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Comment by ec109685 | Hacker News Reader

These are poor examples: > Why do I need to know what quarks are, or how steam engines work? Why do I need to know anything about anything? I can just look it up with AI

Literally all possible with Google and YouTube.

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> Literally all possible with Google and YouTube.

Literally all possible with school

Go to Google Search and literally ask "How do steam engines work?", and an AI-generated answer is exactly what it will show you, along with a Wikipedia link/excerpt followed by an endless list of links to clickfarms with lede talking about steam engines in general terms to lure you onto their ad-cluttered pages (btw, Duck Duck Go/Bing is just the same).

Shouldn't you rather say "go to Wikipedia straight", or push for Wikipedia to improve their search with all their money already? Isn't a choice of using local open-weight LLMs not actually progress over "googling" and Google's rotten algorithms, or even freaking YouTube and their even worse ad feeds?

So what's your point (I'm tempted to insert "boomer" here)?

It’s one thing to provide hints of a response (10 blue links) and the response (AI).

Except it's all a show when those link to generated AI slop next to hundreds or even thousands of trackers and ads anyway, most prominently Google Ads and Google Analytics, which is why they're ranking and displaying at the top in the first place.

If you are using the local LLM as a sort of Encarta (another software that failed) it might work, as long as you are fine with shallow answers.

Proper research that compares many different pages still requires the regular Google search. Google LLM summaries are pathetic, Perplexity and Grok have to be nudged to the point that I feel I am training them with links obtained by Google.

I went to Google Search and literally asked "How do steam engines work?". It led be to a pretty cool video https://youtu.be/Hszu80NJ438 - I've learned some new stuff about them.

I thought the video images were AI at first but the guy actually does them in blender https://youtu.be/itj2t8Fv8xs?t=2040

It's something I often find when people complain about "even freaking YouTube and their even worse ad feeds" etc., when you look you find all this amazing stuff that didn't exist a few years ago. I mean I'm sure the ad crap exists but I don't really see it due to ad blockers and the like.

And a bit earlier with books and libraries.

Over time, we reduced friction and cost.

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