[ordu]

> did this do you any better than if you had searched a youtube video or some other source?

Yes. With LLM it is easy to explore the domain from ground up, and it is interactive. You don't wait for some random guy in a video to come to a point, you are asking questions, consuming the information at your speed.

When I do this, I switch constantly between a search engine and LLM. I copy words of LLM into search box, and asking LLM questions about things I've found. It is the way to explore things. Search engines alone are not. Not anymore. At least you need to ask LLM for some starting points, because when you search google, you get results that are LLM slop. The same thing you can get from LLM, but not interactive, so it can go and go for multiple screens of a wall of a text, while delivering exactly zero useful information.

> I'm trying to gauge whether LLMs are truly expanding our capabilities in a fundamental way or are really just another way to search for answers without going to google or a library.

They just another way to search. And you should strike Google, it doesn't work anymore. 15 years ago google was good enough, but now it is useless.