[aquaduck]

My cynical prediction: Google search (as we now know it) will be retired. Google will provide AI-generated text which attempts to answer the user's prompt, with links to results in a handful of curated sources such as wikipedia.

[fny]

I already use GPT for this purpose, and it works terrifyingly well. You can even ask it for citations, and it provides you with a link.

Beware--it's prone to bullshitting. This one time I asked it for the symptoms for pulmonary hypertension: shortness of breath, chest pain, lightheadedness, and fainting. Check. Then I asked it for a citation...

It linked me to an article on hemorrhoids.

[vertis]

Or is it smarter than all of us and detecting some link between pulmonary hypertension and hemorrhoids.

[bryanrasmussen]

"This study showed that patients with hemorrhoids displayed a 27% increased risk of CHD after adjustment for the confounding factors. Risk factors for the development of CHD are more common among subjects with hemorrhoids than those without hemorrhoids except for diabetes mellitus."

https://journals.lww.com/md-journal/fulltext/2017/08040/asso...

[makk]

> it's prone to bullshitting.

We may be closer to human-level AGI than I thought.

[drexlspivey]

Can you post your prompt/params ?

[thatjoeoverthr]

I’ve started doing this already. Just last week I had a question about how to interpret labeling on construction wood. Google came up with nothing for SEO spam. GPT3 explained it completely.

[jondwillis]

What did you use to “ask” GPT-3?

[stevewatson301]

Their fields of research, such as large language models and image generation and the newly demoed “multi search” feature all strongly point towards this being the case.

[nickfromseattle]

>Google search (as we now know it) will be retired.

I think so too, but I think it's still pretty far out.

In order to do this, Google's AI-generated text needs to be better than the web results they return today, 100% of the time. It's the same reason why Google has never made 100% of the first 10 results ads. If users make a search and advertisers aren't bidding on the keyword, Google will return 0 results, and the user is less likely to come back and make a new search.

Google's AI needs to consistently be better than the content created by webmasters. Across billions (trillions?) of different search phrases.

Maybe there is an intermediary step where Google uses AI-generated text in a small subset of searches, and then expands out gradually. But there is so many unique searches it seems like a tall task.

Also, if Google displaces webmasters with AI-generated content, what incentives do websites have to create the new content Google will need to train their AI on to answer whatever humans want to know over the next 50 years?

[joegibbs]

How would this work with new information, e.g. breaking news? Would Google be manually putting in anything new that comes up or would they have the legacy Google crawler running in the background to feed to the AI system?

[theonlybutlet]

How will Google monetise this though?

[bryanrasmussen]

Ads will still exist.

[4ggr0]

"Dear GoogleBot, how can I center a div?"

- To center a div horizontally on a page, simply set the width of the element and the margin property to auto. Or, you can use WebSiteBuilder® which simplifies it for you. Use 'this' affiliate link for 10% off in the first month.

[bryanrasmussen]

that's first year

second year: there are 25 different ways of centering a div with potential fallbacks for older browsers and user technologies, please consider WebSiteBuilder® for all your div centering needs. Otherwise click here to read about the 25 different ways to use, text guaranteed 86% accurate.

third year: WebSiteBuilder®