I do think it’s disingenuous to downplay how effective AI can be. If you ask certain AI a question, it will give you a faster and better answer than using a search engine would, and will provide sources for further reading if requested.
And the art, whilst not as good or as ethical as human art, can still be high quality.
Being against AI is completely valid, but disparaging it with falsehoods does nothing but give the feeling that you don’t know what you’re talking about.
If you ask certain AI a question, it will give you a faster and better answer than using a search engine would, and will provide sources for further reading if requested.
I think that speaks to how bad search engines have gotten, not really to how good AI is. Google used to work. I promise! It used to not just be ads and SEO garbage, if you knew your special search operation functions you could find exactly what you were looking for every time. It’s only because they enshitified the platform that AI search even makes sense to use.
They’ll enshitify AI search soon enough and we’ll be right back where we started.
Sure, but what I am talking about outperforms any search engine in history. If you have a specific question you will get a specific answer with AI, and usually it will be correct. If you use a search engine you can come to the same answer but it will definitely take you longer.
I’m not defending the use of AI, I’m just saying, the quality of them is not the issue. They are becoming extremely high quality with their answers and usefulness. The problem is with the ethics and energy usage.
It used to be that the first couple results would answer the specific question, as long as you knew how to format the question in the correct search terms and with the correct special operations. What might take longer is refining the search to get extremely specific results, but that was usually only necessary if you’re writing a paper or something.
But you shouldn’t just trust whatever the AI says when you’re writing a paper anyway, so that’s not really different.
AI does allow you to skip all that and just ask a plain language question, but search didn’t used to take so long if you knew how to use it. It worked.
Yes it worked, and still required you to dig through the answers to find the answer yourself. That is the difference. AI will search for you and collate the results to give you the definitive answer. I’m not saying searching didn’t work, or doesn’t even work today, I’m just saying AI is more efficient and effective and pretending it isn’t is simply wrong and / or lying.
You shouldn’t just trust whatever the AI says
And you also shouldn’t just trust random things you read on the internet, so I’m not sure exactly what point you are making here. I’ve never advocated for that. I also am not sure why you keep explaining to me how good search engines used to be, seems like a strange aside considering you don’t know how long I’ve been on the internet for.
I can’t tell if you’ve forgotten how good search was, are too young to know better, or were never good at using search.
I’m telling you that you didn’t have to “dig through the answers” if you formatted the search well. It worked. You obviously couldn’t trust everything you read on the internet, but the tricky part was formatting. No digging was required once you were good enough at key words, syntax, and search functions (“” , + - site:). Search results were incredibly efficient and effective. It was amazing.
AI is now maybe as efficient and effective as search results used to be. That’s it. They ruined search and gave us AI.
You had to “dig through answers” as in, you got your answer, in the form of a website that you then had to click into and scan for the answer.
AI is far more efficient. I can’t tell if you are delusional or just willfully ignorant. Ask a question and in two seconds you have a succinct answer with all of the information that using a search tool (now, and in the past) would provide you.
I also don’t disagree that they will ‘ruin AI’, I’m not defending it or the creators of it in the slightest. I am simply saying it can be an extremely effective tool and it is without a shadow of a doubt better than using a search engine to get the answer to a question.
I do think it’s disingenuous to downplay how effective AI can be. If you ask certain AI a question, it will give you a faster and better answer than using a search engine would, and will provide sources for further reading if requested.
And the art, whilst not as good or as ethical as human art, can still be high quality.
Being against AI is completely valid, but disparaging it with falsehoods does nothing but give the feeling that you don’t know what you’re talking about.
I think that speaks to how bad search engines have gotten, not really to how good AI is. Google used to work. I promise! It used to not just be ads and SEO garbage, if you knew your special search operation functions you could find exactly what you were looking for every time. It’s only because they enshitified the platform that AI search even makes sense to use.
They’ll enshitify AI search soon enough and we’ll be right back where we started.
Sure, but what I am talking about outperforms any search engine in history. If you have a specific question you will get a specific answer with AI, and usually it will be correct. If you use a search engine you can come to the same answer but it will definitely take you longer.
I’m not defending the use of AI, I’m just saying, the quality of them is not the issue. They are becoming extremely high quality with their answers and usefulness. The problem is with the ethics and energy usage.
It used to be that the first couple results would answer the specific question, as long as you knew how to format the question in the correct search terms and with the correct special operations. What might take longer is refining the search to get extremely specific results, but that was usually only necessary if you’re writing a paper or something.
But you shouldn’t just trust whatever the AI says when you’re writing a paper anyway, so that’s not really different.
AI does allow you to skip all that and just ask a plain language question, but search didn’t used to take so long if you knew how to use it. It worked.
Yes it worked, and still required you to dig through the answers to find the answer yourself. That is the difference. AI will search for you and collate the results to give you the definitive answer. I’m not saying searching didn’t work, or doesn’t even work today, I’m just saying AI is more efficient and effective and pretending it isn’t is simply wrong and / or lying.
And you also shouldn’t just trust random things you read on the internet, so I’m not sure exactly what point you are making here. I’ve never advocated for that. I also am not sure why you keep explaining to me how good search engines used to be, seems like a strange aside considering you don’t know how long I’ve been on the internet for.
I can’t tell if you’ve forgotten how good search was, are too young to know better, or were never good at using search.
I’m telling you that you didn’t have to “dig through the answers” if you formatted the search well. It worked. You obviously couldn’t trust everything you read on the internet, but the tricky part was formatting. No digging was required once you were good enough at key words, syntax, and search functions (“” , + - site:). Search results were incredibly efficient and effective. It was amazing.
AI is now maybe as efficient and effective as search results used to be. That’s it. They ruined search and gave us AI.
And they’ll ruin AI too, just you watch.
You had to “dig through answers” as in, you got your answer, in the form of a website that you then had to click into and scan for the answer.
AI is far more efficient. I can’t tell if you are delusional or just willfully ignorant. Ask a question and in two seconds you have a succinct answer with all of the information that using a search tool (now, and in the past) would provide you.
I also don’t disagree that they will ‘ruin AI’, I’m not defending it or the creators of it in the slightest. I am simply saying it can be an extremely effective tool and it is without a shadow of a doubt better than using a search engine to get the answer to a question.