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No. Learn to become media literate. Just like looking at the preview of the first google result is not enough blindly trusting LLMs is a bad idea. And given how shitty google has become lately ChatGPT might be the lesser of two evils.
No.
Yes.Using chatgpt as a search engine showcases a distinct lack of media literacy. It’s not an information resource. It’s a text generator. That’s it. If it lacks information, it will just make it up. That’s not something anyone should use as any kind of tool for learning or researching.
Well, inside that text generator lies useful information, as well as misinformation of course, because it has been trained on exactly that. Does it make shit up? Absolutely. But so do and did a lot of google or bing search results, even prior to the AI-slop-content farm era.
And besides that, it is a fancy text generator that can use tools, such as searching bing (in case of ChatGPT) and summarizing search results. While not 100% accurate the summaries are usually fairly good.
In my experience the combination of information in the LLM, web search and asking follow up questions and looking at the sources gives better and much faster results than sifting though search results manually.
As long as you don’t take the first reply as gospel truth (as you should not do with the first google or bing result either) and you apply the appropriate amount of scrutiny based on the importance of your questions (as you should always do), ChatGPT is far superior to a classic web search. Which is, of course, where media literacy matters.
You ate wrong. It is incredibly useful if the thing you are trying to Google has multiple meanings, e.g. how to kill a child. LLMs can help you figure out more specific search terms and where to look.
LLMs can help you figure out more specific search terms and where to look.
Not knowing how to use a search engine properly doesn’t mean these sites are better. It just means you have more to learn.
Both the paid version of OpenAi and co-pilot are able to search the web if they don’t know about something.
The biggest problem with the current models is that they aren’t very good at knowing when they don’t know something.
The o1 preview actually solves this pretty well, But your average search takes north of 10 seconds.
They never know about something though. They are just text randomisers trained to generate plausible looking text
What does that have to do with what I wrote?
The problem isn’t that the model doesn’t know when it doesn’t know. The models never know. They’re text predictors. Sometimes the predictive text happens to be right, but the text predictor doesn’t know.
So, let me get this straight. It’s your purpose in life, to find anytime anyone mentions the word know in any form of context to butt into the conversation with no helpful information or context to the message at hand and point out that AI isn’t alive (which is obvious to everyone) and say it’s just a text predictor (which is misleading at best)? Can someone help me crowdsource this poor soul a hobby?
You’re strangely angry
I don’t think I will.
Obvious problem is obvious.
garbage in, garbage out.
And when the search engines shove it in your faces and try to make it so we HAVE to use it for searches to justify their stupid expenses?
Just scroll past it? I just assume it’s going to be wrong anyway.
Use something else.
No.
I ask GPT for random junk all the time. If it’s important, I’ll double-check the results. I take any response with a grain of salt, though.
You are spending more time and effort doing that than you would googling old fashioned way. And if you don’t check, you might as well throwing magic 8-ball, less damage to the environment, same accuracy
The latest GPT does search the internet to generate a response, so it’s currently a middleman to a search engine.
No it doesn’t. It incorporates unknown number of words from the internet into a machine which only purpose is to sound like a human. It’s an insanely complicated machine, but the truthfulness of the response not only never considered, but also is impossible to take as a deaired result.
And the fact that so many people aren’t equipped to recognise it behind the way it talks could be buffling, but also very consistent with other choices humanity takes regularly.False.
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And some of those citations and quotes will be completely false and randomly generated, but they will sound very believable, so you don’t know truth from random fiction until you check every single one of them. At which point you should ask yourself why did you add unneccessary step of burning small portion of the rainforest to ask random word generator for stuff, when you could not do that and look for sources directly, saving that much time and energy
I, too, get the feeling, that the RoI is not there with LLM. Being able to include “site:” or “ext:” are more efficient.
I just made another test: Kaba, just googling kaba gets you a german wiki article, explaining it means KAkao + BAnana
chatgpt: It is the combination of the first syllables of KAkao and BEutel - Beutel is bag in german.
It just made up the important part. On top of chatgpt says Kaba is a famous product in many countries, I am sure it is not.
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LLMs are great at cutting through noise
Even that is not true. It doesn’t have aforementioned criteria for truth, you can’t make it have one.
LLMs are great at generating noise that humans have hard time distinguishing from a text. Nothing else. There are indeed applications for it, but due to human nature, people think that since the text looks like something coherent, information contained will also be reliable, which is very, very dangerous.
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You do have this issue, you can’t not have this issue, your LLM, no matter how big the model is and how much tooling you use, does not have criteria for truth. The fact that you made this invisible for you is worse, so much worse.
So, if it isn’t important, you just want an answer, and you don’t care whether it’s correct or not?
The same can be said about the search results. For search results, you have to use your brain to determine what is correct and what is not. Now imagine for a moment if you were to use those same brain cells to determine if the AI needs a check.
AI is just another way to process the search results, that happens to give you the correct answer up front, most of the time. If you go blindly trust it, that’s on you.
With the search results, you know what the sources are. With AI, you don’t.
If you knew what the sources were, you wouldn’t have needed to search in the first place. Just because it’s on a reputable website does not make it legit. You still have to reason.
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I somehow know when it’s going to be accurate
Are you familiar with Dunning-Kruger?
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Ok.
> uses search engine
> search engine gives generative AI answer
God dammit
> scroll down
> click search result
> AI Generated article
Maybe go to more than 2 places for your information? I agree that this shit is also an issue with news and other media, but it’s not that hard to find more substantial information on things. At least not yet.
And I can’t remember the exact process off hand, but there’s still a way to get search results without that garbage on google. I’ll edit if I can find it.
**For some reason Lemmy is adding a ‘25’ between the % and s. Those numbers shouldn’t be there, just fyi.
The URL as shown is actually valid. No worries there.
The value
25happens to be hexidecimal for a percent sign. The percent symbol is reserved in URLs for encoding special characters (e.g.%20is a space), so a bare percent sign must be represented by%25. Lemmy must be parsing your URL and normalizing it for the rest of us.
Don’t be ridiculous. It’s more like Google search result you click is an ad rather than an organic search result, and that ad… is an ad that’s ai generated… god damnit
Dont forget sponsored results crammed in between.
> search engine gives generative AI answer
> It cites it source, so can’t be that bad right?
> click link to source
> It’s an AI generated article
Oh no.
AI will give the correct, real source and then still make shit up. Bing linked to bulbapedia to tell me wailord was the heaviest Pokemon. Bulbapedia knows it isn’t close, bingpt doesn’t know shit.
It’s funny because I’ve also used LLM for getting useful info about pokemon, and it didn’t make any sense.
I gave up immediately, friend tried one for old school Runescape and it said a rune pickaxe was available at any charter trader. It is in fact available at 0 of them. I’ve literally never had it be accurate
?? https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Rune_pickaxe
Prompt: Where can I buy a rune pickaxe in osrs
Answer: In Old School RuneScape (OSRS), you can purchase a rune pickaxe from several locations:
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Nurmof’s Pickaxe Shop: Located in the Dwarven Mine, this shop sells various pickaxes, including the rune pickaxe, for 32,000 coins.
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Yarsul’s Prodigious Pickaxes: Situated in the Mining Guild, Yarsul offers the rune pickaxe at the same price of 32,000 coins.
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Pickaxe-Is-Mine Shop: Found in the dwarven city of Keldagrim, this shop also stocks the rune pickaxe.
Additionally, you can purchase a rune pickaxe from other players through the Grand Exchange or by trading directly. Keep in mind that prices may vary based on market demand.
For a visual guide on where to buy pickaxes in OSRS, you might find this video helpful:
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It’s fantastic at templating
Just don’t trust what it provides the template
Use udm14.org.
Legend.
There’s also udm14.com if you want to have cheeky fun with it.
Ok.
> uses search engine
> search engine gives generative AI answer
> stops using that search engine
That’s all you have to do, it’s not hard. I’m absolutely certain that people really want to have things that annoy them and makes them feel bad just so they can complain and get attention from that complaining. This is the same as people complaining about ads online and then doing nothing to fix that, it’s the same with many things.
The uncertainty has gripped the world in fear. I go to hug my wife for comfort. She is
cakeGen AI.Jen AI
Run, Forrest. Run.
Why don’t you love me Jen AI?
Umm no, it’s faster, better, and doesn’t push ads in my face. Fuck you, google
Just use another search engine then, like searxng
Sorry, I like answers without having to deal with crappy writing, bullshit comments, and looking at ads on pages.
As long as you don’t ask it for opinion based things, ChatGPT can search online dozens of sites at the same time, aggregate all of it, and provide source links in a single prompt.
People just don’t know how to use AI properly.
Shit’s confidently wrong way too often. You wouldn’t even realize the bullshit as you read it.
Give me an example to replicate.
Ask it how many Rs there are in the word strawberry.
Or have it write some code and see if it invents libraries that don’t exist.
Or ask it a legal question and see if it invents a court case that doesn’t exist.
It’s important to know how to use it, not just blindly accept its responses.
Previously it would say 2. Gpt thinks wailord is the heaviest Pokemon, google thinks you can buy a runepickaxe on osrs at any trader store. Was it google that suggested a healthy dose of glue for pizza to keep the toppings on?
Ai is wrong more often than right.
AI gives different answers for the same question. I dont think you can make a prompt that can make it answer the same all the time
Calcgpt is an example where the AI is wrong most of the time, but it may not be the best example
Give me an example. It cannot be opinion based.
The ironic part is that it’s not bad as an index. Ignore the garbage generative output and go straight to cited sources and somehow get more useful links than an actual search engine.
Sorry, I like answers without having to deal with crappy writing, bullshit comments, and looking at ads on pages.
Oh, you don’t know what searxng is.
Ok, then. That’s all you had to say.
Getting a url is half the problem. I pretty much don’t ever want to browse the web again.
Where was all this coming from? Well, I don’t know what Stern or Esquire’s source was. But I know Navarro-Cardenas’, because she had a follow-up message for critics: “Take it up with Chat GPT.”
The absolute gall of this woman to blame her own negligence and incompetence on a tool she grossly misused.
No one should take The Verge seriously after their PC-building fiasco
This is why Melon and the AI chud brigade are so obsessed with having a chatbot (sorry, “AI”) that always agrees with them: a stupid number of people think LLMs are search engines, or worse, search engines but better, some diviner of truth.
Information is not truth. A do or die slogan for the 21st century.
Google search results are often completely unrelated so it’s not any better. If the thing I’m looking for is obscure, AI often finds some thread that I can follow, but I always double check that information.
Know your tool limits, after hundreds of prompts I’ve learned pretty well when the AI is spitting bullshit answers. Real people on the internet can be just as wrong and biased, so it’s best to find multiple independent sourcesThis is a basic element of information gathering. Always check the source!
Start using SearXNG.
searX still uses the same search engines.
Yes, however, using a public SearXNG instance makes your searches effectively private, since it’s the server doing them, not you. It also does not use generative AI to produce the results, and won’t until or unless the ability for normal searches is removed.
And at that point, you can just disable that engine for searching.
from a privacy perspective…
you might as well use a vpn or tor. same thing.Yes, but that’s not the only benefit to it. It’s a metasearch engine, meaning it searches all the individual sites you ask for, and combines the results into one page. This makes it more akin to DDG, but it doesn’t just use one search provider.
it’s a fantastic metasearch engine. but also people frequently dont configure it to its max potential IMO . one common mishap is the frequent default setting of sending queries to google. 💩
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Can you briefly explain how this works? Do you have a link or something similar?
There are many projects just search for clones of perplexity most use searxng + llms. I used one recently called yokingma / Search_with_ai But there are others
Thanks for the new rabbit hole! 😁
brother eww
But you don’t use a spell check?
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Generative AI is a tool, sometimes is useful, sometimes it’s not useful. If you want a recipe for pancakes you’ll get there a lot quicker using ChatGPT than using Google. It’s also worth noting that you can ask tools like ChatGPT for it’s references.
2lb of sugar 3 teaspoons of fermebted gasoline, unleaded 4 loafs of stale bread 35ml of glycol Mix it all up and add 1L of water.
Do you also drive off a bridge when your navigator tells you to? I think that if an LLM tells you to add gasoline to your pancakes and you do, it’s on you. Commom sense doesn’t seem very common nowdays.
Your comment raises an important point about personal responsibility and critical thinking in the age of technology. Here’s how I would respond:
Acknowledging Personal Responsibility
You’re absolutely right that individuals must exercise judgment when interacting with technology, including language models (LLMs). Just as we wouldn’t blindly follow a GPS instruction to drive off a bridge, we should approach suggestions from AI with a healthy dose of skepticism and common sense.
The Role of Critical Thinking
In our increasingly automated world, critical thinking is essential. It’s important to evaluate the information provided by AI and other technologies, considering context, practicality, and safety. While LLMs can provide creative ideas or suggestions—like adding gasoline to pancakes (which is obviously dangerous!)—it’s crucial to discern what is sensible and safe.
Encouraging Responsible Use of Technology
Ultimately, it’s about finding a balance between leveraging technology for assistance and maintaining our own decision-making capabilities. Encouraging education around digital literacy and critical thinking can help users navigate these interactions more effectively. Thank you for bringing up this thought-provoking topic! It’s a reminder that while technology can enhance our lives, we must remain vigilant and responsible in how we use it.
Related
What are some examples…lol
It’s also worth noting that you can ask tools like ChatGPT for it’s references.
last time I tried that it made up links that didn’t work, and then it admitted that it cannot reference anything because of not having access to the internet
That’s my point, if the model returns a hallucinated source you can probably disregard it’s output. But if the model provides an accurate source you can verify it’s output. Depending on the information you’re researching, this approach can be much quicker than using Google. Out of interest, have you experienced source hallucinations on ChatGPT recently (last few weeks)? I have not experienced source hallucinations in a long time.
I use GPT (4o, premium) a lot, and yes, I still sometimes experience source hallucinations. It also will sometimes hallucinate incorrect things not in the source. I get better results when I tell it not to browse. The large context of processing web pages seems to hurt its “performance.” I would never trust gen AI for a recipe. I usually just use Kagi to search for recipes and have it set to promote results from recipe sites I like.
Paid version does both access the web and cite its sources
And copilot will do that for ‘free’
Okay, but what else to do with it?
Then how will I know how many ‘r’ is in Strawberry /s
