I use it almost every day for work. It has mostly replaced Google for me. A lot more convenient. Now whenever I use Google it's more or less just to look up the address of a specific site.
That said, I can’t really use ChatGPT as a search engine, but I did plug it into a self-hosted telegram bot and I do ask it some basic questions from time to time - telegram is a good UI for 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.
Not really sure why you are so fixated on the echo chamber thing. We are on the internet! The biggest echo chamber humanity has ever built.
Because it's a layer of abstraction, mate. One known to get things wrong, because it's an LLM. If I write a post about Richard Stallman's opinions on paedophilia and Jeffrey Epstein (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Controversies), and it incorrectly tells you that Stallman associated directly with Epstein, or is a paedophile himself, that would not be accurate to the source.
At least with a Google search result you can go more directly to the source. If the scientific method is getting to the truth, why on Earth would you put an obstacle in front of it?
If someone tells me x, am I going to believe them? No. So, why would I believe an LLM if it isn't presenting sources to me that are 1:1 in accuracy to the information it presents to me?
Alright, but most people aren't looking for accuracy relative to the source material.
They're looking for code that does a specific thing, or food that tastes a certain way.
> If the scientific method is getting to the truth, why on Earth would you put an obstacle in front of it?
Possibly because they aren't doing science. They may be doing software development or baking instead.
Given that it hallucinates in particular over measurements/specs/stats, I'd be extremely sceptical of taking a recipe from it, whether that's generated and original or coming from a known source.
Baking requires very specific measurements, the slightest mistake and it won't turn out well in most cases. Again, why go via an LLM and not a search engine to the actual source? It makes zero sense, especially if it only returns text and you can't see what the recipe produces if it's an existing thing.
I believe the argument presented (possibly in a separate thread) was that search engines have degraded to the point where what they show you is worse than LLM output.