Comment by pornel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pornel | Hacker News Reader

I can see this happening. If I had to choose between having a web browser or ChatGPT, I'd already think twice, especially on mobile.

Getting any information on the Web requires battling dark-pattern tracking prompts, newsletter nags, and sifting through SEO fluff and content farms (that thanks to LLM, are only going to get worse).

I don't expect the ad-based Web improve, at least not until the tracking-based ad model collapses (either way bad news for Google). When the ads target users, not sites, then any site of any reputation can have profitable ads! This benefits quantity over quality and outrage-fuelled clickbait.

OTOH LLMs can give me a straight answer immediately. ChatGPT understands even terse queries, while Google ignores half of my keywords and substitutes the other half with irrelevant synonyms. With LLM I can ask clarifying questions without restarting my search. ChatGPT has issues and limitations, but I think it can improve.

> If I had to choose between having a web browser or ChatGPT, I'd already think twice, especially on mobile.

No way. Not today by a long shot. The limitations are too great. Most of my queries seem to be way different than yours maybe…

Where is the nearest X place, where can I buy Y, etc cannot be handled with ChatGPT at all. I tried it with restaurants in San Francisco and it made up restaurants, or included ones from other cities.

If I’m searching for something related to work at the train station, then also no. Reading about any technical topic on chatGPT is impressive but knowing it’s untrustworthy makes me skeptical about anything technical but it’s code generation (which can be compiled to verify).

Finally, I’ll search for pop cultural questions when out with friends (what movie was he in? What are the lyrics to such and such song) are things that are easy to use the web for, and the trustworthy and lack of realtime updates kills chatGPT here too.

This is queries on generic chatgpt.

Customised models are going to absolutely crush Google.

https://openai.com/blog/customized-gpt-3/

"Nearest X place" is a task for map apps, not broad Web search. But ChatGPT can actually recommend restaurants. You can ask it for ideas, tell it to pick something appropriate for an occasion, be picky about what you don't like, etc.

Trustworthiness of the info is going to be an issue, partly because the model is too small to remember everything exactly, but also because restaurant reviews in general are problematic.

> Nearest X place" is a task for map apps, not broad Web search.

Why? I have a big search bar and I dump everything into it. That’s the reality of how I search the web.

Every search engine worth its weight has an integrated mapping feature and it will punt you to a map for certain queries.

I tried chatGPT for restaurants and it made up places. I personally don’t need it to be a concierge telling me about places appropriate for certain occasions (although that would be useful to many i admit) when I can’t trust the results anyways. Fool me once… and I fall back to Google because I don’t have patience to be fooled twice.

> restaurant reviews in general are problematic.

Not related to chatGPT but I think everyone gets this wrong. Yelp et al are good for auditing a restaurant selection, but are terrible for searching. I find that those listicles from major publications that list “Best X in $Location” are great for discovering if you don’t want to walk around and actually look at storefronts. So I think there is trustworthy (enough) review sources, but the ML models can’t know that.

OpenAI will fall to the same sin - greed - when they try to monetize it. The clear on-point answers will be generously padded with fluff sponsored by advertisers, words in the answers will become links to ad-filled junkyards, paeagraphs of text will be amended with annoying flashing animations with sounds, and some of the ads will be mandatory to watch if you want to see the next paragraph. And so on.

We are seeing a version of this with WhatsApp for business. There was a time when businesses couldn’t(wouldn’t?) proactively message you on WA.

Then its monetisation started. It isn’t yet as bad as SMS spam but inching towards parity.

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