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by jbverschoor 856 days ago
OpenAI needs to be fast (few ms), and be able to show sources (links)
6 comments

Does it, though? I do wonder if we just have set up a false expectation of how search ought to work. I want answers to problems I have, 20-30 seconds for a good quality answer will very, very often be vastly preferred over 200ms and results I'll have to frequently delve deeper into myself, and I am not adding any less than 30 seconds in most cases.

I'm happy to use a !bang to indicate what kind of response I want. I'm not the average user but people understand the difference between asking your roommate who's right there and asking a professional about something, so this doesn't seem like much of a stretch.

I tried to use chatgpt to search for many things, but it's just too slow for the amount I use google. Adding the lengthy prompts does not help.

Performance is a feature

OpenAI is already far faster than Google. Sure, Google returns your search results very quickly, but it then takes me forever to sift through the results and tweak my search query until I _maybe_ find an answer to my question, and I'm finding more and more that no matter how long I take, Google can't give me the answer at all.

GPT-4 takes maybe 15-30 seconds to spit out a precise, detailed answer to exactly what I asked for, and it's usually the correct answer, or at least it's close enough. It would have to get a _lot_ slower to make me go back to Google.

It also needs to be profitable, obviously their free tier is a money sink but I think it's currently unclear whether even their paid tiers are net-positive.

Even if they provide a better service, if it's only feasible to run when subsidised by the AI hype-wave VC money firehose then it's not going to last.

There is a trade off between processing time and quality of result's that pays off if the first result is the answer sought.
Very true.. I resort to chatgpt if things are not clear enough, when I need a broader picture, or when I want to have a discussion about the matter.

Note the 'resort'. Huge opportunity here indeed

This is about infra rollout. The thing for Google is they can’t just slap Bard on the home page because it would be flattened in 10 seconds unless they massively invest in GPU resource.

So what’s Google’s play here? Charge money to deliver ads to people?

A startup otoh can start small and grow as revenues are received.

The play? Advice people on what to buy. Have a conversation about the user's needs. Discover latent needs.

They have the opportunity to do automated solution sales.

"Bard Qualified Leads", they can charge a commission instead of CPM. Genius!
I recommend Phind if you want to sources.
Interesting take! Quick results (not as quick as google) + a summary / answer to the question.

I just would like to be able to disable: "To improve our service, we may anonymously log your search queries and their associated results"

I know google does the same, but there's more control there, and a large company is less likely to look into my specific queries.

It needs to not advertise.