The point about filtering signal vs. noise in search engines can’t really be stated enough. At this point using a search engine and the conventional internet in general is an exercise in frustration. It’s simply a user hostile place – infinite cookie banners for sites that shouldn’t collect data at all, auto play advertisements, engagement farming, sites generated by AI to shill and produce a word count. You could argue that AI exacerbates this situation but you also have to agree that it is much more pleasant to ask perplexity, ChatGPT or Claude a question than to put yourself through the torture of conventional search. Introducing ads into this would completely deprive the user of a way of navigating the web in a way that actually respects their dignity.
I also agree in the sense that the current crop of AIs do feel like a space to think as opposed to a place where I am being manipulated, controlled or treated like some sheep in flock to be sheared for cash.
If you need to search the internet on a topic that is full of unknown unknowns for you, they're a pretty decent way to get a lay of the land, but beyond that, off to Kagi (or Google) you go.
Even worse is that the results are inconsistent. I can ask Gemini five times at what temperature I should take a waterfowl out of the oven, and get five different answers, 10°C apart.
You cannot trust answers from an LLM.
I then pointed out this same inconsistency to her, and that she shouldn't put stock in what Gemini says. Testing it myself, it would give results between 47c-57c. And sometimes it would just trip out and give the health-approved temperature, which is 74c (!).
Edit: just tested it again and it still happens. But inconsistency isn't a surprise for anyone who actually knows how LLMs work.
Exactly. These people saying they've gotten good results for the same question aren't countering your argument. All they're doing is proving that sometimes it can output good results. But a tool that's randomly right or wrong is not a very useful one. You can't trust any of its output unless you can validate it. And for a lot of the questions people ask of it, if you have to validate it, there was no reason to use the LLM in the first place.