many more results along with the main one. https://www.google.com/search?q=github+bevy+rust+texture+atl...
I have tried using these things for search, but among the hallucinations and lack of different options in the response, I still find searching on Google or other search engines superior.
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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.
> 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
The sad reality is that typing this into google would have given you AI generated content, anyways. Might as well use the best model for it.
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.
Same, also Google is now ranking tons of spammy SEO'd coding sites above useful ones like StackExchange. I could restrict to StackOverflow, but maybe the answer is on dba.stackexchange or something instead, plus it's annoying.
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).
> 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).
This sounds like a great use case. What is your setup for this? Do you have ChatGPT connected to a smart speaker?
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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).
I've had the same experience. Now ChatGPT is my go-to.
I often paste error messages with context into the chat and ask what's wrong.
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.
Every time I see people proud of ChatGPT all I see is it being wrong. Is this really what people are so hyped about?
Cookies are fine if you're just storing user preferences, no banner needed if the only type of localStorage/Cookie banner you have is a purely functional one that doesn't serve tracking purposes. Github for example doesn't have a cookie banner as far as I remember, but they're definitely using various cookies.
It's the wrong answer, though.
Websites are required to get your consent before they can track you. Storing cookies or other information is totally fine if it is purely functional, for example a login session or dark mode preference. Similarly, tracking without consent is also forbidden if they do so without using tracking cookies.
Using cookies for any of these purposes does not require a banner, though.
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.
Yeah I was one of those. Now that the power it brings has dawned on me I'm trying to integrate it everywhere I can with a "where was this thing for half my life" feeling. I truly think it's a bigger revelation than Google was when it first appeared.
There's definitely something disquieting behind the elation.
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I'm not OP, but I still feel kind of confused by people saying that ChatGPT is a 100% equivalent replacement for search engines. I'm not saying that LLMs aren't extremely impressive in their current stage, but that the use cases for the two are different, at least for me. In my mind, LLMs seem to be more useful for open-ended questions, problem solving, and formulating questions that wouldn't be suited for a search engines. But when I use Google, I'm usually not looking for answers, but specific places on the internet. If I need to find an email of a professor at my university, or a Github page for a project, or the official website of some software I need - I don't see why I'd need to replace Google with an LLM for it.
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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."
That's smart, but very insidious as well. Following in the footsteps of dark UI patterns designed for users to misclick on ads, now dark suggestions on conversations with an LLM will be the next big thing. Like a conservative talking with an LLM which inserts liberal propaganda into it's responses and after an hour he turns into a liberal voter. The next day he talks with a conservative LLM which inserts propaganda into his conversations and he turns back to a conservative voter. Pretty dystopic.
On a more serious note, imho advertisers are on their's last legs, and google loses a lot of revenue already. We are going fast into a new internet, web3, which will enable direct monetization of information from users, instead of the publishers relying on ads.
Not to wander a lot off topic here, but synthetic datasets created by paid humans workers to train machines is going to be a humongous industry.
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