There is significant overlap between those two things. Depending on how old you are, you may not remember a time when people didn’t know how to search for information on the Internet; it was a skill people needed to learn. These days it’s pretty difficult to mess up finding what you want to find on the Internet, as the tools have been refined so much that it’s nearly idiot proof.
It’s much the same way with using an LLM. We’re at the stage where using an LLM is a skill many people don’t have, and it leads to incorrect outputs. I have no doubt that the same refinement will happen for LLMs as happened with search engines.
Search engines are optimized to maximize profits for the owner of the search engines above being wholly accurate, succinct, or reflexive of the actual search query. This has the result of promoting results that are similar enough in most cases, but may not consistently be what your looking for–especially true when looking for historic relevancy.
I’m a developer who loves to tinker. This leads me to having weird technical errors at times (like black screens on new hardware with fresh windows installs on any version of a GPU driver). No amount of searching yielded anything relevant or actionable to resolve that issue. Plenty of posts trying to sell me the exact GPU I had purchased though.
I like small time musical artists. I’ll occasionally search one to pull up their discography only to find … the artist I’ve been listening to for years apparently doesn’t exist. Plenty of results for streaming apps though.
I’ll occasionally search lyrics verbatim only to find completely unrelated media as the only results.
Searching for product numbers and error messages often yields 0 results.
Google doesn’t even honor quotation marks to indicate exact matches anymore.
I’m glad you continue to have a good experience with search engines, but the experience I’ve had is one of severe degradation and intentional enshitification over the last 10-15 years or so.
Has it occurred to you that all the searching in the world can’t help you find a website that isn’t indexed?
Obscure errors especially may not exist for you to find, and depending on how small and obscure the music is you’re looking for, it may not exist or be properly indexed.
Unfortunately it’s not the confidence in using AI that’s lacking. It’s the confidence in the output.
There is significant overlap between those two things. Depending on how old you are, you may not remember a time when people didn’t know how to search for information on the Internet; it was a skill people needed to learn. These days it’s pretty difficult to mess up finding what you want to find on the Internet, as the tools have been refined so much that it’s nearly idiot proof.
It’s much the same way with using an LLM. We’re at the stage where using an LLM is a skill many people don’t have, and it leads to incorrect outputs. I have no doubt that the same refinement will happen for LLMs as happened with search engines.
Search engines are way worse now than they were 20 years ago tho
I never have trouble finding what I’m looking for online. Are you saying you do?
You must not have niche hobbies or errors.
Maybe? How niche are we talking? Are you saying the websites you need to find exist but you can’t find them via a search engine?
I honestly thought people didn’t have issues finding things via a search engine anymore. TIL people still struggle with it.
Search engines are optimized to maximize profits for the owner of the search engines above being wholly accurate, succinct, or reflexive of the actual search query. This has the result of promoting results that are similar enough in most cases, but may not consistently be what your looking for–especially true when looking for historic relevancy.
I’m a developer who loves to tinker. This leads me to having weird technical errors at times (like black screens on new hardware with fresh windows installs on any version of a GPU driver). No amount of searching yielded anything relevant or actionable to resolve that issue. Plenty of posts trying to sell me the exact GPU I had purchased though.
I like small time musical artists. I’ll occasionally search one to pull up their discography only to find … the artist I’ve been listening to for years apparently doesn’t exist. Plenty of results for streaming apps though.
I’ll occasionally search lyrics verbatim only to find completely unrelated media as the only results.
Searching for product numbers and error messages often yields 0 results.
Google doesn’t even honor quotation marks to indicate exact matches anymore.
I’m glad you continue to have a good experience with search engines, but the experience I’ve had is one of severe degradation and intentional enshitification over the last 10-15 years or so.
Has it occurred to you that all the searching in the world can’t help you find a website that isn’t indexed?
Obscure errors especially may not exist for you to find, and depending on how small and obscure the music is you’re looking for, it may not exist or be properly indexed.
Search engines aren’t magic.