To a large extent this is already viable.
Yes, ChatGPT doesn't know what it's talking about. But Google is so bad these days, that ChatGPT in many circumstances can do much better even while being far from perfect.
Yes, ChatGPT doesn't know what it's talking about. But Google is so bad these days, that ChatGPT in many circumstances can do much better even while being far from perfect.
Can you give some examples of how ChatGPT “does better” than a human searching for something and then using their own cognition to make sense of it?
If Google was an LLM then I’d agree with you, but the idea that googling something somehow skips the step of using critical thinking to understand what is on your screen seems pretty new to me.
…even if it has to invent people, places, things or events to satisfy your focus.
Do you have a particular example where ChatGPT does better than googling something? I’m especially interested in your example since we agree that googling entails using humans cognitive ability to make sense of things.
I do not argue that you don’t seem to get any value out of using ChatGPT, I’m curious about the big difference in quality between the knowledge you get from the ChatGPT page vs what knowledge you can get by googling something.
I'll give you a concrete example where it does better than search: my last Google search was about how to zip a whole folder in the Linux terminal (I must have searched for that dozens of times in my life, but I don't do it very often so it doesn't stick).
I saw the results, and I noticed that they were mostly transcriptions, summaries or extensions of man pages listing all the options, which would take a few minutes to skim through and look for the relevant options (which is what I wanted to avoid by Googling, otherwise I would have used man in the first place).
So I switched to the ChatGPT tab, asked, got the exact command I wanted, done.
This is different from asking it for an explanation or definition of something and not cross-checking every "fact".
While I would definitely, definitely think critically before running a command from the internet, I can see how that use case makes sense for ChatGPT if you’re willing to roll that way.
>…take a few minutes to skim through and look for the relevant options (which is what I wanted to avoid by Googling…
Ah, I see! We are using the phrase “googling” differently here. I explicitly mean googling as a verb that involves reading and parsing information, not the act of avoiding reading or parsing information.
I wouldn't count that as critical thinking, although I guess it depends on how you define the term.
In order to make things friendlier towards search, nigh any answer you find will be drowned in a sea of junk. Eg, Googling sends me to: https://phoenixnap.com/kb/how-to-zip-a-file-in-linux
It does have an answer, around the middle of the page.
https://i.imgur.com/jVEyCZe.png (useful answer on the bottom)
Here's what I actually want:
https://i.imgur.com/tXOEIIX.png
What I actually want most of the time is the closest equivalent to "Hey Bob, what's the command to zip up a folder on Linux?"
Of course I only use relevant keywords in my search. Adding extra words like "how to" will add results containing those words, which tends to mean more SEO spam.
Wouldn’t you have had an identical experience copy and pasting from Google as you did ChatGPT? Did you recognize the correct command immediately in ChatGPT but have difficulty recognizing that same command on Google’s page?
Certainly! ChatGPT outperforms human search and cognitive processing in several ways. For instance, when you require a quick, step-by-step tutorial to fix an issue in an application or program, ChatGPT excels. Instead of searching for an online tutorial yourself, ChatGPT provides you with immediate, on-the-fly instructions. This saves you from sifting through search results and having to verify the quality of each tutorial before attempting them. ChatGPT's instructions are already evaluated based on probability, eliminating the need for time-consuming quality checks. By receiving a concise, step-by-step list, you can swiftly proceed with your task, making it significantly more efficient than relying solely on manual searching and critical evaluation.
A task in this case could be finding out where a particular Vermeer is hung, or which viscosity of oil to put into your car’s engine — a specific concrete task in which ChatGPT provides you with knowledge better than a web search does.
I won’t argue that ChatGPT is better at writing lists than Google is. Google isn’t a website that writes lists so that comparison would be pointless.
Technotroll: How do I enable editing of word document?
ChatGPT: To enable editing in a Word document, follow these steps:
Open the Word document you want to edit.
If the document is in "Read-Only" mode, you'll need to enable editing. Look for a yellow or red banner at the top of the document that says "Protected View" or "Read-Only." Click on the banner, and you should see an "Enable Editing" button. Click on it to enable editing mode.
If the document doesn't have a "Protected View" or "Read-Only" banner, it may already be in editing mode. In that case, you can start editing right away.
If you are using Microsoft Word, you can also check the top-right corner of the window. If you see a button that says "Editing Restricted," it means the document has restricted editing. Click on the button and select "Stop Protection" to enable full editing.
In some cases, the document may be password-protected, preventing any edits without the password. If you're prompted to enter a password when trying to edit, you'll need to obtain the password from the document's owner or author.
By following these steps, you should be able to enable editing and make changes to your Word document. Remember to save your changes regularly to ensure your work is preserved.
Technotroll: I clicked the x on the yellow banner. Now what?
ChatGPT: If you accidentally clicked the "x" on the yellow banner in Microsoft Word, which appears when a document is in "Protected View" or "Read-Only" mode, you can still enable editing by following these steps:
Click on the "File" tab in the top-left corner of the Word window. This will take you to the "Backstage" view.
In the "Backstage" view, you should see an "Enable Editing" button on the right-hand side. Click on it to enable editing mode.
Alternatively, you can press the "Esc" key on your keyboard to exit the "Protected View" and enable editing.
If you closed the yellow banner by mistake, don't worry. You can still enable editing by following the steps above. Remember to save your changes regularly to ensure your work is preserved.
Conclusion: It worked almost immediately. If I were to Google it, I'd have to verify multiple documents before I got to the answer.
https://serpapi.com/playground?q=How+to+enable+editing+of+a+...
It looks like Google’s output is nearly identical information as what ChatGPT gave you. If you chose to trust ChatGPT’s output simply because it was more confident sounding, does that actually qualify as the software doing better?
However, if you do not get a quick guide, or if you're not satisfied with it for whatever reason (perhaps it doesn't work, which has happened to me multiple times), then you'd be forced to browse documents either way. This takes time and energy which I'm not prepared to spend. That has very little to do with how “confident” the information sounds, it has to do with the likelihood that I will expend energy on bs tasks when I can just get the answer right away. Google simply doesn't offer that.