Om Malik – Has Search Become Just a Feature?

It's interesting to ponder that Chat might simply replace browsers and web pages. Not entirely for everyone, but I can see younger folks starting out online just using a chat interface (like Capt Kirk)

Yes life changes. Listing changes that turned out positive doesn't necessarily mean that holds for the future. Also I never found google to be greatly better than the existing engines at the time when they first started - could have been a regional thing I guess. It was meh until it just got better and other services fumbled the ball. For the public, the mid 00s IMHO was the golden age of searching, it's been in decline since.

However it's an interesting question of whether ChatGPT was good enough to replace a search engine, one which has been part of many conversations since A.I. services started to have real promise.

Those who've always had straightforward problems and the solution found easy enough, will probably find their net experience / life going forwards with A.I. based answers improved and enriched. They'll probably never notice if what they wanted to know was in fact not that straightforward, was complex, or that much of the data on the net was merely BS echoes, as they'll get a nice answer they'll swallow as being the best advice to be had.

Certainly one day, A.I. results might reach the stage where it can weigh and answer correctly after analysing all the data (including that in books) and determine which data holds up, even if 99% of the data was in fact noise / in error. Then the problem is how well it might censor said information, given who's asking.

Myself, I want links always. Good search engines used to have an available cache that wasn't hidden or denied based on who you were ... and present day I now find a verbose query is just a guide or it spits out too hard, no results.

Decent, credible, non fiction books generally still to this day include a thorough bibliography.