[HN Gopher] OpenAI Announces SearchGPT
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       OpenAI Announces SearchGPT
        
       Author : notyouralias
       Score  : 268 points
       Date   : 2024-07-25 18:15 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (chatgpt.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (chatgpt.com)
        
       | chachra wrote:
       | Perplexity has some competition!
        
       | SeanAnderson wrote:
       | Announcing a waitlist! :) Signed up either way, but really wish
       | OpenAI announcements were for usable products.
        
         | buremba wrote:
         | ^ this. I had a similar feeling when I saw the landing page as
         | I have been waiting for Sora to be available after it's
         | "announced".
        
         | ashu1461 wrote:
         | Open ai always surprises. They are yet to completely release
         | some of the features announced an year ago, but still announced
         | a production ready model last week.
         | 
         | Maybe this is the difference between anthropic and open ai..
         | Anthropic has sharp focus on improving their core product and
         | open ai is spread out.
        
           | rvz wrote:
           | > Open ai always surprises.
           | 
           | Not this time. With this one, we were given notice about this
           | as a rumor 3 months ago. [0]
           | 
           | [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40313359
        
           | viraptor wrote:
           | It's a natural consequence of size. Openai with 1200+
           | employees will have more projects running in parallel (and at
           | different speeds) than Anthropic with ~500.
        
         | herval wrote:
         | It seems all their recent major have been waitlists: sora, the
         | voice model, now this
        
       | samiwami wrote:
       | I wonder how good this will be. My employer gave us Perplexity
       | Pro for free, and I removed Safari from my home screen and pinned
       | Perplexity to force myself to use it... I found it really really
       | slow and didn't really add to my search experience
        
         | marcosdumay wrote:
         | IMO, Perplexity does absolutely shine in a kind of search for
         | what other engines don't compete at all. But it's way worse
         | than normal engines for most of the things I search.
         | 
         | Anyway, comparing it by speed isn't useful at all.
        
           | llm_trw wrote:
           | >Tractors are slower than cars, why would you use them?
        
       | nsilvestri wrote:
       | I have never felt like my searches in other engines have been
       | helped by AI. I hope SearchGPT changes that. My expectations are
       | low.
        
       | blakesterz wrote:
       | People with websites used to have a clear reason to allow bots to
       | crawl and index our sites. Google and everyone sent us traffic.
       | There was something of a trade off. Google has been slowly
       | changing that trade by displaying more and more of our sites on
       | google.com rather than sending people our way.
       | 
       | As far as I can see there's no sending people away from
       | SearchGPT, it just gives answers. I can't see any reason to allow
       | AI crawlers on my sites, all they do is crawl my site and slow
       | things down. I'm glad that most of them seem to respect
       | robots.txt.
        
         | marcosdumay wrote:
         | If it doesn't send you to the sites, what's the difference from
         | just using ChatGPT?
         | 
         | My impression from the demo is it has a perplexity-like result,
         | with the answer and references to where each part comes from.
        
           | wilg wrote:
           | Search is a familiar interface and chat is a bit janky
           | sometimes.
        
         | jpcookie wrote:
         | I clearly would not. "Slow down your site" because information
         | is super useful when you can't search it properly.
        
           | mikepurvis wrote:
           | Sites might exist for reasons other than to "be useful". At a
           | bare minimum, they may be trying to sell eyeballs to
           | advertisers, but they also might be trying to deliver an
           | experience, induce some deeper engagement, make a sale, build
           | a community, whatever.
           | 
           | All of that disappears when a bot devours whatever it
           | assesses to be your "content" and then serves it up as a QA
           | response, stripped of any of the surrounding context.
        
             | jpcookie wrote:
             | Because reading nonsense inside an infinite debatable
             | context is fun. I know what you're talking about and
             | frankly I'm not impressed.
             | 
             | You know why people like these chat systems? Because it
             | straight up saves time. When a system is made it to
             | indexable, "context dependent", and "creating a certain
             | experience" it just begs to be summarized and made to be
             | something you can use. That interpretable work is....
             | Pointlessly difficult.
             | 
             | A good example: discord. A vast number of communities are
             | designed to be "experiences" where you have to pour hours
             | of your time to adapt to their little fiefdoms if you
             | wanted to obtain any useful information in the form of
             | important information on a topic. Try doing this in any
             | serious fashion and you will quickly be wasting more of
             | your time than you want.
             | 
             | Yeah so maybe chatgpt gives you the occasional incorrect
             | fact. I haven't had that happen in any way, shape, or form.
             | Furthermore: just be critical of your information. Not
             | hard, and they are already working on fixing that.
             | 
             | Especially for people that are bonafide adults time is
             | worth more than "the pride of human work".
        
               | Xelynega wrote:
               | I'm confused how this can be your opinion while you're
               | also spending time on this website responding to people.
               | 
               | Why are you not just asking chatgpt "what's the latest
               | tech news"?
               | 
               | Could it be that there's something else you get from this
               | site other than just it's content being easily searchable
               | in someone elses database?
        
               | TeMPOraL wrote:
               | I imagine that something else is _conversation_.
               | 
               | Note however that HN is not gatekeeping any useful
               | information that may be produced during conversations
               | here; in fact, it's all indexed and searchable.
        
               | mikepurvis wrote:
               | Sure, and if a chatbot can helpfully summarize factual
               | content being gatekept in a Discord chat, then that's
               | fantastic, but I don't think that's quite what I'm
               | getting at. The internet has room for more than just an
               | infinite queue of fact-seekers interacting with a bank of
               | fact-repositories. Some writing (eg, poetry) is clearly
               | art and the people who have created it are entitled to
               | have a bit of say over how that art is consumed and under
               | what regimes it is summarized/remixed. Or at least us as
               | those consumers should have the discernment required to
               | be able to say "this isn't authentic, let me seek out the
               | original instead."
               | 
               | I'm not normally a purist on these things, but I'm
               | recalling musical artists who bemoaned the destruction of
               | the album format in favour of $0.99/track sales in the
               | early days of the iTunes store. Concept albums in the
               | vein of Sgt Peppers still exist of course, but almost
               | every modern mainstream song is now prepared first and
               | foremost to be listened to in isolation. I didn't care
               | for those arguments at the time they were being made, but
               | years later, I can appreciate how something was lost
               | there and that it might have been appropriate to let
               | artists specify that album X was to be sold _only_ as an
               | album.
        
         | blowski wrote:
         | If you want ChatGPT to say nice things about you (or bad things
         | about your competitors), then you'll need to give it your
         | version of information - at least that will be the line peddled
         | to us.
         | 
         | I've already received emails from SEO snake oil sellers now
         | advertising themselves as being able to influence ChatGPT
         | output.
        
           | netghost wrote:
           | Maybe this is an excellent time for prompt injection :)
        
           | loloquwowndueo wrote:
           | Pedalled or peddled? :)
        
             | blowski wrote:
             | Fixed
        
         | jsheard wrote:
         | > I'm glad that most of them seem to respect robots.txt.
         | 
         | https://github.com/ai-robots-txt/ai.robots.txt/blob/main/tab...
         | 
         | Some of them identify themselves by user agent but don't
         | respect robots.txt, so you have to set up your server to 403
         | their requests to keep them out. If they start obfuscating
         | their user agents then there won't be an easy solution besides
         | deferring to a platform like CloudFlare which offers to play
         | that cat and mouse game on your behalf though.
        
           | wilg wrote:
           | If I were making a search engine or AI crawler, I would
           | simply pose as Googlebot
        
             | jsheard wrote:
             | Google actually provides means of validating whether a
             | request really came from them, so masquerading as Googlebot
             | would probably backfire on you. I would expect the big CDNs
             | to flag your IP address as malicious if you fail that
             | check.
             | 
             | https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-
             | indexing/...
        
               | wilg wrote:
               | You could maybe still only follow robots.txt rules for
               | Googlebot.
        
           | lolinder wrote:
           | The entry here for Perplexity is the one that got a lot of
           | attention but it's also unfair: PerplexityBot is their
           | crawler, which uses that user agent and as far as anyone can
           | tell it respects robots.txt.
           | 
           | They _also_ have a feature that will, if a user pastes a URL
           | into their chat, go fetch the data and do something with it
           | in response to the user 's query. This is the feature that
           | made a big kerfuffle on HN a while back when someone noticed
           | it [0].
           | 
           | That second feature is _not_ a web crawler in any meaningful
           | sense of the word  "crawler". It looks up exactly one URL
           | that the user asked for and does something with it. It's
           | Perplexity acting as a User Agent in the original sense of
           | the word: a user's agent for accessing and manipulating data
           | on the open web.
           | 
           | If an AI agent manipulating a web page that I ask it to
           | manipulate in the way I ask it to manipulate it is considered
           | abusive then so are ad blockers, reader mode, screen readers,
           | dark reader, and anything else that gives me access to open
           | web content in a form that the author didn't originally
           | intend.
           | 
           | [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40690898
        
             | ffsm8 wrote:
             | No, thats illogical.
             | 
             | The action is indeed prompted by a human, but so is any
             | crawl in some way. At some point they either configured an
             | interval or other trigger to send the script to the Web
             | host to fetch anything it can find.
             | 
             | It's inherently different to extensions such as adblockers
             | that just remove elements according to configuration.
             | 
             | After all, the users device will never even see the final
             | DOM now. instead it's getting fetched, parsed and processed
             | on a third device, which is objectively a robot. You'd be
             | able to make that argument only if it was implemented via
             | an extension (users device fetched the page and posts the
             | final document to the LLM for processing).
             | 
             | And that's ignoring the fact that adblockers are seen as
             | illegitimate by a lot of websites too, and they often try
             | to block access to people using these extensions too.
        
               | lolinder wrote:
               | I wrote a reply but you edited out the chunk of text that
               | I quoted, so here's a new reply.
               | 
               | > After all, the users device will never even see the
               | final DOM now. instead it's getting fetched, parsed and
               | processed on a third device, which is objectively a
               | robot.
               | 
               | Sure, but why does it matter if the machine that I ask to
               | fetch, parse, and process the DOM lives on my computer or
               | on someone else's? I, the human being, will never see the
               | DOM either way.
               | 
               | This distinction between my computer and a third-party
               | computer quickly falls apart when you push at it.
               | 
               | If I issue a curl request from a server that I'm renting,
               | is that a robot request? What about if I'm using Firefox
               | on a remote desktop? What about if I self-host a client
               | like Perplexity on a local server?
               | 
               | We live in an era where many developers run their IDE
               | backend in the cloud. The line between "my device" and
               | "cloud device" has been nearly entirely blurred, so
               | making that the line between "robot" and "not robot" is
               | entirely irrational in 2024.
               | 
               | The only definition of "robot" or "crawler" that makes
               | any kind of sense is the one provided by robotstxt.org
               | [0], and it's one that unequivocally would incorporate
               | Perplexity on the "not robot" side:
               | 
               | > A robot is a program that automatically traverses the
               | Web's hypertext structure by retrieving a document, and
               | recursively retrieving all documents that are referenced.
               | ... Normal Web browsers are not robots, because they are
               | operated by a human, and don't automatically retrieve
               | referenced documents (other than inline images).
               | 
               | Or the MDN definition [1]:
               | 
               | > A web crawler is a program, often called a bot or
               | robot, which systematically browses the Web to collect
               | data from webpages. Typically search engines (e.g.
               | Google, Bing, etc.) use crawlers to build indexes.
               | 
               | Perplexity issues one web request per human interaction
               | and does not fetch referenced pages. It cannot be
               | considered a "crawler" by either of these definitions,
               | and the definition you've come up with just doesn't work
               | in the era of cloud software.
               | 
               | [0] https://www.robotstxt.org/faq/what.html
               | 
               | [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
               | US/docs/Glossary/Crawler
        
         | namdnay wrote:
         | So you get the information out to people without even having to
         | serve traffic? Sounds like a win? At the end of the day, if
         | they want to book/buy anything they'll have to go to your site
        
           | markild wrote:
           | I guess collaborative sites like forums are likely to suffer
           | greatly from this shift.
        
             | criddell wrote:
             | Do you think HN will suffer greatly from AI bots digesting
             | the site?
        
         | wseqyrku wrote:
         | If that's the case, I think it's fair to say that we can skip
         | websites and just host a service that chatgpt can talk to. If
         | you're a restaurant, user can actually order right from the
         | chat. or voice.
        
           | nicce wrote:
           | > If you're a restaurant, user can actually order right from
           | the chat. or voice.
           | 
           | So, instead of giving 30% fee for DoorDash or Wolt about
           | visibility, we start giving that fee for "some-AI-search-
           | tool", and they don't allow selling food cheaper than you get
           | by using the AI search process ordering. I don't like this
           | era.
        
             | wseqyrku wrote:
             | That's assuming you don't have any customers. Those will
             | just directly name your restaurant. I guess the only way to
             | attract new customers would be word-of-mouth, or some other
             | form of advertising.
        
               | nicce wrote:
               | I am assuming that most customers comes from deliveries
               | in these days. People optimize time.
               | 
               | Only some big, well-known restaurants are an exception
               | because people already known them and know to look for
               | them. They are big enough to have online shop for food
               | delivery and some form of delivery system.
               | 
               | For other places, it is not like that. They need to be
               | visible on platforms that people use. If they are not
               | there, people don't order take-away food because they
               | mainly use applications which provide decent-enough
               | catalog about available restaurants with delivery option
               | and easy payment process.
               | 
               | Typical platform monopoly problem exists because people
               | tend to be lazy and it is hard to get visibility on
               | traditional search engines, when they are flooded by ads
               | for the normal users, and then if you filter them out,
               | SSO spam, which might not be related to restaurants, and
               | then finally, competition against other restaurants.
        
         | smrtinsert wrote:
         | Slowly? Google gave up quality searches years ago
        
         | Dalewyn wrote:
         | >Google has been slowly changing that trade by displaying more
         | and more of our sites on google.com rather than sending people
         | our way.
         | 
         | To an extent, I actually like the trend as Joe Average User.
         | 
         | Most websites are just plain filthy and even dangerous today. I
         | know I am not opening any link to a website I don't already
         | know and trust unless it's in a Private window (fuck their
         | cookies) with JavaShit more than likely blocked. If it's really
         | shady I'll fire up an entire disposable VM for it first.
         | 
         | Google, Bing, et al. just putting the content right then and
         | there saves me time and hassle from dealing with the ancillary
         | garbage myself.
         | 
         | It's honestly a tragedy of the commons. Big Tech wants more
         | traffic and to keep it, websites want more traffic and just
         | throw whatever literal shit they can muster (aka SEO).
        
         | wilg wrote:
         | Fundamentally the problem here is that in many (maybe about
         | half of) search cases people are not ultimately interested in
         | visiting a website, they are interested in a piece of
         | information on the website. The website is essentially a
         | paywall for that information. The website is a middleman, and
         | middlemen can be easily disrupted by a better one.
         | 
         | So what we really need here is a new approach to funding the
         | availability of information. Unfortunately, ads are fairly
         | lucrative because advertisers are willing to pay a lot more
         | than users are. You could I guess do something where SearchGPT
         | pays a couple of cents out of a monthly fee to each information
         | source it used. Much harder with LLMs, since the source of
         | information is potentially very diffuse and difficult to track.
         | And even if you tracked it each publisher would get such a tiny
         | fraction of what they are making now.
         | 
         | But the difficult part for web publishers is that AI powered
         | information retrieval is a significantly better user
         | experience, which means it's very likely to win no matter what.
        
         | mrtksn wrote:
         | >People with websites used to have a clear reason to allow bots
         | to crawl and index our sites
         | 
         | For a long time now, that reason was to show ads and the
         | content quality was very, very low. It destroyed journalism, it
         | destroyed everything pretty much. Some of the blame is on
         | Google but a lot of the blame is on the people with websites
         | IMHO.
         | 
         | People with websites can go back to the good old days when they
         | made websites to show off their talents, persuade people into
         | activism, spread ideas and seek interaction with likeminded
         | humans.
         | 
         | LLMs have the problem of hallucinations but when that's solved
         | I wouldn't be looking back. Hopefully, Google itself would be
         | disrupted.
         | 
         | Maybe we can finally have a business model for high quality
         | data, like journalists selling their work on current events
         | without the need to present it in the most bombastic way
         | possible?
         | 
         | I think the world currently is in strong need of a way to
         | process large amounts of data streaming in and make sense of
         | it. AI can be very useful of that. I would love to have access
         | to an LLM that can keep up with the current events so I don't
         | have to endure all the nazi stuff on Twitter.
         | 
         | I don't want censorship it's just that I would be perfectly
         | happy to know that there are bunch of people thinking that
         | Biden was replaced and that there are some other people
         | thinking that Michelle Obama is actually a man without have to
         | read it like 100 times a day when I'm trying to look at the
         | opinions of the people on something. It's cool to know that
         | there are such people(or bots?) out there but I don't want to
         | read their stuff, I want to the computer to on top of all that
         | and give me a brief on, then I can drill down if I want to know
         | more or see the exact content.
        
           | evilfred wrote:
           | LLM hallucinations can't be solved as it is the whole LLM
           | mechanisms. all LLM results are hallucinations, it just
           | happens some results are more true/useful than others.
        
       | tptacek wrote:
       | So, Google already does this, right? And most of the feedback
       | I've seen is: "how the hell do we turn this off".
        
         | MattGaiser wrote:
         | The problem with the Google one is accuracy. It told people to
         | eat rocks. OpenAI just needs to beat that.
        
           | alpha_squared wrote:
           | Obvious errors make for good comedy and create obvious
           | moments for reflection on what is actually being done. Subtle
           | errors lead to fractured realities.
        
             | dheera wrote:
             | Google makes shittons of the subtle variety now as well.
        
           | minimaxir wrote:
           | It appears from the demo example, OpenAI is not winning in
           | the accuracy department either:
           | https://x.com/kifleswing/status/1816542216678179083
           | 
           | > In ChatGPT's recent search engine announcement, they ask
           | for "music festivals in Boone North Carolina in august"
           | 
           | > There are five results in the example image in the ChatGPT
           | blog post :
           | 
           | > 1: Festival in Boone ... that ends July 27 ... ChatGPT's
           | dates are when the box office is closed [X] 2: A festival in
           | Swannanoa, two hours away from Boone, closer to Asheville [X]
           | 3. Free Friday night summer concerts at a community center
           | (not a festival but close enough) [O] 4. The website to a
           | local venue [X] 5. A festival that takes place in June,
           | although ChatGPT's summary notes this. [Shrug]
        
             | patchorang wrote:
             | Not saying the SearchGPT will or will not be accurate, but
             | this demo was certainly made in After Effects. Who knows
             | where the copy came from.
        
               | minimaxir wrote:
               | Even though placeholder copy is common in promos, a
               | _search engine demo_ is the one case where you need
               | completely accurate copy.
        
           | paxys wrote:
           | They are both training on the same garbage. OpenAI's accuracy
           | isn't any better.
        
         | dheera wrote:
         | It would be cool if it could collect and aggregate information.
         | 
         | "What is the mean and standard deviation of the AQI along the
         | current fastest driving route from Palo Alto to Lassen National
         | Park, averaged over the driving time"
         | 
         | "What is the easternmost supermarket before Yosemite that is at
         | least 2000sqft in size"
         | 
         | etc
        
         | killerstorm wrote:
         | Microsoft does it. In fact they came up with Bing integration
         | before GPT-4 release, although UI is a bit different.
         | 
         | Kinda hilarious that nobody remembers...
        
         | mrinterweb wrote:
         | OpenAI isn't going to beat Google at the search game any time
         | soon, and yeah Google's AI results have mixed popularity now.
         | Doesn't seem like the best use of OpenAI's focus to me.
        
         | paxys wrote:
         | Bing has been doing this for a while, _using_ GPT-4. I don 't
         | see how OpenAI can substantially improve on that experience.
        
         | drexlspivey wrote:
         | Have you used perplexity? It is very useful, I rarely google
         | stuff any more.
        
         | onemoresoop wrote:
         | I think Open Ai can do this better than google for the simple
         | reason that nobody pays for google search, ads do. And with ads
         | the incentive make the search bad. Google has become an
         | advertising monster. If only google could get people to pay for
         | proper search but that is not very likely and problematic since
         | it would cannibalize their ads based shitty search business.
         | 
         | Open AI or other AI companies could capitalize on that because
         | they already have hooked their users up with their LLMs, search
         | could be another feature and has the potential to grow from
         | there.
        
       | xivzgrev wrote:
       | Finally, the inevitable product we all knew was coming: going
       | after Google's core biz
       | 
       | I like the follow up questions feature but how is it different
       | than chat gpt - just providing links as well?
        
         | ashu1461 wrote:
         | Getting more richer context of the current web events and doing
         | that in a faster way. The current website scrapping feature is
         | too slow.
        
         | CephalopodMD wrote:
         | That feature is also part of Google search's AI
        
         | ignoramous wrote:
         | > _going after Google's core biz_
         | 
         | Meta is out to commodotize Google's core product ( _Search_ ).
         | Meta's foray into Open Source AI is likely to hurt more as
         | Google's distribution advantages (via Chrome and Android) is
         | close to insurmountable for _one_ rival search engine to make
         | any meaningful dent by going toe-to-toe.
        
       | mentos wrote:
       | Being a separate product I wonder if they plan to introduce
       | advertising in ways that they couldn't with ChatGPT.
        
         | floam wrote:
         | According to the article: this separate product is ephemeral,
         | it's a prototype and eventually the idea is what it does will
         | become part of ChatGPT.
        
       | kva wrote:
       | This just represents such a stark lack in originality and lends
       | even more credo to "OpenAI wants to copy its customers"
        
         | 42lux wrote:
         | They are not research focused anymore they are a product
         | company now.
        
           | gbarletta wrote:
           | Maybe to the point they will rebrand themselves soon
        
       | MattDaEskimo wrote:
       | I really dislike this as OpenAI has spent the past months signing
       | sweetheart deals with any publisher willing to sell their content
       | for training data.
       | 
       | It ties everything to their platform and returns a regurgitation
       | of prioritized content without indicating any sort of
       | sponsorship.
       | 
       | SEO will be replaced by cold hard cash, favors, and backroom
       | deals
        
         | jjulius wrote:
         | >SEO will be replaced by cold hard cash, favors, and backroom
         | deals
         | 
         | Maybe it's my pessimistic nature, but it's garbage either way
         | to me - backroom deals in your scenario, or the SEO-gameified
         | garbage we currently have.
        
           | pandeiro wrote:
           | Can't believe unfettered greed and self-interest would ruin
           | something like this.
        
           | tivert wrote:
           | At least with "SEO-gameified garbage" the little guy has a
           | chance to compete by learning the SEO game.
        
           | benreesman wrote:
           | Cold hard cash, favors, and backroom deals have been the
           | modus operandi of this leadership team for over a decade now,
           | it's the only song they know.
        
         | Topfi wrote:
         | > SEO will be replaced by cold hard cash, favors, and backroom
         | deals
         | 
         | Maybe this reflects my biases, but isn't that was SEO has been
         | from the get go? Like, from the moment someone had the idea
         | that they could influence search engine results in their favor
         | and charge money for those services, SEO has been purely
         | negative for internet users simply trying to find the most
         | fitting results for their query.
        
           | arp242 wrote:
           | Well, there's SEO and then there's _SEO_. Some of it is just
           | common-sense stuff to aid search engines a bit, and that
           | benefits everyone. And then there 's _SEO_ which is all the
           | bullshittery you 're referring to.
           | 
           | For well over a decade the best SEO trick is to write helpful
           | useful content.
           | 
           | Your small independent blog can become a top Google hit
           | without too much effort. This is kind of neat.
        
         | benreesman wrote:
         | If no one else does it soon I'll probably do it myself: we're
         | long overdue for the ad-block of LLM output. I want a browser
         | plugin that nukes it at the DOM, and I don't care how many
         | false positives it has.
        
           | viraptor wrote:
           | You can't detect LLM output with any reasonable rate. You'd
           | have both false positives and false negatives all over the
           | place. If you solve that part on its own, that will be a SOTA
           | method.
        
             | benreesman wrote:
             | This is a dangerous falsehood. OpenAI's since-cancelled
             | polygraph had a 9% rate of false positives, and a 26% rate
             | of true positive. If I can lose a quarter of toxic bytes
             | and need to enable JavaScript on one site in ten? Count me
             | in!
             | 
             | I want _more_ false positives.
             | 
             | https://openai.com/index/new-ai-classifier-for-indicating-
             | ai...
        
               | viraptor wrote:
               | Then don't use any website - 100% false positives. But
               | seriously, it's a 9% rate for specific models at the
               | time. It's a cat and mouse game and any fine tuning or a
               | new release will throw it off. Also they don't say which
               | 9% was misclassified, but I suspect it's the most
               | important ones - the well written articles. If I see a
               | dumb tweet with a typo it's unlikely to come from LLM
               | (and if it does, who cares), but a well written long form
               | article may have been slightly edited with LLM and get
               | caught. The 9% is not evenly distributed.
        
               | benreesman wrote:
               | It was a cat and mouse game before, spam always is. The
               | inevitable reality that spam is a slog of a war isn't a
               | good argument for giving up.
               | 
               | I don't know the current meta on LLM vs LLM detector, but
               | if I had to pick one job or the other, I'd rather train a
               | binary classifier to detect a giant randomized nucleus
               | sampling decoder thing than fool a binary classifier with
               | said Markov process thing.
               | 
               | Please don't advocate for giving up on spam, that affects
               | us all.
        
           | dragonwriter wrote:
           | > If no one else does it soon I'll probably do it myself:
           | we're long overdue for the ad-block of LLM output. I want a
           | browser plugin that nukes it at the DOM, and I don't care how
           | many false positives it has.
           | 
           | Well, if you don't care how many false positives it has, just
           | block everything. But there's no even remotely reliable way
           | to detect LLM output if it isn't deliberately watermarked to
           | facilitate that, so you aren't going to get anything that is
           | actually good at that.
        
         | ineedaj0b wrote:
         | as long as sama is running things we'll be seeing this. he's
         | trying to grow as large as possible, for more leverage.
        
         | supertofu wrote:
         | > SEO will be replaced by cold hard cash, favors, and backroom
         | deals
         | 
         | The fact that SEO has to exist in the first place is evidence
         | of search engine mafia.
        
         | kridsdale3 wrote:
         | I honestly think that will be an improvement. SEO is
         | enshittification, it degrades the quality of the product. I
         | would rather pay a couple bucks for something good and vetted.
        
       | rvz wrote:
       | Perhaps no-one could answer my question in [0] because many
       | (including me) knew OpenAI would release their own search engine;
       | eventually in [0].
       | 
       |  _" Who can tell me how and why is Perplexity.ai is worth $1BN?
       | How much revenue are they making vs the amount of money they are
       | burning? What is the justification of this valuation?"_ [0]
       | 
       | At this point with this unsurprising announcement, Perplexity is
       | worth <$50M.
       | 
       | [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40313461
        
         | marcosdumay wrote:
         | Company valuations never have an explanation. At all. It's all
         | whatever people at the moment guessed, usually with so little
         | information that you'd be infuriated.
         | 
         | For non-traded companies, it's even worse, because it's less
         | people, at fewer moments, and they don't even need to be
         | honest. As a first approximation, non-traded companies do not
         | have a valuation, any number you get is bullshit and you can
         | get something with the same accuracy by just asking ChatGPT.
        
         | mrkramer wrote:
         | It is worth $1BN because people who invested in it, think it is
         | worth that much.
        
       | skydhash wrote:
       | Search engines for me is keyword based. I want to type "pizza
       | <town> near <street>" or "<function> <library> <language>" and
       | get sensible result. Anytime a search engines tries to interpret
       | my query with something far semantically and ignoring my own
       | keywords, it's a worse experience.
        
         | asddubs wrote:
         | you end up searching for a pub called graphite and get 10000
         | results about graphite bars because it's a more common term and
         | bar = pub, right? contrived example but that seems to happen to
         | me every other month at least
        
         | kypro wrote:
         | I have no data to back this up, but I strongly suspect 90% of
         | search traffic consists of dumb searches for things like,
         | "facebook", "weather tomorrow", "gmail".
         | 
         | While people do search for things that could benefit from some
         | comprehension, I don't think that's a common feature.
         | 
         | For example, my most recent searches and I'm probably a bit of
         | an outlier given my usage:
         | 
         | "given when then" "[some project] github" "[some person]
         | wikipedia" "[some person] wikipedia" "act of supremacy
         | wikipedia" "NVDA stock" "django docs onetoonefield"
         | 
         | Perhaps one of those Wikipedia searches could have been done
         | better as an AI search since I wanted to know something
         | specific, but other two were just from wanting to read
         | generally about a topic.
         | 
         | The benefits I get from ChatGPT and similar tools are more
         | conversational than search like. Eg, I might be trying to solve
         | a coding problem and want some suggestions about how I might go
         | about it. I might act for libraries, example code, and pros and
         | cons of different approaches. I basically use it as a
         | replacement for another senior engineer which I can bounce
         | ideas off of, it's not for search / knowledge type stuff and I
         | can't see why I'd ask an AI for that. If I want to know
         | something I can just type a few keywords into google and find a
         | reputable site that for that info.
        
         | throw310822 wrote:
         | Depends. I'm sure that Google trained us to rephrase at least
         | some of our questions as keywords and to not ask some complex
         | questions at all- or at least to expect them to fail. Plus, in
         | general we expect Google to mostly find the information that is
         | already there, while there is a world of information that has
         | not been made explicit by anyone. For example, "how many
         | pizzerias are in this town" and "which one has the highest
         | ratings by Italian customers" are two questions that I would
         | never dream to ask Google. Yet they're possible and not too
         | absurd to ask to an omniscient intelligence.
        
       | binary132 wrote:
       | Shameless Google search clone
        
       | jigneshdarji91 wrote:
       | I've been using Perplexity for the past 3 months on a regular
       | basis and it has replaced DDG for most use cases. It's really
       | nice to have answers directly.
       | 
       | Product comparison/updates/features:
       | 
       | > What's the difference in speedo latex cap vs elastomeric?
       | 
       | > What's new in iOS 18 Beta 4?
       | 
       | Documentation (esp for non-mainstream tools):
       | 
       | > How do i find the sioyek db files? How do I move it to my local
       | iCloud folder instead?
       | 
       | I'd assume SearchGPT's results might be better given the
       | partnerships with publishers and creators vs Perplexity searching
       | the internet. More importantly, Perplexity already did the work
       | of finding Product-Market Fit for OpenAI.
        
         | llm_trw wrote:
         | My beef with perplexity is that there is no way to increase the
         | number of uses of large models.
         | 
         | People keep telling me that I can use the smaller models, but I
         | really can't. I'm using this for work and those things are toys
         | which just game bench marks.
         | 
         | I'd love to give them an api key from openai or anthropic and
         | get uses to my hearts content like phind does.
        
           | Havoc wrote:
           | Huh? I haven't seen any limits yet regardless of model choice
        
             | llm_trw wrote:
             | You hit them after dozens of uses on the big models and
             | hundreds on the small ones.
        
         | freefaler wrote:
         | Perplexity is great, but they might have their rug pulled
         | underneath them.
         | 
         | They use google and other search providers to run the query
         | over the results and may be they still can find a good
         | provider. However it's either Google or Bing and they both have
         | their own competing products.
         | 
         | However, openAI might not execute this better and then
         | Perplexity might have a chance... (I hope so).
        
           | drexlspivey wrote:
           | > They use google and other search providers to run the query
           | over the results and may be they still can find a good
           | provider.
           | 
           | No they don't? AFAIK they have their own crawler and semantic
           | search index.
        
             | jigneshdarji91 wrote:
             | Yes [1]
             | 
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40690898
        
         | machiaweliczny wrote:
         | The elephant in the room is monetization for people writing
         | this content that perplexity (and then other search engines)
         | will show.
        
           | jigneshdarji91 wrote:
           | And I believe for this reason necessarily SearchGPT might
           | come out on top, at least for higher quality content from
           | partnerships.
        
       | charlierguo wrote:
       | Have we figured out a way to monetize AI-powered search yet?
       | Presumably a product like this (or Perplexity) will ultimately be
       | free, in which case they'll be forced to offer ads (bringing us
       | back to Google's status quo) or perhaps worse, we'll have
       | "product placement" in our AI-written results.
        
         | downrightmike wrote:
         | No, and that is a big problem, search doesn't make money
         | either. People will not actually pay the cost for AI once they
         | have to.
        
           | criddell wrote:
           | They might pay for it indirectly. For example, Apple just
           | signed a deal with OpenAI and I could imagine a future where
           | users of Apple devices get free access to some AI because
           | Apple and that company made a deal.
        
             | PodgieTar wrote:
             | Well, maybe, but I think the huge thing missing from this
             | assumption is that Apple are not paying OpenAI anything,
             | and are developing their own in-house and on-device models.
             | 
             | And a lot of what those on-model devices can do are what
             | the average person will want.
             | 
             | And there's going to take a lot to move people meaningfully
             | away from google.
        
           | freediver wrote:
           | > No, and that is a big problem, search doesn't make money
           | either.
           | 
           | Kahm, Kagi (and Google) would both disagree. You can even
           | pick your favorite business model!
        
         | freediver wrote:
         | This is already happening, most have either announced or are
         | already monetizing their output with ads.
         | 
         | A few (inlcuding Kagi's LLM assisted search) will be monetized
         | through user/customer subscriptions exclusively.
         | 
         | As with search, these two business models will lead to
         | different outcomes for the users.
        
       | moralestapia wrote:
       | GG Google and I couldn't be more pleased.
       | 
       | It may not be this specific iteration that kills it, but a search
       | product with AI (and without trash) is what will dethrone it.
       | 
       | I'm already using ChatGPT for ~30% of the queries I used to use
       | Google for. I prefer hallucinations to ads, to be honest.
       | 
       | They were right to call Code Red when GPT came out, but their
       | response to it has been extremely poor, _even when they had all
       | their cards in their hands_. The quality of their products has
       | been increasingly worse with time, everyone (but their own VPs)
       | has been telling them that, it 's hardly a secret.
       | 
       | They literally just have to go through the first two or three
       | comments on this site (or Reddit or w/e) and fix the extremely
       | obvious pain points people have with their products:
       | * Bring back verbatim search, make search *actually* work.
       | * If I search for "italian restaurants", I want a list of italian
       | restaurants not a blog post with someone's opinion on why italian
       | restaurants should hire more immigrants because of blah blah blah
       | ... I want to *eat* something!            * The whole "vikings
       | were black" episode ... wtf.
       | 
       | They kind of deserve it at this point.
        
         | avgDev wrote:
         | ChatGPT is like a drunk expert. It says the correct words but
         | might completely wrong. I've had some funny instances of it
         | hallucinating.
        
           | moralestapia wrote:
           | "SEO-optimized" sites are equally crappy, if not worse.
           | 
           | You still have to discard a lot of information from Google,
           | you probably just got used to it. Even though I still use it
           | for ~70% of my queries, what I'm actually looking for is one
           | or two pages down the list of results, the first ones being
           | just mediocre articles around the topic of interest.
           | 
           | What's the first thing you do when you get Google results?
           | You _scroll down_ , it has become muscle memory at this
           | point.
        
         | chubot wrote:
         | OK but this is the same pattern as image uploading services -
         | https://drewdevault.com/2014/10/10/The-profitability-of-onli...
         | 
         | 1. google was a good search engine when it was less profitable
         | 
         | 2. now that it is more profitable, it is bad
         | 
         | Importantly, it was possible for Google to be good AND
         | profitable at the same time! Roughly from 2003-2013 perhaps.
         | 
         | 1. OpenAI is nowhere near profitable ... it seems to be heavily
         | dependent on Microsoft, and in some sense on Microsoft's desire
         | to compete with Google in certain areas
         | 
         | 2. If it ever becomes profitable, does anyone want to argue it
         | won't get significantly worse? It will probably have a bunch of
         | bad side effects, like Google's decline did on the web itself
         | 
         | I guess this is "normal", but it also seems pretty inefficient
         | to me ... Part of the problem is that "free" is a special price
         | that users like
         | 
         | IMO it would have be nice if Google search was sustainable at a
         | high quality -- I think it easily could have been
        
           | llm_trw wrote:
           | LLMs aren't tech that can be free, the good ones are
           | expensive enough that we have to move away from the
           | malvertising economy that was supported by keyword searches.
           | 
           | Here's hoping capitalism starts working again with
           | subscriptions so users are the consumers and not the product.
        
         | ewoodrich wrote:
         | I would say at least 1/3 of my Google usage is for local lookup
         | queries like your example of "Italian restaurants". Which as I
         | would expect returned a list sourced from Google Maps in my
         | area, then "Top $x Italian Restaurants in $mycity" posts from
         | sites like TripAdvisor. So I'm not sure what you're referring
         | to with that example, that seems more of an issue for something
         | like recipes.
         | 
         | ChatGPT can be useful for certain hard to Google informational
         | questions but doesn't help me at all for the boring "IKEA
         | hours" type searches I do every day.
        
       | Topfi wrote:
       | OpenAI, up to this point, has shown a willingness to outcompete
       | some of the very companies that rely on their API to function,
       | most famously with the release of GPTs, which had a quite severe
       | impact on many "AI startups" [0]. In that way, they remind me of
       | Apple with Sherlock way back in the early 2000s.
       | 
       | Despite this, I was doubtful that they'd go so far as to release
       | a full-on search product due to their relationship with MSFT and
       | reliance on Azure credits. I am happy to admit that I have long
       | stopped any attempt to properly understand how OpenAI's corporate
       | governance and company structure work, so I have a hard time
       | following where this falls under and who would decide on this
       | release, as well as how they interact with the part of OpenAI
       | cooperating with MSFT and the Bing team, but I still have a hard
       | time seeing how releasing a clear Bing competitor wouldn't cause
       | some trouble for their entire suite of products and maybe even
       | hinder future expansion by limiting the resources they can rely
       | upon.
       | 
       | I am also interested in how this will impact search in
       | https://chatgpt.com/, which, like everything in that product, has
       | been inconsistent to a maddening extent. Started out barely
       | usable, failing consistently, then got reliable whilst retaining
       | the ability to search through multiple sites and handle more than
       | one request in a row, then lost most of those capabilities and
       | now barely works anymore, only looking at an incredibly limited,
       | often barely fitting selection of results, whilst also needing to
       | be manually invoked by asking for a search, rather than before
       | when that was done automatically whenever it seemed sensible.
       | 
       | Like so many changes, e.g. the subjective reduction in GPT-4's
       | abilities over time whilst retaining the model's name (not to
       | mention the regressions they publicized in the name of
       | efficiency, like the "turbo" variants), this is certainly done to
       | reduce costs to the point of finally becoming financially viable
       | at the $20,- price they charge for ChatGPT+. I might be in the
       | minority, but I will continue to scream from the rooftops that I
       | am more than willing to pay far more for a consistent,
       | guaranteed, high-end LLM with web access (which sadly excludes
       | Anthropic's efforts).
       | 
       | [0] I still dislike using that term for companies solely relying
       | on third-party API's, a frontend and database solution,
       | especially since I also detest calling LLM's "AI", but it's what
       | this crop of companies have been termed and how they collected
       | bucket loads of VC.
        
       | bendecoste wrote:
       | Excited to try it once it is actually open for use. Anyone else
       | find the the product gifs hard to follow with all of the motion
       | and zoom?
        
       | sonium wrote:
       | The fact that OpenAI is releasing a fancy UI instead of an
       | improved model says something. I'm afraid GPT-5 won't be there
       | any time soon.
        
         | aabhay wrote:
         | C'mon. OpenAI is a large company now with 1000+ employees.
         | You're really going to air this hot take?
         | 
         | - if they release a model "they're just releasing models
         | without use cases" - if they release safety guardrails "they
         | are just doing this to avoid launching models" - if the release
         | has a waitlist "they're losing their velocity" - if they launch
         | without a waitlist "they weren't considering the safety
         | implications" - if they hired a top researcher "they're
         | conspiring to out spend open source" - if they fire a top
         | researcher "there's too much politics taking over"
        
         | blagie wrote:
         | You realize GPT-4o was released in May? And the new Facebook
         | models within the past week?
         | 
         | New models are coming fast too.
        
           | asadotzler wrote:
           | New models, not refinements on old models. You know what the
           | OP was saying. Why the pedantry?
        
             | t0md4n wrote:
             | Aren't 'new models' always technically just refinements of
             | old models? isn't that the point?
        
         | HaZeust wrote:
         | Probably because the benchmarks with higher models are, at this
         | time, negligible. Increasing transformers and iterating
         | attention might be a dead-stop for more capable models beyond
         | 2T parameters. But, I'm not sure.
        
         | energy123 wrote:
         | > I'm afraid GPT-5 won't be there any time soon.
         | 
         | Based on nothing but idle speculation.
        
       | summerlight wrote:
       | I understand OpenAI had to make it cheap enough before the
       | launch, but it feels like they're too late for this. They
       | should've done this in 2023 H1 when Google was completely
       | vulnerable. Now it seems to be prepared to quickly replicate the
       | product?
        
       | oceanplexian wrote:
       | Where is GPT-5? Imo these "announcements" from OpenAI are a
       | further sign that model capability has plateaued with GPT-4.
        
         | Workaccount2 wrote:
         | It's not supposed to be out until 2025.
        
       | rfoo wrote:
       | Nice, they found a way to bring ads back!
        
         | ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
         | Bring on the ads!
        
       | iamleppert wrote:
       | ChatGPT has already largely replaced Google Search in many of the
       | cases I have. I no longer rely on Google to do basic research, it
       | feels so out of date and clunky compared to just getting an
       | answer to your question. No looking through multiple pages and
       | clicking through to web sites with ads and paywalls and trying to
       | piece together an opinion from multiple sources.
       | 
       | ChatGPT just works, and it works quickly, and its usually right,
       | and is a better user experience than Google Search in every way.
       | I hope OpenAI comes out with an AI mail client so I can finally
       | ditch Google completely.
        
         | Workaccount2 wrote:
         | Because it is still "usually" right, I still end up using
         | google.
         | 
         | Also google gives an AI generated answer at the top now, along
         | with the sources so you can quickly check. I have caught a few
         | bad answers like this.
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | [dupe]
       | 
       | Discussion on official post:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41071585
        
       | jimbobthemighty wrote:
       | I have found Perplexity to be very useful; if OpenAI can better
       | Perplexity Alphabet has a big problem (at least until the
       | opposition ruin their products by monetising them).
        
         | RobinL wrote:
         | Agreed. Highly recommend giving it a go for anyone who hasn't
         | tried it. I'm a heavy (paid) chat gpt user, but for anything
         | that I know in advance the answer will benefit from a web
         | search (because it needs recent data), I use perplexity.
        
           | freediver wrote:
           | How do you reconcile having to use multiple apps to get to
           | the information you want?
        
             | Havoc wrote:
             | The same way people have many tabs open in browsers
             | presumably
        
       | zachmu wrote:
       | Seems like this spells the end of any website that vends
       | information or answers to questions, as opposed to narratives.
       | Narrative based writing (or images) will be fine, people will
       | still visit and see ads. But anything matching the search term
       | "how do I" or "when was the" is toast.
       | 
       | Most websites in this business are, generously, hot garbage. And
       | it's getting worse. So I imagine AI search will be quite
       | successful at displacing them.
       | 
       | The problem moving forward: how do we keep information-based
       | websites in business so that AI can scrape them? There's a real
       | risk of AI eating its own seed corn here. Seems only fair that AI
       | scrapers pay for the content since they're not generating ad
       | views (and are in fact stealing future ad views). But I have no
       | idea how you would enforce that.
        
       | hubraumhugo wrote:
       | Too bad it's only a waitlist. iFixit apparently published fake
       | repair guides [0] that then got crawled by ChatGPT for training
       | [1]
       | 
       | [0]
       | https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Data+Connector++Replacement/147...
       | 
       | [1]
       | https://chatgpt.com/share/e52dc4dd-77e6-48a5-a7ca-77e3dfa39e...
        
         | GaggiX wrote:
         | >then got crawled by ChatGPT for training
         | 
         | Not really, from the example you provided I think it's pretty
         | clear that a custom system prompt was used and ChatGPT is using
         | its own creativity, it doesn't have anything in common with the
         | iFixit guide.
        
           | deely3 wrote:
           | Actually, you can ask ChatGPT and get the same results
           | without any prompt. No custom prompt is necessary. It takes a
           | few seconds: https://chatgpt.com/share/2f873b1a-e487-469f-a78
           | b-7e57fdd91b...
        
             | GaggiX wrote:
             | This is pretty funny, it seems to work with random foods,
             | iFixit doesn't seem to have anything to do with it.
        
         | saurik wrote:
         | So... more vaporware? :( Whatever happened to that new voice
         | interface they "announced" back in May? I wish companies would
         | stick to "releasing" things rather than "announcing" them...
        
           | lossolo wrote:
           | > Whatever happened to that new voice interface they
           | "announced" back in May?
           | 
           | Yeah, and it was suddenly made just the day before Google
           | announced their models... and do you remember Sora? That was
           | in February.
        
             | anakaine wrote:
             | The voice interface is present in the mobile apps.
             | 
             | They know how to release to get press coverage.
        
               | EForEndeavour wrote:
               | Not the new voice interface, no: https://www.reddit.com/r
               | /ChatGPT/comments/1d80q59/openai_jus...
        
       | woopsn wrote:
       | > Getting answers on the web can take a lot of effort, often
       | requiring multiple attempts to get relevant results.
       | 
       | Don't get me wrong, search has become extremely problematic, ...
       | but how much effort does it take really? Compared to writing a
       | letter, reading a map, walking half a mile etc?
       | 
       | The google results for "music festivals in boone north carolina
       | august" are completely adequate. If not then you search again,
       | sure. What makes that "a lot of effort" compared to "asking
       | follow-up questions like you would in a conversation"?
       | 
       | According to Sequoia Capitol there is a $600B hole in this sector
       | at the moment, which continues to grow.[1] They need to invent
       | something akin to the global smartphone market, over the next 2-4
       | years. Some thing new that solves significant problems for people
       | that aren't already solved for free.
       | 
       | [1] https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/ais-600b-question/
        
         | zamadatix wrote:
         | Current search is great for facts, alright for generic
         | questions, and annoying for answering something. AI has almost
         | the inverse balance, pairing the two is a decent savings (and
         | also what Bing/Google are trying to do from the opposite end of
         | things).
         | 
         | Whether this gets AI out of being a money pit remains to be
         | seen.
        
           | OrigamiPastrami wrote:
           | > Current search is great for facts, alright for generic
           | questions, and annoying for answering something.
           | 
           | I feel like Google used to be pretty great at answering
           | questions until they started pushing ads more aggressively
           | into their results, and then intentionally gimping their
           | results (for instance if you put quotes around a word Google
           | will happily ignore it, whereas this used to actually be an
           | enforced rule).
           | 
           | I'm not sure AI is the solution to this problem at all. I
           | think it's about misaligned incentives and trying to shoehorn
           | a new cash cow into the mix.
        
         | Dalewyn wrote:
         | >how much effort does it take really?
         | 
         | Depending on the query, _substantial_ effort.
         | 
         | I know I've taken to just asking Bing (read: ChatGPT) if I just
         | want something answered (FSVO answered) because sometimes I
         | just don't feel like speaking Search Engine across multiple
         | attempts to try and find something.
        
         | variadix wrote:
         | Depending on how SEO'd the thing you're looking for is it can
         | range from easy (looking up docs, specs, etc.) to impossible
         | (product recommendations) to find quality information (without
         | knowing what sources are reliable beforehand). I'm not sure
         | that LLMs will fix the problem, seems like curation is the
         | issue and none of the major players are interested in that.
        
       | gwervc wrote:
       | This is in a way very good, as it will be another differentiator
       | between smart people and others: average Joe will indulge himself
       | in hallucinations while a few will retain the knowledge of
       | querying a search engine, citing a source and critically think of
       | what they read.
        
         | zamadatix wrote:
         | You can do things "the right way" (find sources, critically
         | think about the info) in either (or other things like books),
         | the common denominator is the person using the tool not going
         | off the first thing they read from the tool as gospel.
        
           | PodgieTar wrote:
           | I don't know how fully I agree with this, to be honest. Or,
           | yes, I do - but we obviously outsource a lot to the tools we
           | use. Rightly or wrongly we expect our search engines to
           | source good sources and high quality information. And that
           | has been sort of inbred into people through years of internet
           | use.
           | 
           | Degrading the quality of the output of tools that were once
           | considered reliable and safe is going to create problems, and
           | the onus is not fully on the people using those tools, but on
           | those creating them.
        
       | andy_ppp wrote:
       | "GPT5 is harder than we thought so maybe we can make money
       | competing with Google?"
        
       | romanovcode wrote:
       | Maybe SEO will finally die. A man can dream.
        
         | whamlastxmas wrote:
         | I can't remember the last time I had to wade through blogspam
         | to find an answer to something I wanted. I also haven't had to
         | endlessly look at stack overflow questions for a couple years
         | now. I'm really grateful to stay away from most of what the
         | modern web has turned into
        
         | pmdr wrote:
         | Too late, now that all SEO garbage has already been fed to
         | LLMs. It will be regurgitated for eons.
        
       | epolanski wrote:
       | Slightly OT but in the end I think this is what people ultimately
       | want and how the internet will morph into because 99% of Google
       | results for many queries just want to spam you with ads
        
       | sharkjacobs wrote:
       | The problem with Rabbit R1 and Humane is that we're still a
       | massive gulf away from a competent human personal assistant who I
       | can rely on to understand what I'm saying and use common sense
       | and reasoning to respond and perform tasks reliably.
       | 
       | This feels like the same thing. If I ask my assistant about
       | "music festivals in Boone North Carolina in august" and they give
       | me 5 results, 0 of which actually match what I asked for I'm
       | throwing my hands up and never asking them for help again.
       | 
       | I use LLMs all the time, regularly throughout every single day,
       | at work and home, and sometimes I really struggle to articulate
       | what they're good at, but this doesn't feel like it. LLMs are
       | really good at talking, so they're easy for casual users to
       | interact with, and we keep seeing products which try to use them
       | to "take away the friction" of various tasks, but I don't think
       | that's it. I think they're at their best when used deliberately
       | and critically.
       | 
       | I think that GPTs were a good product, but not a popular one
       | because most people haven't thought of a need which GPTs would
       | fill. Search is a problem that everyone knows is a need and since
       | "google sux" now its one that is ripe to be filled by a
       | competitor. But I don't see how this is a real improvement, the
       | problem with search is that the results are worse, not that they
       | need to be summarized in a more friendly and accessible voice.
        
         | Ancapistani wrote:
         | > sometimes I really struggle to articulate what they're [LLMs]
         | good at
         | 
         | I think of them like a person with entry level experience and
         | an IQ of about 80.
         | 
         | That doesn't seem super useful, only... that "entry level
         | experience" isn't in a single field. It's in _literally
         | everything_.
         | 
         | It takes some time to figure out how to interact with them in a
         | way that reliably gives the results you expect, but once you
         | do, you can get a lot done. Taken to an extreme, a mid-career
         | professional can essentially become a team lead that manages
         | LLM-driven processes instead of a team of employees.
        
       | shmatt wrote:
       | I will give OpenAI credit for having a capable product team that
       | builds on top of the existing models.
       | 
       | As much as I love Anthropic (the only AI company I pay), they
       | seem to be investing almost nothing in pure product orgs. No way
       | to manage chats, memory usage is very high on the web ui (700mb
       | claude vs. 100mb chatgpt on my mac), artifacts can be very hit or
       | miss. They've been hiring the brightest ML people, time to build
       | some strong product orgs (I nominate myself, DM me anthropic
       | people)
        
       | ray__ wrote:
       | I wonder how this will compare to Arc's "Browse for me" feature-
       | at least for a single search (I don't thing the chat-based
       | interface will be much of a value add here beyond just running a
       | second "Browse for me"/SearchGPT). I really like the "Browse for
       | me" feature, but only in specific cases, and I don't think I'd
       | ever use it if it was a standalone app and not a built-in feature
       | of Arc that also lets me run a quick google search.
        
       | Oras wrote:
       | Perplexity style is definitely better than Google. I can't
       | remember the last time I googled something.
       | 
       | Having it part of the OpenAI subscription, and assuming it will
       | be accurate, I think Perplexity will have a problem.
       | 
       | Let's see how long the waiting will last, still waiting for Sora
       | access!
        
       | xwall wrote:
       | Perplexity has never been a player in the search engine game.
       | OpenAI, a startup, has dominated the AI space, while Google has
       | long dominated the search engine market. Can Perplexity compete
       | against these two solid competitors, OpenAI and Google?
        
       | joshstrange wrote:
       | I like and use OpenAI products but I'm so sick of these
       | announcements. Ship or GTFO. We are still waiting on a whole slew
       | of things (like Sora or new voice chat) and I've lost track of
       | what's actually released and what's just announced.
        
       | Hizonner wrote:
       | I'm guessing this is going to be even more opinionated than, say,
       | Google has started to be, about what I'm allowed to search for
       | and which results it's good for me to see. And...
       | 
       | > Publishers will have a way to "manage how they appear in OpenAI
       | search features,"
       | 
       | Oh, goody.
        
       | mupuff1234 wrote:
       | "OopsGPT: OpenAI just announced a new search tool. Its demo
       | already got something wrong."
       | 
       | https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/07/searc...
        
       | rich_sasha wrote:
       | I'm sure this is good, but it's starting to feel like "GPT" is
       | the new "e" or "i" or ".com" - magical letters that transform
       | your product into something cutting edge.
       | 
       | I guess I'll withhold my cynicism until I try this. I kind of use
       | chatgpt as a search engine anyway, so seems like a reasonable
       | direction.
        
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