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ChatGPT as a search engine sounds amazing but also really quite problematic. It's an extension of the issue with Google's "instant answers" (or whatever they're

ChatGPT as a search engine sounds amazing but also really quite problematic. It's an extension of the issue with Google's "instant answers" (or whatever they're called): right now the creators of the content Google/ChatGPT scrapes are usually paid via the advertisements on their pages. When no-one clicks though any more, no-one gets paid. I know, I know, the ad banner-funded web is a mess and I wouldn't mourn its demise either. But it worries me that it's an entirely open ended question for what actually replaces it.

arbitrage 4y ago
The question for what actually replaces the WWW as we currently know it isn't really open-ended. Many of the people who post on HN and similar sites remember what the web was like before it became an ad-funded mess. I would enthusiastically welcome a web that isn't based on firehose-advertising and outright deception/lies.
- afavour 4y ago
  > I would enthusiastically welcome a web that isn't based on firehose-advertising and outright deception/lies. I would too but I don't see how it happens. The awesome web that used to be was built on the backs of unpaid volunteers. Maybe that could return but even if it did all that wonderful volunteer work would get funneled through Google or OpenAI so investors can make a fat profit from it. Feels fundamentally wrong to me.
jimbob45 4y ago
right now the creators of the content Google/ChatGPT scrapes are usually paid via the advertisements on their pages Are you saying Google pays them per scrape or they get paid only when users click through?
- MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
  Google does not pay site owners and I thought the big complaint was that users rarely if ever click through. The instant answers keep users and their potential page impressions in Google-land.
  - grogenaut 4y ago
    Further the users were really only paid if they put Google's ads up on their website to further monetize it or if they had a paywall which meant that their information was much less likely to show up in Google. So Google has only for a short time really paid people back when ads were actually relatively lucrative. Or if you were essentially selling something you could instantly monetize through that sale that Google pointed people too but for people just producing content it's never been that great of a way to reward them for them aggregating their information and selling it to other people.
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
Nadella was asked about this. He basically said that they have a responsibility to drive users to sites with click through or else sites won't have an incentive to be crawled. How that pans out in practice remains to be seen.
- rchaud 4y ago
  > He basically said that they have a responsibility to drive users to sites with click through or else sites won't have an incentive to be crawled. This is partially a BS answer. As long as websites are running Google Ads, they will have an incentive to be crawled. Fewer clicks > no clicks (which is what would happen if the site was set to 'noindex'. Google also pays news publishers to license their content; $1bn alone just for Google News Showcase [0] [0] https://blog.google/supportingnews/#overview https://blog.google/supportingnews/#overview
safog 4y ago
In general, generative models are taking publicly available content from creators and are monetizing them for big tech. Same with stable diffusion, AI art. And it'll be the same with LLMs. Eventually the whole internet would be flooded with cheap AI generated content and clearly AIs need human generated content to train on so it'll be the snake eats itself.
- grogenaut 4y ago
  There are parallels in manufacturing and product. People who sell with high quality control, better methods. And everything else gets cheaper more common and lower (good enough) quality.
- the_snooze 4y ago
  >Eventually the whole internet would be flooded with cheap AI generated content and clearly AIs need human generated content to train on so it'll be the snake eats itself. Geniune human-generated content will retreat to account-gated networks and private group chats where everyone knows one another. The rest of the internet will just be incestuous AI-generated chum. In a way, it'd be an improvement. Genuine connection doesn't scale, so let's be honest about keeping it away from random parasites online.
- binkHN 4y ago
  > In general, generative models are taking publicly available content from creators and are monetizing them for big tech. This is fair—also in fairness, whenever my Google speaker answers a question, it always tells me which site the answer is from.
- merely-unlikely 4y ago
  That’s not so different from the current state of the world in which many search results are full of cheap SEO content. Now instead of appending Reddit to my search I just go to chatGPT. Probably similar levels of accuracy between Reddit and GPT anyway while the SEO content is just garbage filler.
  - j16sdiz 4y ago
jurmous 4y ago
At least the Prometheus model used by Bing is aware of its sources and displays them as links below the result. That could help driving traffic and monetisation. This is something that Google Bard seemed to lack for now.
Karawebnetwork 4y ago
Perplexity https://www.perplexity.ai/ https://www.perplexity.ai/ does it well in my opinion. It builds a paragraph answering your query but it has a lot of footnotes that link directly to websites. Ex: "geopolitical reason for palm oil being banned and why it's bad for health" The EU has banned palm oil in biofuels due to its negative impacts on health[1] and its geopolitical implications, such as favoring alternative crops grown in Europe[2]. Palm plantations are also a major factor of deforestation[3], leading to the loss of habitat for endangered species[4]. Indonesia's President Joko Widodo recently announced a ban on the export of palm oil, which could backfire due to its importance in the global market[5]. 1nih.gov 2weforum.org 3theconversation.com 4triplepundit.com 5carnegieendowment.org
- fblp 4y ago
  Great share thank you. And i hope this becomes mainstream. The citations provide a hierarchy of authenticity to the web.
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  A link is useless if you can't verify it. Just linking to the "nih.gov" homepage is meaningless, I have no ability to click through and verify that "ah yes, this page does demonstrate the claim being made." The system could just link to arbitrary homepages of respected institutions and claim that they back up whatever is being said.
  - DonsDiscountGas 4y ago
    The displayed text is the home site, but the link itself is to a relevant specific page. Also clicking "view list" expands and shows excerpts from each page.
  - luxcem 4y ago
    The links are actual pages not just the homepage. "nih.gov" is just the link title.
  - true_religion 4y ago
    They seem to link to the inner page where they found data to generate that inference. Like for me, it gave be a footnote to this page: https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/109h24i/gpt_4_is_coming_are_you_ready/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/109h24i/gpt_4_is_co... When I asked about chatGPT.
justinzollars 4y ago
> ChatGPT as a search engine sounds amazing but also really quite problematic. I don't think I want to chat with Bing or Google. I think you are correct. These are two distinct products.

arbitrage 4y ago

The question for what actually replaces the WWW as we currently know it isn't really open-ended. Many of the people who post on HN and similar sites remember what the web was like before it became an ad-funded mess. I would enthusiastically welcome a web that isn't based on firehose-advertising and outright deception/lies.

afavour 4y ago
> I would enthusiastically welcome a web that isn't based on firehose-advertising and outright deception/lies. I would too but I don't see how it happens. The awesome web that used to be was built on the backs of unpaid volunteers. Maybe that could return but even if it did all that wonderful volunteer work would get funneled through Google or OpenAI so investors can make a fat profit from it. Feels fundamentally wrong to me.

jimbob45 4y ago

right now the creators of the content Google/ChatGPT scrapes are usually paid via the advertisements on their pages Are you saying Google pays them per scrape or they get paid only when users click through?

MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
Google does not pay site owners and I thought the big complaint was that users rarely if ever click through. The instant answers keep users and their potential page impressions in Google-land.
- grogenaut 4y ago
  Further the users were really only paid if they put Google's ads up on their website to further monetize it or if they had a paywall which meant that their information was much less likely to show up in Google. So Google has only for a short time really paid people back when ads were actually relatively lucrative. Or if you were essentially selling something you could instantly monetize through that sale that Google pointed people too but for people just producing content it's never been that great of a way to reward them for them aggregating their information and selling it to other people.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

Nadella was asked about this. He basically said that they have a responsibility to drive users to sites with click through or else sites won't have an incentive to be crawled. How that pans out in practice remains to be seen.

rchaud 4y ago
> He basically said that they have a responsibility to drive users to sites with click through or else sites won't have an incentive to be crawled. This is partially a BS answer. As long as websites are running Google Ads, they will have an incentive to be crawled. Fewer clicks > no clicks (which is what would happen if the site was set to 'noindex'. Google also pays news publishers to license their content; $1bn alone just for Google News Showcase [0] [0] https://blog.google/supportingnews/#overview https://blog.google/supportingnews/#overview

safog 4y ago

In general, generative models are taking publicly available content from creators and are monetizing them for big tech. Same with stable diffusion, AI art. And it'll be the same with LLMs. Eventually the whole internet would be flooded with cheap AI generated content and clearly AIs need human generated content to train on so it'll be the snake eats itself.

grogenaut 4y ago
There are parallels in manufacturing and product. People who sell with high quality control, better methods. And everything else gets cheaper more common and lower (good enough) quality.
the_snooze 4y ago
>Eventually the whole internet would be flooded with cheap AI generated content and clearly AIs need human generated content to train on so it'll be the snake eats itself. Geniune human-generated content will retreat to account-gated networks and private group chats where everyone knows one another. The rest of the internet will just be incestuous AI-generated chum. In a way, it'd be an improvement. Genuine connection doesn't scale, so let's be honest about keeping it away from random parasites online.
binkHN 4y ago
> In general, generative models are taking publicly available content from creators and are monetizing them for big tech. This is fair—also in fairness, whenever my Google speaker answers a question, it always tells me which site the answer is from.
merely-unlikely 4y ago
That’s not so different from the current state of the world in which many search results are full of cheap SEO content. Now instead of appending Reddit to my search I just go to chatGPT. Probably similar levels of accuracy between Reddit and GPT anyway while the SEO content is just garbage filler.
- j16sdiz 4y ago

jurmous 4y ago

At least the Prometheus model used by Bing is aware of its sources and displays them as links below the result. That could help driving traffic and monetisation. This is something that Google Bard seemed to lack for now.

Karawebnetwork 4y ago

Perplexity https://www.perplexity.ai/ https://www.perplexity.ai/ does it well in my opinion. It builds a paragraph answering your query but it has a lot of footnotes that link directly to websites. Ex: "geopolitical reason for palm oil being banned and why it's bad for health" The EU has banned palm oil in biofuels due to its negative impacts on health[1] and its geopolitical implications, such as favoring alternative crops grown in Europe[2]. Palm plantations are also a major factor of deforestation[3], leading to the loss of habitat for endangered species[4]. Indonesia's President Joko Widodo recently announced a ban on the export of palm oil, which could backfire due to its importance in the global market[5]. 1nih.gov 2weforum.org 3theconversation.com 4triplepundit.com 5carnegieendowment.org

fblp 4y ago
Great share thank you. And i hope this becomes mainstream. The citations provide a hierarchy of authenticity to the web.
UncleMeat 4y ago
A link is useless if you can't verify it. Just linking to the "nih.gov" homepage is meaningless, I have no ability to click through and verify that "ah yes, this page does demonstrate the claim being made." The system could just link to arbitrary homepages of respected institutions and claim that they back up whatever is being said.
- DonsDiscountGas 4y ago
  The displayed text is the home site, but the link itself is to a relevant specific page. Also clicking "view list" expands and shows excerpts from each page.
- luxcem 4y ago
  The links are actual pages not just the homepage. "nih.gov" is just the link title.
- true_religion 4y ago
  They seem to link to the inner page where they found data to generate that inference. Like for me, it gave be a footnote to this page: https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/109h24i/gpt_4_is_coming_are_you_ready/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/109h24i/gpt_4_is_co... When I asked about chatGPT.

justinzollars 4y ago

> ChatGPT as a search engine sounds amazing but also really quite problematic. I don't think I want to chat with Bing or Google. I think you are correct. These are two distinct products.