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this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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Asklemmy
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I'm with you on this one. Personally, there are a myriad of issues with replacing search engines with AI-generated answers:
When I look something up that isn't trivial, I typically use multiple search results and make the call myself. This step is removed if you use AI, unless one explicitly ask it to iterate all the top conflicting answers (along with sources) so the user can decide for themselves. However, as far as I know, its amalgamated answer is being treated as a source of truth, even if the content has nuanced conflicts a human can easily spot. This alone deters me from AI search in general.
I feel like doing this will degenerate my reading/skimming comprehension and research skills, and can lead to blindly trusting direct and easy to access answers.
In the context of technical searches like programming or whatnot, I'm not that pressed for time to take shortcuts. I don't mind working stuff out from online forums and documentation, purely because I enjoy it and it's part of the process.
Sometimes, looking things up yourself means you also can discover great blogs and personal wikis from niche communities, and related content that you can save and look back later.
Centralizing information makes the internet bland, boring and potentially exploitative. If it becomes normalized to pay a visit to one or two Big AI search engines instead of actually clicking on human-made sources then the information-providing part of the internet will become lost to time.
There's also problems with biases, alignment, training AI on AI-generated content, etc., make of that what you will but that sounds worse than spending a couple of minutes selecting sources for yourself. Top results are already full of generic, AI generated stuff. The internet, made by us, for us, must prevail.
Anecdotally, I've used ChatGPT once or twice when I was really pressed for time with something I couldn't find anywhere, and because my university professor wasn't replying to my email regarding the topic. I was somewhat impressed at its performance, but this was after 6 or 7 prompts, not a single search away.
Maybe the next generation of AI search users who's never looked a thing up manually will grimace at the thought of pre-AI search engines.