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Sometimes I want a simpler system so that I can understand how it works in order to make it do exactly what I want. This is like driving your own car. Other ti

Sometimes I want a simpler system so that I can understand how it works in order to make it do exactly what I want. This is like driving your own car. Other times, I want an intelligent system that figures out what I really meant and take care of the details. This is like having a chauffeur. Which is better? It depends. But Google seems to think that only chauffeur style is important.

OJFord 4y ago
Much as I'm a bit of a sceptic, this is actually quite a compelling aspect of ChatGPT isn't it? It's not even the LLM necessarily, it's the interaction and the NLP: 'those results are not what I'm looking for [remove all those], I remember something I saw before [if you have access to my history..] which included the phrase 'hunter2' [refine for exactly that, not hunter without number, not different numbers, not synonyms for hunter]'
- JohnFen 4y ago
  When I'm looking for web pages, though, I actively don't want to use natural language. Natural language is too vague and open to interpretation. To make it work, you have to get very precise in your wording, and it's just easier to get the right precision using keywords and operators.
  - _puk 4y ago
    Why does it have to be so binary? Natural Language is great for loosely defining what you want, whilst literal searches are great for finding the exact occurrence of something you know you are looking for. I can imagine something like: Search for the error code: "XY123", triggered by product "ABC" when I try and start it bound to port 123. I'm using version 1.0.0, and want results from the official documentation or sites of good repute. Only include solved problems, and give me references in your results. Granted, a lot of that could be covered by special incantations in a more literal search, but that just feels far more flexible. Note I'm trying to delineate between literal (in quotes) and Natural Language in this example if it's not clear.
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      I suppose it depends on what you're searching for? In your example, you're looking for an answer to a very specific question. That's more of an "answer engine" sort of thing than a web search. When I'm searching the web, I'm very rarely doing that sort of search. I'm more usually looking for a variety of websites that talk about a thing, not for a specific answer.

OJFord 4y ago

Much as I'm a bit of a sceptic, this is actually quite a compelling aspect of ChatGPT isn't it? It's not even the LLM necessarily, it's the interaction and the NLP: 'those results are not what I'm looking for [remove all those], I remember something I saw before [if you have access to my history..] which included the phrase 'hunter2' [refine for exactly that, not hunter without number, not different numbers, not synonyms for hunter]'

JohnFen 4y ago
When I'm looking for web pages, though, I actively don't want to use natural language. Natural language is too vague and open to interpretation. To make it work, you have to get very precise in your wording, and it's just easier to get the right precision using keywords and operators.
- _puk 4y ago
  Why does it have to be so binary? Natural Language is great for loosely defining what you want, whilst literal searches are great for finding the exact occurrence of something you know you are looking for. I can imagine something like: Search for the error code: "XY123", triggered by product "ABC" when I try and start it bound to port 123. I'm using version 1.0.0, and want results from the official documentation or sites of good repute. Only include solved problems, and give me references in your results. Granted, a lot of that could be covered by special incantations in a more literal search, but that just feels far more flexible. Note I'm trying to delineate between literal (in quotes) and Natural Language in this example if it's not clear.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    I suppose it depends on what you're searching for? In your example, you're looking for an answer to a very specific question. That's more of an "answer engine" sort of thing than a web search. When I'm searching the web, I'm very rarely doing that sort of search. I'm more usually looking for a variety of websites that talk about a thing, not for a specific answer.