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One example which shows usefulness of 'ChatGPT style' search.

I'm in the market for a new car but have a particular requirement about size of the vehicle (width, length) due to parking constraints at my location.

Instead of going to Google, I went to ChatGPT and asked it to compare two different models in terms of size - these two were within my budget and style.

The answer that came about was exactly that I was looking for; it felt like some family vehicle expert nicely, helpfully and with empathy explaining the size difference without throwing all mm/cm from the get-go. It started by saying something to the effect: Overall Model1 is slightly larger than Model2, but lengthwise it is more... (I don't remember how exactly it went and too lazy to regenerate the result and paste it here).

Was it factually correct or AI hallucination though? This seems like it would be important.

It was correct.. was easily verifiable.

Part of it is lack of monetization and advertising. We have forgotten what technology is capable of if it's not overrun by business people.

For now no one paied ChatGPT to "recommend" you one over the other or engaged in SEO to game the system.

Once that happens it will just as trustworthy as a Google search and smart people will develop a sense of mistrusting the system just like they would a smooth talking sleazy car sales person, who is also a subject matter expert.

Unless we are directly paying Microsoft I don't see a way around it and probably not even then.

That is extreme view.

Why not a link at the bottom which takes to the identified car company website, where I get to see 360 degree view along with all other jazz that the company's marketing spent millions on; and they would be thankful to send some hundreds to ChatGPT way.

This is exactly how Google AdWords started. To your point yes, it may go Google way, but there is hope (atleast in the initial years) it may not.

I agree it will be a process but the motivation to game the lists, comparisons and evaluation in the "natural" result parts will be enormous.

If I search for "recipe for an apple pie" google (and the internet), has the information/technology to give me the one paragraph exceprt from my grandma's cooking book that would make me happy.

Instead I get bloated spammy pages filled to the brim with ads.

Maybe I'm cynical to not believe that Microsoft just scoffs at all those opportunities to get squeeze out extra money.

In fact I hope I'm wrong.

This is missing the forest for the trees. Everything you mention is just regular old programming and fixable. The impressive part is the internet compressed into 4GB. This is just the beginning and progress is going extremely quickly.

Are you saying the ChatGPT model is only 4GB?

I think OP meant SD model, it's 4 GB. ChatGPT 175B version is ~350+ GB.

Not all of the internet. I just tried "What is the most energy efficient electric vehicle available in 2022?" What I thought would be a softball question.

I got: "I'm sorry, but I don't have any information about specific electric vehicles that will be available in 2022. In general, the most energy efficient electric vehicles are those that have a large battery pack and a powerful electric motor, which allows them to travel long distances on a single charge. Some of the most energy efficient electric vehicles on the market today include the Tesla Model S, the Nissan Leaf, and the Chevrolet Bolt. It is possible that even more efficient electric vehicles will be available in 2022, but I don't have any specific information about them."

Yeah, this thing is a demo. An impressive demo, but still just a demo. Big money chasing hype is nothing new. We have no idea what the backend of this thing looks like or how much potential it has, and its current uses are extremely shallow.

openai has specifically said it hasn't been trained with recent data. what did you want it to say?

I expected it to give me the most efficient electric vehicle on the market in 2022 in terms of miles/kwh rating. Not that hard.

As for recent data, I tried the same question with 2020 and got the following:

    A: There are a number of electric vehicles that were    available in 2020 that are known for their energy efficiency. Here are a few examples:

    Tesla Model 3: The Tesla Model 3 is a compact sedan that has a range of up to 358 miles on a single charge. It has a powerful electric motor and a large battery pack, which makes it one of the most energy efficient electric vehicles on the market.

    Nissan Leaf: The Nissan Leaf is a compact hatchback that has a range of up to 226 miles on a single charge. It is equipped with a powerful electric motor and a large battery pack, which makes it one of the most energy efficient electric vehicles in its class.

    Chevrolet Bolt: The Chevrolet Bolt is a compact hatchback that has a range of up to 259 miles on a single charge. It has a powerful electric motor and a large battery pack, which makes it one of the most energy efficient electric vehicles on the market.

    These are just a few examples, and there are many other electric vehicles that were available in 2020 that are known for their energy efficiency

Once again, not impressive in terms of information. It simply says they are "one of the most energy efficient" without quantifying it in any way.

Are you really going to be a ChatGPT stan?

your first question to it didn't even make sense, since it was asking an impossible question for it. the second answer seems... fine? what is it you're looking for? most efficient isn't a single definition.

I said "energy efficient", and interesting you think so, because Google figured it out easily: https://www.google.com/search?q=What+is+the+most+energy+effi...

This is one of the situations where "you are the product" applies.

They would prefer to produce an inline response because it keeps you from going to another website. This way they don't have to share you with a third party. Which ultimately means they can show you more ads or have more time to find some other way to monetize you.

Remember, search engines have been employing this strategy for some time with a variety of inline responses to many searches. The open web is generally the least profitable thing they can direct you to. ChatGPT simply represents an expansion of the business strategy that's already in place when you do a currency conversion or ask for hotel rates or ask a question that has FAQ structured data associated with it on some website. All about keeping you on the page/in network for as long as possible.

It doesn't matter if the classical notion of web search is better or is what you really want. They will invest in this model instead if it's more profitable (and to be fair they will attempt to make this model better so that it compares favorably to web search for users, this just isn't the primary goal).

>I don't quite get the appeal of replacing a search engine with ChatGPT. It's certainly useful for many use cases [1], but when you're searching for information you likely want some trust signals attached to that information.

ChatGPT-like systems in the future can quote sources and recommend further readings and information reservoirs something like books do e.g. "Want to learn more?", "Further Reading:..." etc.

Google's ultimate goal was and still is an Answer Machine which gives you almost perfect answer to every question you ask. But I think the fundamental question to ask is do we want an Answer Machine or do we want Internet Search Engine which helps you find useful information and useful websites. And remember World Wide Web(WWW) is not only about information it is also about e-commerce, social connections, entertainment etc. Insofar LLMs like ChatGPT can not fulfill demands of a modern internet user. ChatGPT is like a smart librarian that knows a lot of stuff and can help you every now and then.

You’ve just made an argument that Google’s automated crawling and search algorithms can never disrupt human-curated directories like Yahoo.