i think the point is that the answer is not reliable. it might be completely correct or borderline wrong, or something in between, and there’s no way to tell without verifying everything it says - and then one could look it up oneself in the first place already.
Im no fan of generative ai, but this argument drives me crazy, there are a lot of things that are easy to verify but hard to come up with, quite famously in fact.
Honestly? It’s a great place to start, especially with every search engine being worse than anything pre-2018
I used to have to post my error codes to a forum if googling them didn’t immediately get my anywhere and pray someone would reply something actually useful some day
Now I can ask ChatGPT to point me at something and go from there. If it assumes wrongly about anything I can correct it rather simply. Its really good at turning documentation written by somebody who hasn’t spoken to another human in 15 years into something my stupid ass can better understand, too
AI is a powerful as shit tool, people who slag it as not having any utility are about as ignorant as the people saying it’s the second coming of Jesus himself
I’m personally planning to host a local model to avoid supporting commercial shit, but that’s a project for down the line rn
The main problem I see is that Google just shouldn’t include AI results. And they definitely shouldn’t put their unreliable LLM front and center on the results page. When you google something, you want accurate information, which the LLM might have, but only if that data was readily available to begin with. So the stuff it can help with is stuff the search would put first already.
For anything requiring critical thought or research, the LLM will often hallucinate or misrepresent. The danger is that people do not always apply critical thinking. Defaulting to showing an LLM response is extremely dangerous, and it’s basically pointless.
I don’t know. I find it to be a helpful tool. There’s definitely times it’s wrong (very very wrong sometimes) and there’s sometimes it’s right. It’s up to the user to figure that out.
Maybe I’m old and cynical, but I don’t take anything I read on the Internet, especially something automatically generated, at face value. It’s just another tool I could use to help get to the answer I’m looking for.
I agree with you, and I use it that same way. But I think it should be something the user explicitly seeks out. The problem is that everyone who uses Google now unintentionally use an LLM in the exact same way they’ve always found human-written content. It’s fundamentally different content, so shoving it into the existing interface is begging for confusion.
i think the point is that the answer is not reliable. it might be completely correct or borderline wrong, or something in between, and there’s no way to tell without verifying everything it says - and then one could look it up oneself in the first place already.
Im no fan of generative ai, but this argument drives me crazy, there are a lot of things that are easy to verify but hard to come up with, quite famously in fact.
Same as most human iterations then?
At least I fact check everything I read. Like I did with this post and the church of the anti-AI got angry they got fact checked.
i didn’t get angry, that was the other guys. just trying to explain it rationally
If you’re using AI verbatim without looking up answers and verifying results, then that’s on you.
When you Google something, do you take the first result and just assume it’s fact? You shouldn’t for AI either.
If you’re going to do the research anyway, why bother with AI?
Honestly? It’s a great place to start, especially with every search engine being worse than anything pre-2018
I used to have to post my error codes to a forum if googling them didn’t immediately get my anywhere and pray someone would reply something actually useful some day
Now I can ask ChatGPT to point me at something and go from there. If it assumes wrongly about anything I can correct it rather simply. Its really good at turning documentation written by somebody who hasn’t spoken to another human in 15 years into something my stupid ass can better understand, too
AI is a powerful as shit tool, people who slag it as not having any utility are about as ignorant as the people saying it’s the second coming of Jesus himself
I’m personally planning to host a local model to avoid supporting commercial shit, but that’s a project for down the line rn
If you are going to cite textbooks anyway, why would you bother with a search engine?
The main problem I see is that Google just shouldn’t include AI results. And they definitely shouldn’t put their unreliable LLM front and center on the results page. When you google something, you want accurate information, which the LLM might have, but only if that data was readily available to begin with. So the stuff it can help with is stuff the search would put first already.
For anything requiring critical thought or research, the LLM will often hallucinate or misrepresent. The danger is that people do not always apply critical thinking. Defaulting to showing an LLM response is extremely dangerous, and it’s basically pointless.
I don’t know. I find it to be a helpful tool. There’s definitely times it’s wrong (very very wrong sometimes) and there’s sometimes it’s right. It’s up to the user to figure that out.
Maybe I’m old and cynical, but I don’t take anything I read on the Internet, especially something automatically generated, at face value. It’s just another tool I could use to help get to the answer I’m looking for.
I agree with you, and I use it that same way. But I think it should be something the user explicitly seeks out. The problem is that everyone who uses Google now unintentionally use an LLM in the exact same way they’ve always found human-written content. It’s fundamentally different content, so shoving it into the existing interface is begging for confusion.