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Comment by yalogin | Hacker News Reader

My search pattern has completely changed. I just go to chatgpt or meta ai directly these days for topics/queries I need help recall or summarization with. This is usually most of the searches. The only reason I use google is for maps based info.

I cannot see the use for Webmd and other sites that provide information along specific verticals, anymore. People are going to WebMD and these sites out of habit and that is it, the same info can already be summarized by an LLM today. That habit is powerful and what will give these sites some time to pivot if they can

Over time as genAI becomes better, everything that doesn't have any time based function will be consumed by it.

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My search patterns has changed as well but not without some pushback, whether it be ChatGPT's inability to:

- cite sources within a certain timeframe which can be trivially done on Google Search

- exclude sources when explicitly asked (and vice versa)

And makes it challenging to determine whether it's output has any reasonable depth or not. Even my simple request on a refresher on the usage of mutexes in C++ gave me a code snippet that exacerbated the very issue I was hoping to get a better handle on. /shrug

You should try Perplexity too. In my experience Perplexity is far better than Google Gemini or Meta AI for searching for info and getting summaries.

This is where first mover advantage and habit play too. Chat gpt and meta ai are good enough for basic recall and summarization tasks.

Google has a branding problem. They integrated Gemini into their search UI, so they just want people to continue the same landing page. However, it feels too noisy, and unnecessary. All I want is a summarization. I don't want to see a huge list of ads or slightly related links. Adds no value to me.

I tried anthropic but it fell way short and so stuck with chat gpt and meta ai. Now for Perplexity I need a compelling need to use it. Haven't seen it yet.

I mentioned Perplexity because their service focuses pretty much only on using LLMs for searching and summarizing. It doesn’t do creative stuff like some of the other services do.

I mainly also just use AI for searching and summarizing like you seem to do as well so that’s why I recommended it.

Cool will give it a try. This is motivation enough :)

As a free user you get a few “Pro” searches a day which are more detailed and extensive in terms of summarizing. With a subscription you get more of those.

The regular basic searches you get in there for free are also good but less detailed.

Just putting this here in case anyone else is interested. I’m sharing this stuff for Perplexity because the Pro searches helped me study for an exam I was taking recently so maybe it might help someone else. Of course the regular non-pro searches in Perplexity were fine too.

> I cannot see the use for Webmd and other sites that provide information along specific verticals, anymore.

You want hallucinated medical information?

How is this not entirely absurd. I feel so angry that person who wrote this comment already knew that its absurd but proceeded to make this comment and prbly got upvotes.

Wait, why do people use WebMd? Is it used by medical professionals? I thought its for regular people diagnosing their problem for fun. All of that information they can get from their doctor. For really specific information like symptoms for a disease, I cannot imagine there be a hallucinations. Even if it did today, it will only get better over time. I don't see it as a problem with this specific use case. I am one of the biggest AI skeptics out there, but when there is practical use, I accept it

you are using chatgpt for medical info today because it might get better tomorrow? your comment wasn't what you plan to do it in future with it, you claimed you are doing all those things today. Now you are talking something about future hypothetical.

You missed the nuance in my statement. May be I will try rephrase it for you

I am saying the use of webmd is all for non medical purposes, just people reading symptoms that they should be getting from their doctor anyway.

Now for the nuance, for the purpose of meaningless consumption it doesn’t matter if there are hallucinations, people are not supposed to take medication based on webmd. Given the really established nature of diseases and symptoms, I find it hard to believe there will be hallucinations, even if there are, it will become better. All of this doesn’t impact me one bit because I don’t do anything medical based off webmd of chat gpt, I go to a doctor

yea i really don't understand what consuming webmd for non medical purposes even means. purpose of consuming hallucinated medical info is like reading medical fiction?

but you do you.

what do you use it for?

to understand symptoms and side effects of drugs i am prescribed.

No doctor ( atleast in this part of the world) will go over all the side effects of the drug that they prescribe.

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/statins/side-effects/

this website is not entertainment for me.

Oh that is super odd! The doctor is not supposed to give you those. They are not supposed to prescribe you drugs without inquiring allergies and talking about side effects.

Also you should not be trust By webmd at all! How do you know they are not just asking someone AI to populate their data base or worse someone is making copy paste errors? If you can trust webmd you can an AI. Anything that is not a doctor is not to be trusted for life threatening advice

But I get it, it has worked for you so far with webmd so you trust it. Am also glad you are skeptical about anything new too.

When all the specific niche sites like WebMD go under where will ChatGPT get it’s information?

"Hey {user} remember that disease you had a while back with {list of symptoms} did you ever get that checked out"?

"Yeah it was a rare new disease the doctor called it {name of disease}"

But seriously there are real medical sources that are far more valuable than freaking WebMD, Medical journals (e.g., PubMed, JAMA), Health agencies (e.g., CDC, WHO), Books and Textbooks, User-Generated Content, Firsthand Expert Input

Medical information isn't exactly a "niche". Most sites rely on community which chatbots could, but probably won't emulate anytime soon, I also really doubt the implication that someones' personal, likely nonmonitized, webpage is going to "go under" because it gets less than some arbitrary view count.

A better question is "When all the governments go under where will chatGPT get it's information"

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