They are being integrated into the most widely used information retrieval systems (search engines). It's not enough that they are "smarter then most people", they have to always be correct when the question asked of them has a definitive answer otherwise they are just another dangerous avenue for misinformation.
Yes, not all questions have definitive answers, which is fine, then you can argue that they are better then going to the smartest human you know and that might be enough. Although I personally would still disagree with this argument, since I think it's better that the answer provided is "I don't know".
Also because AI (if I may even call it that) is not yet good enough to answer these things with high accuracy, let alone judge sources. I don't use Google much so I can't really speak for it, but from what I've seen, I'd estimate that 20% of the answers (for non-mainstream topics) are either misleading or false.
Not only that, but if it's a topic you don't know much about and you aren't seeing information from a variety of different sources, how would you even be able to know it's a wrong answer?
No, it's just that such information makes a huge difference to those that try to make sense of the question, especially a poorly defined and somewhat confusing question as posed here.
You're right. I'm talking about the ones with the pre-requisite knowledge, not the total blaggers. It's hard to address their answers to the questions that don't have right or wrong answers because they answer so well.
It's not even really about how well you can find the answers, it's more about what you'll learn while you're searching for and thinking about the answers.
That process is completely cut short if you just copy someone else's answer.
But to aulin's fifth point, often you won't get answered with the correct information. Instead you will get "corrected" with the local mythos, as the most repeated answer to a question usually becomes the preferred knowledge of a group.
It's also assuming the SO answer is less considerate of context than the documentation; this can be the case, but I find quite often good answers are quite comprehensive and explain things broadly.
It’s because when you take all information together, on average it’s correct for those topics. If the consensus was incorrect, you would get incorrect answers.
The problem is one of the precision of the question and the scope of the answer. Usually some questions are just indicative of a complete lack of understanding of the field, basically making a whole comp science course necessary to answer in depth.
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