Yeah, I agree. Google did a lot of work to make ChatGPT useful. It's clearly worse than it used to be.
I usually need someone to explain something to me. And I used Google before to land on a site where I could find the explanation (e.g. how to use a library). ChatGPT can explain most things I need and I can skip Google and the other sites. But it's indeed not a search engine, if you need factual information then your best bet is to find the documentations, articles, databases, etc.
I don't know how you use search but even if ChatGPT is good, it can't replace Google for me because it serves a completely different purpose. I want links and pages, and being able to browse and read multiple sources, and find up-to-date information about what's happening in the world. ChatGPT can't give you any of that. And that's not a problem with ChatGPT; it was built for a very different use case.
I'm not the OP but I had a similar set of experiences with ChatGPT so I find the discussion useful. Essentially I already know how to find what I need using a search engine, and I know how to use cues from the source material to judge if it's correct. When I try using ChatGPT for technical problems I face, I frequently get hallucinated answers that feel like a waste of time.
Then I go on HN and read these paeans from other technologists who say ChatGPT has completely changed how they work and is 10x better than using Google. I'd like to have that too! I just don't get it, it doesn't match my experience at all. And yes I did try the paid ChatGPT model for a month.
I dunno. ChatGPT is still ridiculously good as a search engine. Learning a new language now is a completely different experience for me. I've recently found myself putting something into Google, realising there is nothing of value in the first page if results and taking my question to ChatGPT instead. It's answers might not be correct, and man is it confident about things it just made up, but it is still a much better experience than clicking though ad laden blogspam, forums and question boards to find the same information.
Can you elaborate on how the ChatGPT software does better than looking stuff up?
I do not argue that you don’t seem to get any value out of using ChatGPT, I’m curious about the big difference in quality between the knowledge you get from the ChatGPT page vs what knowledge you can get by googling something.
Google search is terrible. Chatgpt is definitively better for searching right now, and i often find myself reaching for it over google for a wide category of questions.
One strange coincidence with the emergence of ChatGPT is that at almost the exact same time, Google became practically unusable as a search engine. Like at least an order of magnitude worse.
People used to use Google the same way they use ChatGPT. They would ask a question in plain English, and get sent back a list of relevant links to blog posts, articles, stack overflow, or whatever that had answers to their questions, including example code.
Sometimes that code or information was outdated or completely wrong and sometimes it was too basic to be useful, or just the code-generated docs.
Google has been getting gradually worse over the years due to spam, algorithm gaming, and ads, but circa late November 2022 it became practically worthless.
I’m not OP but I do much fewer Google searches now as well.
Prior to ChatGPT, the majority of my Google searches ended up on either Wikipedia (for direct information), Reddit (for opinions/advice), or StackOverflow (for programming questions).
Now all those use cases can be done by ChatGPT, and it’s faster, especially because it requires less skimming to find useful data.
ChatGPT is like living in an information tunnel. It’s amazing but it doesn’t replace search for me at all. Irony is when it does search, because it’s obviously just doing a quick crawl it actually makes things worse as it treats whatever shit it finds as authoritative - which, as anyone working on RAG knows, is a whole world of problems on its own.
This is absolutely not to say that Google can be considered ‘good’ these days.
I find it hard to believe that ChatGPT is useful beyond trivial things or giving you a lead that you can follow on Google. It's very frequently just plain wrong.
The thing is, ChatGPT doesn't do search. And we don't want search - we want information, which we obtain by searching. If ChatGPT provides curated search results and compiles them into a neat paragraph, along with some associated links for more information, that itself is more than useful compared to search. To take into account stats, more than 50% of searches end at Google because most of the required information is provided in fact boxes.
I use chatgpt, begrudgingly, because it's frequently wrong and takes a lot of iterations to get something right. But, I use it, because Google sucks. I would have very little use for chatgpt with the Google of,I guess, like 10-12 years ago.
You could go back even further and ~25 years ago, I had an entire class on using search engines and all manner of advanced operators and search techniques.
With today's computing power it would be awesome to see what the search engines of past decades could have become if not for the monetary incentives to obscure information and increase engagement.
As much as I want to bash ChatGPT, this is actually a good use for it.
It’s been possible to google this stuff for a long time but you need to know how to use a search engine. And the results have slowly been getting worse over time.
ChatGPT adds another dimension to search. It’s not an oracle of truth but it can point you to things you would have thought of.
I disagree. I use ChatGPT daily as a replacement for Google. It doesn't understand or have logic, it can spit out information very well though. It has a broad knowledge base. There is no entity there to have an understanding of the topic.
This becomes pretty clear when you get to more complex algorithms or low level details like drawing a stack frame. There is not logic there.
For me, ChatGPT has already replaced Google for most queries, so the point is moot.
Even if ChatGPT is flawed, it's still way better than Google. Using Google feels stupid; trying different search terms and clicking through dozens of websites with cookie popups and skimming all the bloated content for an answer which might be close to something you're looking for. ChatGPT gives the answer instantly.
I don't believe there's any future for Google (and Google-optimized websites).
It’s even worse. I’ve been using ChatGPT a lot in situations that’d be Google searches before and I love how you can fill in so much detail and it will actually provide you with better results. With Google, additional detail is actually used against you. With enough keywords, it will match just about any site to your query.
This is exactly my thoughts and feelings after more than 20 years of Googling except that Google is largely still useful as it is. Sooner or later, however, most of the people will use ChatGPT or similar services as a better replacement for Google search or Google on steroids. Before the advent of ChatGPT researchers especially, have been clamoring for better Google search with more contexts, intuitive and relevant feedbacks.
With the new ChatGPT (Plus) features introduction for examples web online search and plug-ins, ChatGPT has becoming a very powerful and viable better alternative to Google search.
Honestly, I've almost stopped Googling and have had personal success just relying on ChatGPT. It's pretty much taught me 3D animation and Blender to Unity workflows. Every time I wanted to know a Blender keyboard shortcut or what some Blender property was, or how to do something in Blender, the forums and documentation is so sparse and outdated. I felt ChatGPT got me a lot closer much faster. Especially when it tells you how to learn concepts you didn't even know existed.
Google results in the meanwhile have just become a pile of SEO-optimized fluff, and it's hard to engineer the search query around that besides sticking "reddit" on the end of it.
I usually need someone to explain something to me. And I used Google before to land on a site where I could find the explanation (e.g. how to use a library). ChatGPT can explain most things I need and I can skip Google and the other sites. But it's indeed not a search engine, if you need factual information then your best bet is to find the documentations, articles, databases, etc.
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