Kenneth“AI search sucks, but that’s OK because no one is asking for AI search.”
https://www.garbageday.email/p/ai-search-doomsday-cult
(from @pluralistic )
Sebastian Zdrojewski@kgourlay @pluralistic and I just wish to have a search engine that simply gives what I am asking for...
tadpole256@kgourlay @pluralistic I don’t know, I really like Perplexity. I use it daily and it’s sooo much better than the current iteration of Google Search
@tadpole256 @pluralistic First, I’m all for good search results, and I find Google misses the mark more often these days. If someone created an AI that better predicted which results would be the most useful given my query, I’d be all for it.
But that’s categorically different than generative AI that attempts to summarize or reword information. In many contexts, that kind of behavior might even get in the way of useful results, whether or not it’s accurate.
On the point of accuracy, I just tried out perplexity with a search on a topic I’ve been interested in this week. I was not impressed with the results. For comparison, I did the same search with Google. I immediately saw that Perpexity’s “sources” and Google’s results were virtually identical. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Perplexity is simply doing a Google search in the background and presenting the results with an AI flair.