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Comment by jwally | Hacker News Reader

I just asked it to make an itinerary for a 45 minute long 6 year old boy's soccer practice. It was almost perfect. It needs to be tweaked (3 minutes for cool down?) but it did 95% of the heavy lifting.

I also asked it for vacation ideas with nice cabins and trailer hookups with outdoor activities for kids and nice cabins within 200 miles of where I live - it was almost perfect in its response.

I have trouble starting things from scratch, but once a framework exists I'm usually solid and can refine it to where I want it. For me, right now, I think that's where it shines: Giving me a solid starting place to work from. Beats the hell out of sifting through blog entries bloated with SEO filler.

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Can you explain how ChatGPT's soccer itinerary is any different from the top google search [1] for the subject? Is ChatGPT's response any more useful or meaningfully different from the practice routines at the link?

[1] https://www.soccerhelp.com/soccer-practice-plans.shtml

It didn't require using Google, for one. That alone should be worth something.

Why exactly? Privacy? OpenAPI is currently experiencing the fastest- and by choice- absorption of personal and corporate data of any major tech company and so is rapidly growing materially useful and unique personal datasets of large swaths of the digital population. Sure it isn't emails or website visits...yet. Different from Google? Not really.

As you said it: Google already does this too, so why not use something that, currently, has less SEO blogspam or ads?

Plus, even if it is just regurgitating top links, if is something you can ask a question and then go to another tab to do something for a minute and then come back and there is exactly what you asked. Ignoring ads, you still have to comb through so much text of information that is, at that time, uesless to your needs when you go to any of those top links.

Plus, GPT is likely pulling from multiple sources at once and VERY quickly.

I'm so confused by the people that keep arguing this about just using Google. It's clear why it is easier to use GPT. Is it always correct? No. But, are you certain the info on the site you just navigated to through Google search results is any more correct? If it is a topic you know nothing about them how would you be any wiser either way?

But it's a paid service requiring your phone number, vs free google search!

As I mentioned in another post, When I asked ChatGPT who the author of a particular published book from 2015 was, it confidently made up the author's name. Google correctly answered with the right author's name when asked the exact same question.

GPT doesn't have my trust, and I'm not sure why so many are throwing money, and their phone numbers, and their trust at ChatGPT.

My phone number is known by so many companies. I really don't care about that. I just really find it interesting and it's very useful as a support with coding.

You’re right that OpenAI does not deserve your trust. Nor does Google. But with both products you’re either paying with a subscription or paying with your data being leaked to advertisers (probably both).

What makes the OpenAI product so much better is an ability to maintain focus. Yes, it lies (or confabulates, hallucinates), but we’ve been seeing the same from Google Search results too for years now by it pushing sites that deliver more ads than content.

Significantly different. OpenAI isn't in the business of building a profile on you and using it to sell your attention to advertisers. The information they have is that which was public and that which was voluntarily provided. There is no privacy violation here, their core business is not at odds with privacy the way that Google is.

If you're not signed into Google, and use ad blockers etc, there's not a lot Google can do to violate your privacy.

> OpenAI isn't in the business of...

Stop! You're trying to describe what a closed company is in the business of.

In practice probably not; with google results there is an increasing feeling that it's entirely bullshit designed to sell something or get clicks...

A response from ChatGPT seems somehow more honest, even though it's just an aggregate of the former.

The top google search always comes with a lot of ads and other crap that you have to filter through. Also the response might not be exactly what your looking for (you might not have the same materials.) For instance you can ask chatgpt to create a practice plan that doesn’t require cones, or is focused on a certain set of skills, etc.

Just wait until sponsors start paying to have ChatGPT incept ideas into your mind. "Crucial next step is to buy some Rogaine", but significantly less obvious. Or other less obvious but highly impactful behavior modification like the algorithms used by TikTok/Instagram that push you in a certain direction or reinforce existing beliefs.

Or the ones already used by Google. Sarcasm aside, at least there’sa fighting chance chatgpt will remain a paid and ad free service. There’s likely to be a lot of competition soon

If it's done well, and I believe it can be given the impressively fluent conversations the current ChatGPT incarnation delivers, you wouldn't even notice that you're being manipulated or advertised at... Which makes it very insidious and dangerous IMHO.

What makes you think that isn’t the case now in other services you subscribe to?

That's already a thing by virtue of how "harmful" data is filtered during the training / data gathering phase. You can't expect to just remove a certain "fact" and not have its immediate precursor not show up in answers. You need to eradicate the entire chain to a certain depth, and after that, because many ideas lead to one idea (and LLMs are devoid or creativity or originality), you only have a few "winners" at the top. The long tail is always cut, and so the entire model converges to a ~~ziggurat~~ few ideas, that might have been pushed hard pre-training phase.

What makes you think the top google result wasn’t written by chatgpt? I came across an article on volleyball the other day that was the top hit for what I was searching for - halfway through the article there was a paragraph about a famous setter from Nekoma’s volleyball team and how they were going to play in the upcoming spring nationals. The “author” seemed completely unaware that Nekoma is a fictional team from the popular manga Haikyuu.

No real knowledge of volleyball or Manga but either way that is pretty hilarious. Also how lazy? Lol Even if you have AI do your work, at least proofread it.... And fact check.

No ads.

> I have trouble starting things from scratch, but once a framework exists I'm usually solid and can refine it to where I want it.

This is so true for GPT’s benefit. As an anecdote here: We wrote some C++ code involving multiple HTTP servers, where while we ultimately wrote the exact code we wanted ourselves, but the starting code provided to us by ChatGPT really helped speed up the process to having finished off the C++ code’s core feature down in one small coding session.

I think the “starting things from scratch” in cases like these can be partially mentally exhausting when having to search the web.

That’s true for me too. Starting from scratch has the same blank page effect that writing does. Letting gpt write something to get started with even if you wind up changing all of it really helps get over that initial hump.

That's starting point really is very draining for some of us. Sounds like you too. The dead-eyed, blink-once-every-two-minutes stare while moving through documentation, stack override, Google, etc.

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