[HN Gopher] ChatGPT won't replace search engines any time soon ___________________________________________________________________ ChatGPT won't replace search engines any time soon Author : freediver Score : 88 points Date : 2023-01-07 19:18 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.algolia.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.algolia.com) | nowherebeen wrote: | ChatGPT will flood the internet with articles like how SEO was | used to hack search. It might not replace search engine, but | search results will becomes even more irrelevant. | wut42 wrote: | I can imagine AI replacing search engines in a somewhat far | future, but in the meantime, it'll mostly be used to flood the | internet with many low quality articles. Consequence will be as | you said, but I also wonder if it won't lower the quality of | new AI trainings as well. | idopmstuff wrote: | But on the search side, it'll also get rid of the need for the | kind of SEO/blogspam stuff you're describing. | | We already see it with recipes - there are all the god-awful | sites that have 1000 words of fluff before you get to the | recipe, because that's what you need for SEO purposes. GPT is | really good at creating that kind of useless fluff, but it also | obfuscates the need for it, because it'll just give you the | recipe you want without the need to go to a website at all. | alsodumb wrote: | There are many ways companies might try to get some ad money in | a ChatGPT setting: obvious and non-obvious product placement in | the answer. | | Q. Find me the best italian restaurant in New York. A. It's | likely subjective - let's just sell it to the highest bidder. | | Q. How to improve mental health? A. Give a reasonably good | answer and probably mention: some say a solar lamp is good in | winter months, there's a good one: | | I somehow feel like people can be easily baited into buying | something when you mix good, useful information with ads. Kind | of like how reputed youtubers/niche influencers do product | placement and make referral money. | | All of this kind of makes SEO obsolete as ChatGPT ads might end | up having more conversions than regular Google ads. | gunshai wrote: | in the short term yes. in the long term I think SEO will | disappear. my buddy who works in the content creation space for | indeed is telling me that they are already starting to use gpt | to replace content creation, but know that it's a matter of | time before that won't work. | chiefalchemist wrote: | Which will ultimately drive more people directly to ChatGPT and | just cut out the search middle-person. | sitkack wrote: | Machine translation won't replace human translation any time | soon. | twojacobtwo wrote: | I can see that being true for the top 5% (arbitrarily chosen | small %) of difficult translations with professional | requirements, but I think for the vast majority of day-to-day | translation between the major languages (maybe only within the | same language family), it is already sufficient and improving. | | I only have the anecdata of my friends and myself, but we have | yet to encounter a casual conversation type translation that | DeepL or Google translate have failed on for Spanish <-> | English <-> French. Granted, it doesn't always return the most | optimal translation, but it has always given the intended core | idea. | sitkack wrote: | Exactly! | | ChatGPT might not replace search (entirely), but for many | many use cases, it has already replaced search. | | When pure machine translation was starting out, there were | lots of similar posts about it how it can't YYY, but in short | amount of time it has become very effective. | | ChatGPT for me is a much better StackOverflow. In fact, I'd | rather people be asking and answering SO style question in a | format that is easier for machines to understand. | | ChatGPT is _better_ at searching for a concept, if it was | unencumbered, I could better constrain the concept space it | was searching over. | twojacobtwo wrote: | Oh, I see. I completely missed the tone/intent of your | original post. I'm in complete agreement with you there. | Thank you for elaborating. | tlogan wrote: | If Google search actually searches (find articles or sites with | keyword) then yes: ChatGTP or it's successor would never replace | Google search. | | But Google search so broken (at least for me) so it looks more | like broken or badly implemented ChatGTP. | iLoveOncall wrote: | > But Google search so broken (at least for me) | | Every single time I've seen this claim made and the person | shared their methodology for searching on Google, it becomes | very apparent that the problem is not Google, but the user. | option wrote: | Right, but the most powerful and useful AI would be ChatGPT like | dialogue based system augmented with search engine. Not the other | way around. | idopmstuff wrote: | These feel like really strange criticisms, since they're just so | straightforward to resolve. | | Can't figure out typos? That's a solved problem. Doesn't | understand all questions correctly? It's going to get much better | at that very, very quickly. Chat results don't give context? You | can put AI search results in whatever UI you want. | | Not shocking to hear a search company say AI won't disrupt | search, but if this is the best they can do, I feel pretty | confident saying that AI will disrupt search very soon. | varunkmohan wrote: | This feels like what a company that hasn't accepted the future | would say. Yes, ChatGPT doesn't do exactly what Google does. Can | it be augmented by well understood search retrieval engines to | generate a much better response? I think for a lot of cases that | seems to be undoubtedly true. | dustincoates wrote: | I'm (the author) actually in agreement with you. LLMs are going | to be a big part of search in the future. I alluded to that I'm | the post. I'm less convinced about search as a chat interface. | But LLMs for query understanding, ranking, etc.? Of course. | tomlue wrote: | Article claims that chatgpt is overly sensitive to queries eg | -gate suffix and come lad vs cum laude. This seems like a weak | argument based on a temporary shortcoming. Any NLP methods search | engines use for word meanings should be trivially integrated into | chatgpt. | | Comes off as a company that sells search solutions looking for | reasons this tech won't replace it. | | I'm sure the author is better informed, but what about the | scalability of search? I'm not sure if the neural network | approaches are as cost efficient (today) as some of our current | search algorithms when it comes to answering queries. | dustincoates wrote: | Author here. I was surprised to see my post on here while | scrolling! | | My point about those examples is less that ChatGPT got it | wrong, but that it's impossible to know really when it does, | because it seems so confident and you only get the one result. | To be fair, this is a problem with webpages, but you at least | get multiple choices. | | > Comes off as a company that sells search solutions looking | for reasons this tech won't replace it. | | I can see why you'd say that, but that wasn't the goal. I | originally wrote this as my own POV for my own blog. I really | do think there's a UX problem in this (and, as I mentioned, I | am a big fan of recent LLMs). | | > [What] about the scalability of search? | | You're right, the NN aren't as performant as lexical search. | They're getting a lot better though. (We're actually working on | this at the moment.) LLMs, though, have a ways to go, so it's | hard to use them right now for real time search. | rogerthis wrote: | Every time I read things like this I take the opposite as the | most likely. | Waterluvian wrote: | I remember when web search engines were new. And boy did they | suck. You wouldn't get what you wanted a lot of the time, and | they were very finicky about the input query. | | These days you can just throw stuff at it like "that movie about | the depressed guy with a plane engine that falls on their house" | | I'm not sure ChatGPT is going to replace search engines, but I'm | confident that it is incredibly young and will evolve | considerably. | Eisenstein wrote: | Yeah but in those days you could call up the local video store | and ask the clerk that question and he or she would tell you it | was Donnie Darko. | coredog64 wrote: | I thought it was "The World According To Garp" | uconnectlol wrote: | In 2001-2003, browsers crashed every 5 minutes then and | Google's search didn't crash nor freeze nor slow it due to not | being covered in ads and popups (having only 1-3 ad results at | the top of the page with green text was a massive improvement). | On tech forums back then, people would say, "is this even | sustainable?" | | Microsoft search and the other ones were just "there was an | attempt" tier and gave complete nonsense results. When Google | debuted, it was the only time web search substantially | improved. There were no other big innovations in web searches | ever, from that day on. | | > These days you can just throw stuff at it like "that movie | about the depressed guy with a plane engine that falls on their | house" | | I have looked for obscure queries like yours for 10 years and | have not found them. For example "that movie where police | vehicles are dispatched and they all crash for seemingly no | reason on the way to the scene". It just won't find it because | nobody talked about it (in a manner that would cause words that | stick out to match), simple. And now days it's even worse | because it does that new "rounding" thing and gives me: | - The 25 Best Police Movies of All Time - Dispatched | (2014) | | That first result simply contains nothing to do with my query | other than the world "police" and "movie". | | Now days when you try to use a web search, you can't be smart | and search strings that are likely to be used by someone | discussing your topic of interest anymore, because it will | always "round" them. It will also look at each word as if they | are the literal thing you are in search for. I don't know if | it's still possible to search bodies of text to get around | that, but I'm not sure if that feature even ever worked. Back | in 2005 when all these people were raving about intitle: inurl: | inbody: whatever, none of them worked consistently, and you | would also get scolded for hacking if you used them "wrong". | Even searching something like "powered by phpbb" got me banned | or scolded once when I wasn't even using it for hacking but | rather as a workaround to narrow my search to only forum | websites. | ipython wrote: | Are you looking for the movie The Blues Brothers? (Not | ChatGPT, I promise) | uconnectlol wrote: | I will skim thru it, but it doesn't look like the right | setting. The movie was some generic action movie for some | reason I remember Denzel Washington being in it but I | looked through his movies from 2006-2012 and didn't find | it. It was around that time. Setting had to be something | like late 90s or later. Black SUVs dispatched and crashed | for no reason at all. I have no idea what the movie was | about but it was hilarious when this happened because IIRC | it was a serious movie. | coredog64 wrote: | The original AltaVista (the DEC Alpha showcase) was pretty | fantastic: I remember giving it part numbers and getting back | useful, actionable data. | transitivebs wrote: | Agreed that chat-based search won't replace traditional search | any time soon. BUT even in this article, the author mentions that | hybrid semantic search is actively being integrated into Algolia. | | Both have pros & cons and the best solutions over the coming | years will be hybrids. | lossolo wrote: | It seems like an article from Kodak or Nokia. It's only a matter | of time, and it will be sooner rather than later, that multimodal | LLMs will replace search engines. All of the problems mentioned | in the article are being addressed as we speak. | | Advanced retrieval transformer + RLHF + LAMBADA[1] = RIP old | search engines. | | 1. https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.13894 | emkoemko wrote: | how do you replace search engines? where is the data coming | from? and why would anyone give it away for free? most of the | web runs off ads | raegis wrote: | Just heard of this, so I logged in with my google account. The | mistake it makes below is interesting. If this were a human | response, I would assume a brain fart. Not expecting this type of | error from "A.I." | | Me> Find the area of an ellipse with semimajor axis 5 and | semiminor axis 4. | | ChatGPT> The area of an ellipse with semimajor axis 5 and | semiminor axis 4 is 40p. You can find the area of an ellipse | using the formula: A = pab, where A is the area of the ellipse, a | is the length of the semimajor axis, and b is the length of the | semiminor axis. In this case, the semimajor axis has length 5 and | the semiminor axis has length 4, so plugging these values into | the formula gives us: A = p(5)(4) = 40p. | skybrian wrote: | The trick is to get it to show its work first and then | calculate the answer. If it guesses the wrong answer first and | then writes out the steps, it won't correct it. | | This works: "Find the area of an ellipse with semimajor axis 5 | and semiminor axis 4. Don't calculate the result until the | end." | raegis wrote: | After computing your example, I tried my original question | which now gives the correct answer. In fact, it gives | essentially the same response for both forms of the question. | I guess the training works as it should. | tarl0s wrote: | Being not very good with numbers is one of the limitations of | the current model. I imagine that in the future we will see | integrations with a number of different tools to overcome these | limits - WolframAlpha being the first one that comes to mind | when talking about algebra and calculus. | raegis wrote: | A friend told me students were using this for cheating on | math exams, so I assumed (incorrectly) it had something like | Wolfram Alpha built in. | bloodyplonker22 wrote: | Algolia's main product is search related. You can tell from this | article that they are scared about ChatGPT even partially | replacing search. They are very scared of losing business, and | anyone who is scared of ChatGPT will be writing articles like | this, badmouthing ChatGPT. | briga wrote: | Au contraire, ChatGPT has already replaced search engines for me, | at least for generalized knowledge searches. It provides better | and more personalized answers to my questions than Google and is | an excellent way to learn about new topics. It's not 100% | accurate and can even be misleading, but that is hardly different | than other search engines. Once more people catch on to how | incredibly useful ChatGPT is its use will become ubiquitous (and | we've barely even scratched the surface of what these tools can | do) | coredog64 wrote: | One of the challenges with ChatGPT compared to Google is that | most employers, even the really paranoid ones, don't mind you | using a search engine to answer questions. That goes out the | window for ChatGPT: My current employer won't even let me use | translate.google.com, let alone copy/paste some IP into someone | else's LLM. | briga wrote: | I fully expect enterprise versions of ChatGPT to become | widespread in the near-term. Modern tech firms already give | their IP to dozens of third party tools and services, I don't | see why this should be any different | aflag wrote: | Also, in a further iteration, people could upvote and downvote | results, or even parts of it, so that it learns what it knows | and what it doesn't. If it just say "I don't know" for bad | results or omit the bad parts, it would already improve things | quite a bit. Doing so is quite simple, really. | gunshai wrote: | ChatGPT is miles above Google search for me when it comes to | learning the "hello world" of just about anything at this | point. | | From there it's a simple prompt of where to go next and asking | for references to work that dig deeper. | | Even if it's wrong, it almost doesn't matter because I can just | say "are you sure?" given this extra information, and it | corrects itself. Even then if it's still wrong you can prompt | it in a ways to give you potential search terms to put into | Google. | zerop wrote: | Does anyone think it will replace or reduce software developers | work | uconnectlol wrote: | [flagged] | lonelyasacloud wrote: | What's going to really slow their adoption down is creators of | the raw information on which they are trained are going to need | some way of being paid for their work. | | Until payment is figured out it seems likely that creators will | increasingly restrict access to their information and that will | impact the utility and adoption of the models. | | Google's probably got the advantage in terms of figuring that | side of it out if it can overcome its inertia. | emkoemko wrote: | yea if this gets popular i can't see any incentive for someone | to give the data away for free to the model | ahstilde wrote: | Personally, I believe the future of search is video. Most of the | world uses mobile devices, and video is better on mobile devices | than text. | | This is why Google and TikTok are shifting to short-form video | for search. | | At my company, we're seeing significant search traffic through YT | shorts, currently ~2500 views per day: | https://www.youtube.com/@wyndly/shorts | waynesonfire wrote: | You're seeing shorts on YT is because Google has changed their | ranking algorithm. | | It seems that the quality of shorts has really declined lately. | It's almost as if they are being made with the assumption that | the only audience they will have is comprised of members of the | gen-z generation, who are known for having short attention | spans and being easily captivated by quick, sensational videos. | These types of videos often feature someone doing something | seemingly ordinary, like crossing the street, but with a | dramatic caption promising that the viewer won't be able to | believe what happens next if they continue watching. It's truly | sad to see the decline in quality of these shorts, and the | reliance on cheap tricks to grab and hold onto the viewer's | attention. | nineteen999 wrote: | I'm curious what will happen in future systems where the AI can | continually learn and update it's model on the fly. I note that | ChatGPT can't download a URL from the Internet and summarise it | for example, or apply it as new knowledge. Of course it seems | ripe for exploitation since there is so much misinformation on | the Internet anyway. | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | Try to Google: Does Jeff Bezos shop at Whole Foods? | throwuxiytayq wrote: | Precisely my experience with 95% of stuff I google. | | I don't know if that's just the nature of the things I usually | search for (primarily technical subjects where the query | shouldn't be "dumbed down" and reinterpreted or you get a | completely different meaning), but I've become incredibly | dissatisfied with Google over the past few years. I imagine | it's a fine search engine if you're looking up the URL for | Netflix. | emrah wrote: | Google already provides a chatgpt-like experience with the | questions it displays based on the query. It is unlike chatgpt in | that google comes up with those questions but they are usually | spot on and you can see the source where the answers are coming | from. Perhaps all google has to do is provide a chatgpt like | interface to that subsection of search results so it feels more | interactive like chatgpt | einpoklum wrote: | Well, I asked ChatGPT, and it said ChatGPT may replace search | engines soon. So there! | throwaway71271 wrote: | Have they not heard of it? The web is dead and as the poet said, | giants will roam the earth once more. | | Every time I interact with davinci-003 it makes me feel more and | more like the first real paradigm change is coming. We are still | using our computers and writing our programs in the same way as | 70 years ago, I emplore you to read 'structured programming' | debates and see how we argue about the same things now. Every | business product basically still competes with a word processor | and spreadsheet. We have made hundreds of thousands of lines of | code so we can auto focus the next field on a form, and it still | doesnt work on 99% of the cases. The GUI was not a paradigm | change, it was more of the same, maybe even worse, mobile | overpromised, anything besides video is just worse desktop. | | Lists and tables.. for 70 years | | This is the first real change. | | -- | | "And what doeth the saint in the forest?" asked Zarathustra. | | The saint answered: "I make hymns and sing them; and in making | hymns I laugh and weep and mumble: thus do I praise God. | | With singing, weeping, laughing, and mumbling do I praise the God | who is my God. But what dost thou bring us as a gift?" | | When Zarathustra had heard these words, he bowed to the saint and | said: "What should I have to give thee! Let me rather hurry hence | lest I take aught away from thee!"--And thus they parted from one | another, the old man and Zarathustra, laughing like schoolboys. | | When Zarathustra was alone, however, he said to his heart: "Could | it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard | of it, that god is dead!" | baq wrote: | is soon a year or a decade? the author says he's at his workplace | for 7 years, I think chatgpt 2030 will absolutely destroy google | search 2023. the question is what google search 2030 will be? | Sozar2000 wrote: | [dead] | fakedang wrote: | I want to add here that I'm building an app at the moment with | code solely generated through prompts for ChatGPT. So far, except | for a few issues and manual refactoring, it has done very well. | | ChatGPT even apologized when it suggested proprietary Firebase, | when I told it to use Supabase instead. | WheelsAtLarge wrote: | True, but it does not have to. ChatGPT is it's own thing. It has | functions search engines can never accomplish. You can say the | same thing the other way around, "Why Search Engines won't | replace ChatGPT?" The essence of what ChatGPT is is here to stay. | We'll be seeing different flavors and it will be a big part of | everyone's life. | kyrra wrote: | Googler opinions are my own. (I know nothing about search). | | Google has LaMDA, which I could see them putting the answers | from it into the knowledge box at the top of searches. There is | no reason they have to be mutually exclusive, a search engine | can provide answers from both. Google search is already an | aggregation of multiple sources (images, web index, knowledge, | shopping, video, flights, etc...). Adding another source seems | like the obvious path forward (assuming accuracy and cost make | sense). | antihipocrat wrote: | If we don't need to click a link does google receives less | revenue? I think including more direct answers from a search | query would require changes to Google's business model. | aflag wrote: | The ads would still be clickable. Clicking the actual | results doesn't really help google much. | antihipocrat wrote: | Except for any ads embedded in the referred sites. | WheelsAtLarge wrote: | Very true, they already have different sections in the | results pages. There's no reason why they can't have one | more. They can also use the box as a way to improve accuracy | by having user vote on the quality of the result. | waynesonfire wrote: | oh thanks so much for letting me know where you work. I was | getting ready to write Google an angry letter. Glad this is | your opinion. That you have to advertise that you're at | Google is theirs. Sheep. | dang wrote: | We really need you to stop posting so aggressively. If you | can't or won't, we're going to have to ban you. You've been | breaking the site guidelines frequently. That's not ok, and | I warned you about this once recently: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33860364. | | I don't want to ban you because you've also posted good | things and if you'd simply follow the site guidelines you'd | be a good contributor, but the current pattern is a | problem. If you wouldn't mind reviewing | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and fixing | this, we'd be grateful. | waynesonfire wrote: | Thanks will do | factsarelolz wrote: | Oh wow, thanks! | baxtr wrote: | A bit tangential, but still worth asking since I haven't seen it | addressed anywhere else: | | When I type a query into Google, it returns results almost | instantaneously. | | With ChatGPT, it has latency PLUS it writes out answers | annoyingly slow. | | Does anyone know why that spell out every answer like that? Is | that a UX gimmick or related to the latency? | KRAKRISMOTT wrote: | Transformers (the frontend in GPT at least) are autoregressive | i.e. they require previous state. | animitronix wrote: | I'm using it more than Google these days, but ok... | lukifer wrote: | Honestly, for many simple programming tasks/questions, I find | it's already rivaling Stack Overflow and Google for quick | results. Just last night it flawlessly wrote me a scaffolding for | a Bash script that parses specific command line flags | mymyairduster wrote: | reminds me of when i said 'my girlfrind won't replace my wife' | ... whoops! | greatpostman wrote: | -written by company selling outdated search solutions | fifilura wrote: | More from the same publisher: | | "Why touch screen phones won't replace clamshell phones any | time soon" | | "Why electric light bulbs won't replace gas lighting anytime | soon" | | "Why transistors won't replace radio tubes anytime soon" | | "Why drones won't replace fighter aircraft anytime soon" | | "Why electric cars won't replace combustion engines anytime | soon" | | "Why linux desktop won't replace windows anytime soon" | axiom92 wrote: | Heh. I asked ChatGPT to generate more such examples: | | "Why virtual reality headsets won't replace traditional TVs | anytime soon" | | "Why smart watches won't replace traditional watches anytime | soon" | | "Why tablets won't replace laptops anytime soon" | | "Why solar panels won't replace fossil fuels anytime soon" | | "Why self-driving cars won't replace human drivers anytime | soon" | | "Why 3D printers won't replace traditional manufacturing | anytime soon" | | "Why e-books won't replace physical books anytime soon" | | "Why streaming services won't replace cable TV anytime soon" | | "Why artificial intelligence won't replace human intelligence | anytime soon" | | "Why robots won't replace human workers anytime soon" | | "Why augmented reality won't replace reality anytime soon" | | "Why online shopping won't replace brick and mortar stores | anytime soon" | | "Why paper money won't replace electronic payment methods | anytime soon" | | "Why online education won't replace traditional education | anytime soon" | | "Why video conferencing won't replace in-person meetings | anytime soon" | | "Why self-checkout kiosks won't replace cashiers anytime | soon" | | "Why video game consoles won't replace computer gaming | anytime soon" | | "Why smart homes won't replace traditional homes anytime | soon" | | "Why digital cameras won't replace film cameras anytime soon" | | "Why ride-sharing services won't replace car ownership | anytime soon" | berkle4455 wrote: | Outdated? How so? The primary thing Algolia is guilty of is | being massively overpriced to the point it's a non-starter for | any platform with even moderate usage. But their full-text | search functions quite well and is very fast. | sitkack wrote: | Vector search over any corpus that fits in memory is quite | fast. Hell, a naive inverted index performs quite well for | 90% of tasks. | [deleted] | CharlesW wrote: | I think it's worth noting the potential bias, but Algolia's the | furthest thing from outdated. | kekkidy wrote: | [dead] | TrackerFF wrote: | I used (still use) Wolfram Alpha for the longest time. Back in | the day, I was amazed that it could calculate a bunch of things | that were way out of range for Google, etc. - and I always | envisioned future search engines to be sort of hybrids, you'll | get linked to the correct websites, but you can also ask them for | whatever you want. | | I don't need ChatGPT or similar models to replace search engines, | I just want to use them in parallel. | | I'm excited to see what Google does with their LaMDA model, now | that Bing will incorporate ChatGPT. | kyleyeats wrote: | Bing announced their ChatGPT deal the next day: | https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/04/microsoft_openai_chat... | supermatt wrote: | They havent "announced" anything. It would make cost-per-query | and latency go through the roof, so its HIGHLY unlikely. | aflag wrote: | Making a gpt query on every search I'd say that's indeed | unlikely. Luckily, most queries are repeated, so caching can | work very well. | | There are many opportunities there, gpt could potentially be | used for common queries to expand the results and even as a | way to disambiguate queries. For instance, if I ask it: | | "If I make a search query for "go", what are the possible | different things I may be looking for?" | | I get | | > There are many possible things that someone might be | looking for when they make a search query for "go". Some | possible interpretations of the term "go" include: | | > | | > The board game "Go" | | > The programming language "Go" | | > The command "go" or "Go!" as a signal to start or proceed | with something | | > The verb "go", as in to move or travel from one place to | another | | > The website "GO", which is a popular search engine | | > | | > It's also possible that the person making the search query | is simply looking for information about the word "go" itself, | such as its definition, pronunciation, or usage in different | contexts. | | there may be better prompts, of course. | | Also, they may identify some queries as being gpt friendly | and get those through gpt, which they may also augment with a | suitable prompt. The thing is, giving the query as is to the | GPT model is not the only option. They can certainly be | creative with how they ask gpt and interpret the results. | They don't have to necessarily even display the gpt response, | they can use it to improve the results. | kyleyeats wrote: | They announced it to The Information, anonymously, in a leak. | naillo wrote: | Why would it make latency go up? It's incredibly | parallelizable just copy the weights on more machines. | hooloovoo_zoo wrote: | Ah the ol' have a baby in a month by impregnating 9 women | strategy. | eachro wrote: | The additional cpu to gpu to cpu round trip time I'm | guessing? | ranting-moth wrote: | MS would run their own instance. Can you imagine how much | money they're willing to spend to dethrone Google? | wut42 wrote: | I really wonder how the economics of running chatgpt for Bing's | request will work. GPT is anything but cheap to run, IIRC, it | requires more than four A100 GPU cards. | rapsey wrote: | The bill is already largely footed by MS probably. OpenAI and | MS are a partnership and they run on azure cloud. | wut42 wrote: | Of course- it makes sense to run ChatGPT free now (reminded | that it's an experiment) for training & betatesting. But | running it even larger, and on a search engine ? It's a | magnitude of difference imo, and totally different than a | short-time bill for an experiment. | kyleyeats wrote: | They could go after the really expensive keywords and do | stuff there. I'm just not sure how they'd make more money | from that stuff. | waynesonfire wrote: | Who gives a shit how much it costs. The value is massive | and 10x better than Google results. Are you comprehending | what that means? After competing with Google for over 10 | years with nothing to show for it, Microsoft is drooling | over this technology. | coredog64 wrote: | There's a very old story about Microsoft and Win 3.x pen | computing. One of the leads was explaining that they | worked on it, and someone else opined that it was too bad | that they didn't provide anything useful for MS. The lead | replied that the goal wasn't actually pen computing, it | was a special teams "block that kick" play that | kneecapped a competitor and so achieved its goal. | | If MS can reduce the absolute firehose of money that ads | provide to Google, it will totally be worth it even if it | takes lighting money on fire to do it. | eternalban wrote: | I asked ChatGPT to emulate various OS's, including Linux | and DOS. On a linux emulation, I had it curl whatsmyip.com. | This bit was in the response: <span | id="ipv4">35.230.98.61</span> | | That's a google property. I wonder if it was trained on | google's cloud. | bottlepalm wrote: | Funny how it already has for me. | ranting-moth wrote: | They might not replace them, but it fulfills a role that Google | could do previously. | | Try to find out what type of a spring is in a spring clamp using | google? "What type of a spring is in a spring clamp?" Or use | whatever query you want. The top 10 results won't tell me the | answer. | | Ask ChatGPT. It'll tell you (spoiler: it's a tension spring or a | torsion spring. It's not a coil spring.) | | 8 out of 10 Google results are trying to sell me spring clamps. | Seriously Google, do you not see that your search engine is | FUBAR? | wizofaus wrote: | Curious, the second result for me was aboutmechanics.com, which | said it was a coil clamp. But I agree Google seems to be | interpreting the question as "what's a spring clamp". | ranting-moth wrote: | Interesting. aboutmechanics.com is not in my top 10 results. | But even aboutmechanics is wrong, it's not coil spring. It's | torsion spring. | [deleted] | iLoveOncall wrote: | > Ask ChatGPT. It'll tell you | | Without any way for you to know if it's the right answer or | not. Wow, so useful. | ranting-moth wrote: | Well, I then did a google image search (which is much better | than it's traditional search) and it came up with things that | did look like that one I had in my hand. | | But I do get where you're coming from, ChatGPT is way too | confident when it's wrong! | emkoemko wrote: | thats one good thing about search you get multiple results | and different opinions | azemetre wrote: | How is this any different than Google? The only thing Google | exceeds at is serving you SEO garbage on every query. | qayxc wrote: | Google results(plural!) give you alternatives and | references, i.e. you know where each answer is coming from | and SEO spam is easily identifiable. | | ChatGPT just gives you an answer that's confidentially | wrong sometimes. | sgc wrote: | But isn't that just a UI problem at heart? It would be | easy to ask for references for its conclusion. | iLoveOncall wrote: | ChatGPT doesn't have references and doesn't make | conclusions, it's a statistical model. | | Ask it for references, it will invent you URLs that look | legit but don't exist. | croes wrote: | I bet google could deliver the answer but they need to serve | ads. | | Same would happen with ChatGPT. As soon they need to make money | without charging the users directly, its answers will change. | schrodinger wrote: | Hmmm, ChatGPT doesn't seem consistent: | | Q: what type of spring is in a spring clamp? | | A: Spring clamps are typically made with a type of spring | called a helical spring or a coil spring. These springs are | made of wire that is wound in a spiral shape and are used to | store energy and apply a force when they are compressed or | stretched. In a spring clamp, the helical spring is used to | provide the clamping force that holds the clamp's jaws | together. When the jaws of the clamp are opened, the spring is | stretched, and when the jaws are closed, the spring is | compressed, creating the clamping force. Spring clamps are | commonly used in woodworking, metalworking, and other | applications where a temporary hold is needed. | moonchrome wrote: | And even after reading through first post and your post I had | to do a double take to figure out it was wrong. | | This is exactly why I don't bother with copilot - I tend to | skim when something looks right. | | Same thing when I'm reviewing code - I don't go into details | - I just do high level sanity checks, if I'm familiar with | domain I check for problems I anticipate, look for potential | improvements where my experience matters. | | If I have to go in depth I might as well do the thing on my | own. | Kibae wrote: | I've been using ChatGPT to suggest me books similar to books I've | liked and so far the results have been good. Many of the books | that are recommended are books I've read and enjoyed so the | remaining ones on the list are added to my reading list. | theSoenke wrote: | For me it suggested fictional book names that do not exist | tluyben2 wrote: | It won't have to replace; it can just augment and be very | successful at it. I'm just unsure how to cover the massive costs | of running this thing with millions of req/sec. | kyaghmour wrote: | How long would it take for "ChatGPT farms" to crop up and try to | influence the results? How much harder will it be to "clean" the | results from any learned data set? | shon wrote: | It already has replaced Google for some of my needs. If I want a | simple answer to queries like: | | How to make a Sazarac | | What's a good waffle recipe | | How do I change the O2 sensor on a 1982 911SC | | I find ChatGPT issues perfectly good answers without all of the | superfluous results, words, clickbait, and ads. | | And for many other questions that are technical, medical, or | trivial in nature I prefer its simple one-shot response. | | Is it perfect? No. But neither is Google. I still at times neees | to use quotes and booleans to get Google to bring me the results | I want. | | As a side note, Google is the Microsoft of 1997. Dominant and | content. It doesn't really want change. That's why it's time for | a new challenger. | owlglass wrote: | Perhaps we'll see OpenAI grow to be the Google of 2022? | cs702 wrote: | ...But ChatGPT's successors just _might_. | | I, for one, look forward to a future in which I can ask a digital | assistant to find and summarize information on anything: | | _" Computer, please find out how GPS works and explain it to me | like I'm five years old."_ | | _" Computer, what are the latest Covid-19 infection stats in my | city?"_ | | _" Computer, who is Claude Shannon and why is he important?"_ | | _" Computer, what are the top three stories on HN today?"_ | | _" Computer, what's on my calendar?"_ | | etc. | localhost wrote: | Another way to think about these kinds of requests in a future | AI world is to ask yourself _why_ you 're asking these | questions? My take: | | _" Computer, can you write and deliver a message to my kid | that explains how GPS works?"_ | | _" Computer, can you tell me what risks there are at dining at | McDonalds down the street?"_ | | _" Computer, can you read this paper [link] and tell me why | it's referencing Claude Shannon?"_ | | _" Computer, I need to waste some time - please use HN to help | me"_ | | _" Computer, tell me about any plans that I have for today"_ | IanCal wrote: | I'll be the first to say that chatgpt already does very well at | the first and third examples. WebGPT sounds like the right | approach for the others (understanding how to formulate a | search query, then searching, then summarising the results) | | Edit | | I think the direction of these models seems clear, and their | capabilities _however limited at the moment_ are outstanding. I | think the best measure of performance is what the naysayers | complain about. We 've quickly gone from "actual gibberish that | looks like paragraphs" to "yes but it loses track after a few | sentences" to "yes it's kind of coherent but doesn't make sense | totally" and are now at "it's like an overconfident human at | many tasks, when they're only somewhat qualified in the area". | People are pointing out where it's got an API call wrong, | without it having any ability to look up the answer and see if | the function actually exists. | | I spoke to it about distributed computation design and | discovered something new I can actually implement in my design. | | I'm very excited about where this will all go because it seems | useful now and I'd be very surprised if this is the best that | it ever reaches. | cs702 wrote: | I agree (with minor caveats). | | The important thing is that these AI systems are only going | to get better over time. | | IMHO, the early 2020's for conversational AI is akin to the | 1980's for personal computers. | IanCal wrote: | Absolutely, I totally agree. I edited my comment to add in | more as I realised I'd not addressed that. It's | surprisingly good right now, and given that it's useful | that feeds into even more attention and money being spent | on making it better. | | Anyone not looking at chatgpt and thinking "what if this | was even just a bit better? Or had better iterations or | lookups?" is missing out on what I think is a revolutionary | change coming probably sooner than people expect. | emrah wrote: | That is, if you can blindly trust the answers.. if it could | provide the top sources for the information so I could fact- | check it if needed, it would work | x86x87 wrote: | We're going to have a generation of people that are cock sure | about things because ... ai, but they won't actually know | jack shift. It sort of happened with google. People can | figure something out but they don't systematically get | things. Shallow explanation. Goldfish attention span | ben_w wrote: | I think that assumes AI makes any difference to the self- | certainly of humans. | | My mother was into all kinds of new age and supernatural | stuff. You may think you can see where this anecdote is | leading, and oh boy I could go there, but instead prepare | for a twist! One of the stories she had was a client saying | "It is not possible, Susan, it is not possible that there | are beings out there that are cleverer than what we is". | pattyj wrote: | Is there a way to disuade users from blindly trusting | responses? Such as unavoidable caveats, make no attempt to | provide depth and instead strongly recommend reliable | research? | | And as a logical aside: if AI can't be trusted, we shouldn't | trust AI's recommendations for reliable sources either. | notahacker wrote: | > And as a logical aside: if AI can't be trusted, we | shouldn't trust AI's recommendations for reliable sources | either. | | Don't think that's automatically true though: an AI can be | consistently excellent at retrieving reliable sources and | still get a lot wrong on its summaries. Also humans have | their own opinions on sources even when they're not | familiar with the detail, and finding out if the AI reads | Nature or 4chan is part of the debugging process... | pattyj wrote: | Sure. Really, I was thinking of the scenario where | someone explictly asks for a reliable source i.e. "Thanks | for summary about X. To whom should I turn for more | accurate/detailed information?" | notahacker wrote: | Oh yeah, it's spectacularly bad at some of that sort of | thing. Ask for a list of academic papers and it'll make | half of them up and give others new authors... | notahacker wrote: | That's why in some respects, I think the sheer clunkiness of | "according to website.com, claude shannon is..." or "ok, I've | found this on the web..." in the current consumer tech is | better than anonymous, authoritative somewhat novel answers | than might be the internet's consensus opinion or might just | be a vaguely relevant word vector structured like an answer | mach1ne wrote: | >"Computer, please find out how GPS works and explain it to me | like I'm five years old." | | "I'm sorry, I cannot answer that query because it has ableist | connotations. I am a large language model by OpenAI." | einpoklum wrote: | So, what you're saying is that "I'm feeling lucky"? | axiom92 wrote: | "Computer, please find out how GPS works and explain it to me | like I'm five years old." | | ChatGPT: | | GPS stands for Global Positioning System. It is a way that we | can figure out where we are in the world using special | satellites. | | Imagine you are standing outside and you see lots of stars in | the sky. Well, GPS works kind of like that, but instead of | stars, there are satellites orbiting the Earth. These | satellites are way up high, so they can see everything on the | ground. | | When you have a GPS device, like a phone or a car, it can talk | to these satellites and ask, "Where am I?" The satellites send | back a message that says, "You are here!" and gives your device | a special code. | | The GPS device can use this code to figure out exactly where | you are on a map. It's kind of like a magic trick! You can use | GPS to find out where you are, or to find your way to a new | place. It's super helpful when you're lost or want to go on an | adventure. | | Not bad! | pwdisswordfisha wrote: | I'd be more impressed if it explained set-theoretic forcing | on that level. | cs702 wrote: | And it's only going to get better over time. | | As I mentioned elsewhere, conversational AIs in the early | 2020's are like PCs in the 1980's -- a new technology that | still has lots of early limitations. | jakeinspace wrote: | The second half of that explanation is completely wrong | though, isn't it? There is no active signal being sent from | your GPS antenna, no two-way communication. | daveFNbuck wrote: | The first half is wrong too. GPS has nothing to do with | satellites being able to see lots of things from high up. | The whole thing is just nonsense that looks plausibly like | an explanation until you try to decipher it. | crabmusket wrote: | I didn't even notice that bit (maybe GPT is a flat- | earther?). | | Something GPT discourse has been demonstrating to me is | that I'm not usually a very careful reader. I apparently | skim a lot. Or maybe I skim GPT outputs because I'm | biased in my expectations already? | AlotOfReading wrote: | GPS doesn't talk to the satellites, but the satellites do | send a message that allows the GPS to answer "where am I" | for itself. It's not the worst way to explain things at | that level, even if it's misleading. | | About half the (presumably human) "eli5 GPS" answers I | found on Reddit made the same mistake, so chatGPT just | copied an apparently popular misconception. | notahacker wrote: | > About half the (presumably human) "eli5 GPS" answers I | found on Reddit made the same mistake, so chatGPT just | copied an apparently popular misconception. | | I think that's one of the biggest problems with using | LLMs for accurate answers. A lot of the text that's very | useful for modelling human language and questions is also | full of factual errors and questionable opinions. Answers | being wrong is a problem with old-fashioned web search | too, but I think LLMs necessarily lean more on quantity | rather than quality of content... | monsieurbanana wrote: | Might not be the worst way to explain how GPS works, but | definitely up there. | | You'd be better off just saying "it uses satellites and | stuff". | IanCal wrote: | Here's it's reply to me: | | Ian Calvert Computer, please find out how GPS works and | explain it to me like I'm five years old | | Sure thing! GPS stands for Global Positioning System. It's | a way to find out where you are on Earth. | | GPS works by using satellites that are way up in space. | There are lots of these satellites orbiting around Earth, | and they are always sending out signals. Your GPS receiver | is a special device that can pick up these signals from the | satellites. | | The GPS receiver knows how far away it is from each | satellite because of the time it takes for the signal to | reach it. By figuring out how far away it is from a few | different satellites, the GPS receiver can figure out | exactly where it is on Earth. | | So, if you have a GPS receiver in your car, phone, or on a | special device like a watch, it can use the signals from | the satellites to tell you exactly where you are and how to | get to where you want to go. Does that make sense? | | --- | | I was also able to ask it to make it simpler and simpler | and it did so pretty well. | ben_w wrote: | Yes, but unlike most times it gets things wrong, this is | probably appropriate for explaining things to 5 year olds. | | (Also, the UK comedy quiz show QI made the exact same | mistake). | jakeinspace wrote: | I'll admit it was a decent answer. However, even a | somewhat bright person (especially someone with radio / | networking experience) could probably have realized that | was an issue without any prior knowledge of GPS. They | know that their phone has a GPS receiver, and that | satellite phones accessing geostationary or high altitude | satellites are much bulkier. Clearly, your cell phone | isn't transmitting to each satellite. | | How will future LLMs be able to conduct that level of | reasoning? | [deleted] | aw1621107 wrote: | > this is probably appropriate for explaining things to 5 | year olds. | | I feel it's appropriate in terms of simplicity, but I | think providing a simple wrong explanation is really only | worth it when the more accurate explanation is | substantially harder to simplify, and I don't think | explaining how GPS works falls into that category. | | Something like this I think is more accurate without | being any more complex: | | > Imagine you are standing outside and you see lots of | stars in the sky. Well, GPS works kind of like that, but | instead of stars, there are satellites orbiting the | Earth. These satellites are way up high, so you can | always see some of them. | | > When you have a GPS device, like a phone or a car, it | can look for these satellites, and if it sees enough of | them it can use math to figure out where you are. | wolfgang42 wrote: | You can just as easily ELI5 this _without_ spreading | misinformation, though. Just change the third paragraph | to: | | > The satellites all broadcast a special code saying | where each of them is. When you have a GPS device, like a | phone or a car, it can listen to these codes and find out | where and how far away different satellites are. | | (Actually, this would be a fun thing to do with a class. | Have a few kids march around the edges of the playground, | saying things like "I'm next to the swingset now!", and | then ask one one kid to close their eyes, put them | somewhere in the middle and ask them to guess where | they're standing.) | theteapot wrote: | Did ChatGPT come up with this, or just rip it off from some | place(s) without attribution? | ben_w wrote: | I've seen this sort of response a lot lately, both for GPT | and all the image generators. | | Google, and all the other search engines, literally show | snippets of the original content to display search results, | and have had copyright infringement lawsuits over this. | | Yet somehow, it's taken these AI, which generally _aren 't_ | just block-quoting things unless you ask them to (and often | getting it wrong if you do), for non-lawyers to start | asking that question. | schrodinger wrote: | Is it any different than an infinitely capable human | reading the entire internet and using the knowledge it | gained to answer questions? | ben_w wrote: | Google or GPT? | | Either way I don't know. Might be the same, but that | might be an unwarranted anthropomorphisation. | theteapot wrote: | I think that just indicates it's more blatant. With | search engine results I can click through to the original | source. That's attribution, at least to the laymen. | ChatGPT has no such thing. | ben_w wrote: | I selected a few sentences from the given response, asked | DuckDuckGo to find them, and got zero hits for any of | them. | | GPT definitely has some kind of internal model of things | and how they relate to other things, and the capacity to | express those relations in different ways. | | Whether this is functionally the same as the model in my | head, or some analog to it, or if such descriptions are | merely cute but misleading anthropomorphisation, is far | beyond my knowledge of neuroscience, psychology, and | indeed machine learning. | theteapot wrote: | > I selected a few sentences from the given response, | asked DuckDuckGo to find them, and got zero hits for any | of them. | | Science. | [deleted] | x86x87 wrote: | The explanation is misleading. The satellites don't see you | and don't care about you. They are beacons sending a radio | signal (the beacons says: i'm satellite X and here is a | timestamp). The receiver based on the known position of the | satelites and the beacon signals received figures out your | position on earth using math! | | So the explanation is either: satellites and their position | or give the full explanation. Not this regurgitation. | emsixteen wrote: | Like Ask Jeeves on steroids. | textide wrote: | Agree. ChatGPT is how I imagined the internet would be back in | the 90s (without having the foggiest clue how it might get | there). Your questions are similar to the types of searches | that people really want but have to translate to 'GPS simple | explanation' or 'COVID in <town> this year' while hoping for a | set of relevant pages in the Google return. | | I've gotten it to fail on some word problems, but even then it | was impressive to see it try to come up with a solution. More | humorous were requests like 'Create a post for ycombinator | about ChatGPT in the style of Chris Farley'. It's surprising | and quite welcome that it even attempts that. | emkoemko wrote: | where will this data come from and how do you make money off | it? | [deleted] | jki275 wrote: | The problem with chatgpt is that I can't evaluate the source it | used to learn the information to see if I think it's credible, | and chatgpt can't give me any indication of whether it's credible | or not, and its answer will be just as authoritative in tone if | it's completely incorrect as if it's correct. | | I asked it for a schematic to connect an i2c device to a | microcontroller, it told me to directly connect the device to the | microcontroller. I asked it if pull-up resistors were required, | it said yes, and then drew what it called "pull-up resistors" | (describing them correctly) incorrectly in series between the bus | and the device. | | I know that's wrong, but someone who doesn't really know what a | pull-up resistor does or why they are there would be at least | somewhat confused by that interchange, and would be misled into | doing it wrong. Meanwhile, I can type in "i2c schematic" to | google and get thousands of correct schematics back to look at. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-01-07 23:00 UTC)