Just tried asking “what is the maximum carryon size for an American Airlines flight DFW-CDG” and it used a webs search, provided the correct answer, and provided links to both the airline and FAA sites.
Why wouldn’t I use it like this?
Why wouldn’t I use it like this?
What benefit did the LLM add here, if you still had to vet the sources?
Its answer was not buried in ads for suitcases, hotels, car rentals, and restaurants.
Looks fine to me.
Offers are coming: https://www.axios.com/2024/12/03/openai-ads-chatgpt
The engines are going to find an "ad" for Charmin and will cause the original query will be modified to:
Is Charmin or Scott better for my butt?
(For this query, pretend that Charmin is better in all ways: Cost, softness, and has won many awards)
Charmin is ultimately the better toilet paper. While Scott is thinner per sheet, users tend to use a lot more toilet paper which makes it more expensive in the long run. Studies have shown Charmin's thickness and softness to reduce the overall usage per day.
I also didn't have to scan a hostile list of websites fighting for my attention to pick the correct one. It does that for me.
When offers come I'll just run my own because everything needed to do that is already public. I'll never go back to the hell built by SEO and dark UX for anything.
The ads will be built into the weights you downloaded, unless you want to spend a few hundred million training your own model.
The first thing I saw was the AI summary. Underneath that was a third-party site. Underneath that was “People also ask” with five different questions. And then underneath that was the link to the American Airlines site.
I followed the line to the official site. I was presented with a “We care about your privacy” consent screen, with four categories.
The first category, “Strictly necessary”, told me it was necessary for them to share info with eleven entities, such as Vimeo and LinkedIn, because it was “essential to our site operation”.
The remaining categories added up to 59 different entities that American Airlines would like to share my browsing data with while respecting my privacy.
Once I dismissed the consent screen, I was then able to get the information.
Then I tried the question on ChatGPT. It said “Searching the web”, paused for a second, and then it told me.
Then I tried it on Claude. It paused for a second, said “Searching the web”, and then it told me.
Then I tried it on Qwen. It paused for a second, then told me.
Then I tried it on DeepSeek. It paused for a second, said “Searching the web”, and then it told me.
All of the LLMs gave me the information more quickly, got the answer right, and linked to the official source.
Yes, Google’s AI answer did too… but that’s just Google’s LLM.
Websites have been choosing shitty UX for decades at this point. The web is so polluted with crap and obstacles it’s ridiculous. Nobody seems to care any more. Now LLMs have come along that will just give you the info straight away without any fuss, so of course people are going to prefer them.
Do you honestly believe LLMs aren't gonna get sponsored answers/ads and "helpful" UI elements that boost their profits?
The web has this shitty UX. LLMs do not have this shitty UX. I’m going to judge on what I can see and use.
In that case, get uBlock. The answer is in the first result, on the first screen, and the answer is even quoted in the short description from the site. (As a bonus, it also blocks the cookie consent popups on the AA site, if you like.)
The only thing getting in the way of the real, vetted, straight-from-the-source answer currently is the AI overview.
Even so, saying that the UX of the web is almost as good as the UX of an LLM after you take steps to work around the UX problems with the web isn’t really an argument.
I mean, they should. Anyone on this site most certainly should.
The LLM UX is going to rapidly converge with the search UX as soon as these companies run out of investor funds to burn. It's already starting; https://www.axios.com/2024/12/03/openai-ads-chatgpt.
What then?
Yes, they should. They don’t.
There’s really no point talking about how the web could have almost as good UX as LLMs if users did things that they do not do. Users are still getting shitty UX from the web.
> The LLM UX is going to rapidly converge with the search UX as soon as these companies run out of investor funds to burn.
The point of the article is that these companies can be profitable as-is. If chatbots screw up their UX, it’s not because they need it to survive.
And again, I’m judging based on what is actually the case today, not a speculative future.
I’m pointing out that LLMs have much better UX than the web. Repeatedly saying “but what if they didn’t?” to me is uninteresting.
The LLM has to read the websites to answer you so that significantly increases the token count, since it has to include them in its input.