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0 pointsvector_spaces24d ago0 comments

> It's reading my requests more clearly than (for example) Google's search input ever did

I see this take a lot and it puzzles me.

While I think LLMs provide some advantages over traditional search in some modestly nontrivial contexts, they tend to be inferior to traditional search at its peak. I attribute this attitude to two things: the broad progressive enshittification and productization of search, and the fact that (re)search is a skill that most people tend to be bad at. Without massaging, LLMs spit out the most utterly braindead boneheaded queries, which are fine in cases where the problem is very well understood with minimum uncertainty or critical nuance. If your problem has either, God help you. But perhaps those queries are at least as good as the average human generated query

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awesome_dude24d ago· 2 in thread

I think that the issue here is that the definition of search/results has changed (in my mind at least they were always - what knowledge are you looking for, followed by, here are the results that carry that knowledge OR point in the right direction, but I recognise that other people will hold more strict definitions)

AI has changed how I find and synthesise information in ways Google never managed - we've always had the problem with Google that we couldn't express exactly what we were looking for - that much I think we can both agree has changed dramatically for the better with LLMs

Edit: I have always held that searching for an answer (whether it be internet or human) has always been about asking the right person, the right question, at the right time.

LLMs most certainly improve that - I don't need to know the exact technical term I am looking to solve in order to get the results I want (eg. I can ask how to "stop (a) function from running too many times" instead of the industry terms "throttling" or "debouncing")

Izkata24d ago

> Edit: I have always held that searching for an answer (whether it be internet or human) has always been about asking the right person, the right question, at the right time.

At the peak of search they're describing, asking a question was how you'd get subpar results. The best way to search was for things you expected to be in the results - like, for a simplistic example, you wouldn't search for "how do I...", you'd search for something like "How to..."

awesome_dude24d ago

Yeah - the plan was to word match - having the right words in the query was the key.

It was also why (one) SEO was to fill the page in a hidden block, every word that could possibly be related (synonyms) to the page content.

On that note I am wondering how the poisoning of the content for AI is going to occur (eventually someone is going to work out how to make LLMs say "Eat at Joes - 1313 Mockingbird lane" whenever someone [else] asks some food related question)

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