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Comment by personjerry | Hacker News Reader

I've built some AI-powered software before, and the issue for a lot of the consumer-facing tools such as this one is that a few incorrect results voids the value of the whole system. I think you'd probably need >95% accuracy for the benefits to outweigh the cost, and looking at the comments here it's clear that that bar has not been cleared.

To put it simply: If you can't be sure that the results are accurate, how can you default to this search system?

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Ignoring all the flak Stephen Wolfram gets, this is something that Wolfram Alpha does much better. Asking `escape velocity on Enceladus` to ChatGPT, it gave correct formula and still wrong result. All the hard-work of generating computable verified results for the Wolfram Engine database seems invaluable in comparison.

The deeper fact that Stephen Wolfram talks about in comparing ChatGPT vs Symbolic AI is true too. A layer deeper from ChatGPT is just a bunch of floats. So it is a lot harder to debug why the system arrived at the wrong result. For symbolic computations there might be a way to resolve how the expressions were transformed by the compiler and where it went off track, a debugging in true sense.

It is my gut feeling that we might see a next AI winter in a decade where we will finally start combining symbolic and connectionist approaches.

Same for any desire based control - a subset of UI to me. Facial Expressions in VR, not desire based - doesn't have to be that accurate and is fun in a 'generally ok state.' However, all the EMG hand based control and EEG brain based control - oof, slow down the standard interaction by 200ms and the world loses its wonder.

This has already happened to chatGPT and me. It's made up a few methods that don't exist in Swift - and I've gone back to my normal documentation > stack overflow work style.

This has actually been my issue with Neeva since before the AI thing. I love the idea of a search engine I can fund by paying directly instead of hoping Google can continue to make money off giving me stuff, but 95% of my Neeva searches result in going to Google anyways.

For a while my muscle memory when searching was to prefix with a "g" so why pay a middle man?

Have you tried Brave search? I actually found it to be good and you can use it for free or subscribe for an ad free version.

What powers Brave search?

Brave powers Brave Search.

Independent search Even supposedly “neutral” or “private” search engines rely on big tech for results. Brave is different. We deliver results based on our own built-from-scratch index. We’re beholden to no one.

Tbh I didn't realize they had a paid option until I looked after reading this comment. I'll probably try it out, thanks.

> I love the idea of a search engine I can fund by paying directly instead of hoping Google can continue to make money off giving me stuff

I have found Kagi to be a nearly 100% replacement for Google

I signed up for Kagi. I’m disappointed in all the login stuff.

You use the session link too, right? That way, once you log in once, you can set your browser to use it as the default search engine and avoid the need to ever log in again.

What do you mean, I just login once on web/mobile, set as default search engine and forget

I've been using Kagi for a few months and while it is better than Google/DDG in many aspects, it still inherits the problem of ignoring words in queries.

Also, the "International" region has a strong American bias. Google still handles localised search results significantly better than anything else. I'm still a paying customer of Kagi though and I hope they get a chance to work on these issues.

Kagi still relies on Google, Bing and others to provide search results. Google and Microsoft could, in theory, end their business by refusing to provide them the search API or increasing prices by 10x. I really hope Kagi or something like it succeeds in the long term, but I don't know how viable their model is going to be without removing dependencies on megacorps.

I haven't seen them before but trying them now. Thanks! Maybe I should try to do a write up these different options.

I have switched over to using you.com for search. Been using it for a few months now and I almost never have to go back to Google for general search.

The only kind of search that I consistently need to use google for is looking up the meaning of words, so searching "define something", for everything else it's been weeks between needing to use Google.

I agree 100%. They had good ideas like being able to prioritize/blacklist sites from results. But ultimately they just seem to be chasing every gimmick instead of focusing on building a good product.

And yet, we somehow take this for granted in Google searches? Who says results in google searches are worth the pixels they’re beamed through?

I think the obfuscation layer of AI results is just too new for us. The same way making big purchases online felt too new a while ago. Once we get acclimated to AI results, it’s not going to feel untrustworthy.

Because google searches show results from many people, and so disregarding results (and people) is easy. This is ONE machine, in a take-it-or-leave-it scenario. You'll either like most of the results or leave because some didn't work for you.

So multiple AI responses and we pick the one we like best?

No, it's "PEBKAC", so we need multiple AI personalities even if they're connected to the same backend.

Agreed. However, Google has a similar problem with SEO and sponsored results. I cant be sure anymore that I actually get what I was looking for. In a sense, thats the same problem.

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