“Actually, there were many officers’ clubs that Yossarian had not helped build, but he was proudest of the one on Pianosa.”
Catch 22
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Maybe they didn’t know, because they had no way of looking that up? /s
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Soon, though. There was the recent article about how the industry has spent 17 times more on the Nvidia “AI” chips than they’ve gotten in revenue, coming on the heels of the revelation that they industry is spending more on electricity than the revenue it’s bringing in, and on top of all that, there’s the massive number of human workers required to train the models, which means significant labor costs, too. All of which is to say, that given the rate at which they’re losing money, it’s not going to last long.
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i can totally believe that. regular search results shows up instantly, while the ml powered summary fades in after a second or two.
it’s amazing ( astounding really ) how fast websearch is these days. that the ml bit is orders of magnitude longer? you can hear the gasp of dying electrons
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This is something that really pisses me off about Google and Bing these days. I’ll carefully craft a highly specific search query with a bunch of hints (+/-, quotes, etc) and rather than simply say “nope” it “helpfully” rejigs my query shows me some bullshit. Just fucking tell me you can’t find anything.
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Perplexity absolutely is something you can use as a search engine.
I’ve been a DuckDuckGo user for several years. But I find I’m using ChatGPT far more than any search engine. I get clearer answers faster and with far less effort scrolling through shit. Yes it can be wrong. But I’ve developed pretty good intuition about when it is off base. And I get better at asking questions the right way.
I honestly don’t (yet) find answers from a good AI like ChatGPT or its Microsoft cousin Copilot to be any less trustworthy than a search engine. With search engines we’ve also had to learn how to discern what not to trust.
OTOH I suspect this is a temporary “golden age” of unbiased AI in infancy. Not too unlike early years of the internet. Right now most players are just trying to learn how to make it work.
But soon enough, monetization and enshittification will take over. AI providers will merge in paid results just like paid SEO took over search results. AI will make it easier and more insidious than ever. And if good AI keeps being so incredibly expensive then only enormous providers are going to exist.
The bills and the investors will have to be paid before long.
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You know, even if an AI gives as good answers, it does so by regurgitating the webpages other people wrote. It would be really sad to have that replace search engines that actually gives the occasional visit to the people who actually put in the hard work of making all the information. 
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The thing that shit’s me about Google search these days is, it tries to second guess the question it thinks I want to ask, rather than the question I ACTUALLY F**KING ASKED!!!
e.g. I recently asked “tinting film manufactured in Australia” and got lots of responses about vehicle manufacturers. I asked “tinting film made in Australia” and actually got my answer. FFS I didn’t ask anything about cars!
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Same. It feels like a violation of one of Asimov’s laws.
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You do know those “laws” are just a plot device for writing interesting short stories, right?
Nothing to do with actual computers whatsoever. Both hardware and software.
Which Asimov was aware of; he had to introduce another plot device, artisanal crafted positronic brains, to make the first one work.
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You should try to turn that into an algorithm which can run on a computer. Computer-aided intuition.
Oh, wait…
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Must admit i have been finding google less and less useful to much junk, searching for what it wants rather than what you want, but inertia and convenience have kept me using it.
Also notice how American UI design elements have come to the uk, when i used google in the usa it was so much worse than the uk, so heavy advertising wise, but have noticed that those design changes have come over here, and make it even worse to use.
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Hiring people like that is bog standard American corporatism. Google is now big enough to be awful and still exist for a long time. See also: IBM, HP
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Brexit. No EU consumer protection laws to (at least pretend to) adhere to anymore.
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I know it’s naive and delusional on my behalf, but the experience causes me a feeling of personal betrayal. My robot computer that used to obey the logic of queries and offer help is suddenly being deliberately obtuse and trying to upsell me. I also take it personally when my car is unreliable, though I’m aware that’s equally ridiculous.
ETA: The First Law, if they existed, would be that if you’re not paying for a service, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.
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I started using Duck Duck Go years ago, and noticed how refreshing it was not seeing ads for things I’d recently been searching for. Back then, it was an inferior search engine but I felt better being less obviously snooped on.
Now its search results are about on par with google.
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Second law: You’re the product.
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