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> Previously if I wanted to know about the French Revolution, I would have Googled it, and likely landed on Wikipedia and maybe 2 or 3 specialty sites. Now, I j

> Previously if I wanted to know about the French Revolution, I would have Googled it, and likely landed on Wikipedia and maybe 2 or 3 specialty sites. Now, I just ask ChatGPT This is a common sentiment. I have been using chatgpt for various things, and there are times when I will turn to it for technical help, sysadmin or figuring out some shell / cli commands. However by and large I definitely still prefer googling something. I would much rather read a wikipedia article of the French Revolution than trust whatever chatgpt had to say about it. I figure chatgpt is just spitting out the very same wikipedia article with some rewording and the occasional hallucination and I would rather just read straight from the source. Same with programming questions - between reading a stack overflow thread with the answer and chatgpt I feel a lot better reading stackoverflow, seeing the context the replies, the alternatives etc. and deciding based on that rather than just trusting gpt.

xmprt 2y ago
ChatGPT helps me get an initial grasp of the topic from which I can come up with more questions and research to do on my own. Usually I don't use ChatGPT as a source but rather a springboard for ideas.
- est31 2y ago
  This is what was often said about Wikipedia. Don't use it as main source of information, but using it as a starting point is fine (if it's just to get a list of sources it quotes).
  - bestham 2y ago
    This begs the question; Is stills still how people use Wikipedia?
jahnu 2y ago
Shout out to duck.com My default
jredwards 2y ago
I enjoy phind.com if I want an AI to summarize a topic. Because while it will give me a nice LLM summary, it will also cite its sources. Whatever particular aspect of the summary intrigues me is what I'll then go look at the original source for.
- xnx 2y ago
  Citation is very important for verifying the response is grounded. Google search does this too.
Alive-in-2025 2y ago
This is probably going to really bug people, but it seems foolish to use chatgpt as your search engine. You really have to have a more critical eye than say looking at wikipedia or a search result from a reputable website. I was telling both my son and my father about how chatgpt is not a search engine, and they started testing things and .... well the obvious happened, they easily found mistakes. And they stopped using it so much. They had no idea it wasn't kind of a search engine. I can ask it questions and get amazing answers, I see the use of it. But it's not a search engine replacement, you have to double check things with search engines. A search engine might return a result with a bogus webpage of course. People don't know that it's not a search engine! It's much more, but it's also a bit less ;-)
- est31 2y ago
  Search engines also return websites with mistakes, sometimes even the stuff they quote directly in their search. But the good part is that they can put the blame onto the individual website if it's wrong. Similarly, you can also use the kind of website to figure out if it's a good source or not. I don't like the LLM interface that it's all filtered to this super friendly, grammatically correct reply that might however make no actual sense logically, or be plain wrong. With websites I see tons of signals I can use to determine how much value I should put to some information, I can compare different websites, etc. Also, it's super slow to return a response. Maybe I'm old, but for most of the tasks I use search engines for, I wouldn't use LLM's.
- satisfice 2y ago
  When someone writes or says that they use ChatGPT for a search engine, that just tells me they aren’t serious about facts or education. Anyone who invests two minutes in crosschecking will easily find disturbing misinformation in its “search results.” Meanwhile, Duck Duck Go provides reasonable sources. After rather extensive testing, my heuristic is never to ask ChatGPT for facts about anything that can’t be readily verified— and even then don’t trust it until it is verified. The act of verification makes ChatGPT too time consuming to be worth using for education. It’s useful when I’m trying to solve certain programming problems, though.
lannisterstark 2y ago
I only ask LLMs if I want to get a quick fact that isn't that important. For actual reading and knowing the information bit I still defer to Wikipedia.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
suraci 2y ago
I see no difference here If I just want to learn conceptual knowledge, having a conversation with ChatGPT isn't much different from doing a DFS through hyperlinks on Wikipedia. In fact, using ChatGPT can be more efficient. If I want to critically understand the details, Wikipedia, aside from providing references, doesn’t offer much more help than ChatGPT. More importantly, just as LLMs can exhibit hallucinations, community content can also contain biases or even errors. in the end, it still comes down to relying on oneself.
- 20k 2y ago
  Nearly everything I've ever asked chatgpt about astrophysics has been critically wrong in some fashion or other. The issue is is that all its training data is polluted by popsci Eg I just asked chatgpt about the metric expansion of space, and its answer is the common popsci answer, that's incorrect Next, I asked it what the general equation for general relativistic redshift in an arbitrary spacetime is. It answered 1+z = a(trec) / a(temit) Where it lists a(t) as the scale factor of the universe. This is not what I asked it, and is the incorrect equation Next I asked it if the adm formalism is strictly equivalent to general relativity. It said that it is strictly equivalent. This is incorrect, as ADM implies a restriction on the change of the topology of spacetime. A lot of the rest of its explanation of ADM is incorrect Next I asked it if the ADM formalism is covariant, which it is. ChatGPT says no, because of the foliation of spacetime. I asked it if covariant BSSN is covariant, and it said yes, while it listed reasons why BSSN isn't covariant (which it isn't) that had nothing to do with why it isn't covariant Then I asked chatgpt if the ADM formalism is more stable the cBSSN formalism. It said that ADM is more stable for highly dynamical systems like binary black hole mergers, which is factually incorrect - it cannot be used for binary black hole mergers. It attributes this to the absence of a clear slicing structure - which is incorrect as they both use the same gauge conditions I then asked it if the Z4 formalism is generally covariant. It said that it, and adm (which it earlier said was not covariant), are both generally covariant. Now on the plus side its right about z4, but my goodness Then I asked it if the ADM formalism is hyperbolic. It said no, because its second order in time and space, but if it were first order in time and space, it would be. This is incorrect. ADM is weakly hyperbolic, but strongly hyperbolic systems can be first order in time, and second order in space. It also states: >This involves introducing auxiliary variables (such as the conjugate momenta of the metric components) The conjugate momenta is one of the fundamental variables of ADM, so its not an auxiliary variable --fin-- Literally everything I asked chatgpt here gave a critically wrong answer, from the basic to the complex, and I'm super glossing over the walls of text which are significantly wrong in virtually all the details. Its frustrating because its not saying its not sure, its just confidently incorrect Information on wikipedia is generally much more accurate, and much more verifiable because it provides links and sources for you to check yourself. Don't use chatgpt for anything
dyauspitr 2y ago
If I want to know about the French Revolution it’s still Google and Wikipedia. If I want a list of famous characters involved in the French Revolution then it’s definitely chatGPT.
PikachuEXE 2y ago
I would explicitly go for private search instead of LLM I do translations of long podcasts from time to time and it's never accurate and often produces hallucination(I know enough in both languages just using LLM to speed up

xmprt 2y ago

ChatGPT helps me get an initial grasp of the topic from which I can come up with more questions and research to do on my own. Usually I don't use ChatGPT as a source but rather a springboard for ideas.

est31 2y ago
This is what was often said about Wikipedia. Don't use it as main source of information, but using it as a starting point is fine (if it's just to get a list of sources it quotes).
- bestham 2y ago
  This begs the question; Is stills still how people use Wikipedia?

jahnu 2y ago

Shout out to duck.com My default

jredwards 2y ago

I enjoy phind.com if I want an AI to summarize a topic. Because while it will give me a nice LLM summary, it will also cite its sources. Whatever particular aspect of the summary intrigues me is what I'll then go look at the original source for.

xnx 2y ago
Citation is very important for verifying the response is grounded. Google search does this too.

Alive-in-2025 2y ago

This is probably going to really bug people, but it seems foolish to use chatgpt as your search engine. You really have to have a more critical eye than say looking at wikipedia or a search result from a reputable website. I was telling both my son and my father about how chatgpt is not a search engine, and they started testing things and .... well the obvious happened, they easily found mistakes. And they stopped using it so much. They had no idea it wasn't kind of a search engine. I can ask it questions and get amazing answers, I see the use of it. But it's not a search engine replacement, you have to double check things with search engines. A search engine might return a result with a bogus webpage of course. People don't know that it's not a search engine! It's much more, but it's also a bit less ;-)

est31 2y ago
Search engines also return websites with mistakes, sometimes even the stuff they quote directly in their search. But the good part is that they can put the blame onto the individual website if it's wrong. Similarly, you can also use the kind of website to figure out if it's a good source or not. I don't like the LLM interface that it's all filtered to this super friendly, grammatically correct reply that might however make no actual sense logically, or be plain wrong. With websites I see tons of signals I can use to determine how much value I should put to some information, I can compare different websites, etc. Also, it's super slow to return a response. Maybe I'm old, but for most of the tasks I use search engines for, I wouldn't use LLM's.
satisfice 2y ago
When someone writes or says that they use ChatGPT for a search engine, that just tells me they aren’t serious about facts or education. Anyone who invests two minutes in crosschecking will easily find disturbing misinformation in its “search results.” Meanwhile, Duck Duck Go provides reasonable sources. After rather extensive testing, my heuristic is never to ask ChatGPT for facts about anything that can’t be readily verified— and even then don’t trust it until it is verified. The act of verification makes ChatGPT too time consuming to be worth using for education. It’s useful when I’m trying to solve certain programming problems, though.

lannisterstark 2y ago

I only ask LLMs if I want to get a quick fact that isn't that important. For actual reading and knowing the information bit I still defer to Wikipedia.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

suraci 2y ago

I see no difference here If I just want to learn conceptual knowledge, having a conversation with ChatGPT isn't much different from doing a DFS through hyperlinks on Wikipedia. In fact, using ChatGPT can be more efficient. If I want to critically understand the details, Wikipedia, aside from providing references, doesn’t offer much more help than ChatGPT. More importantly, just as LLMs can exhibit hallucinations, community content can also contain biases or even errors. in the end, it still comes down to relying on oneself.

20k 2y ago
Nearly everything I've ever asked chatgpt about astrophysics has been critically wrong in some fashion or other. The issue is is that all its training data is polluted by popsci Eg I just asked chatgpt about the metric expansion of space, and its answer is the common popsci answer, that's incorrect Next, I asked it what the general equation for general relativistic redshift in an arbitrary spacetime is. It answered 1+z = a(trec) / a(temit) Where it lists a(t) as the scale factor of the universe. This is not what I asked it, and is the incorrect equation Next I asked it if the adm formalism is strictly equivalent to general relativity. It said that it is strictly equivalent. This is incorrect, as ADM implies a restriction on the change of the topology of spacetime. A lot of the rest of its explanation of ADM is incorrect Next I asked it if the ADM formalism is covariant, which it is. ChatGPT says no, because of the foliation of spacetime. I asked it if covariant BSSN is covariant, and it said yes, while it listed reasons why BSSN isn't covariant (which it isn't) that had nothing to do with why it isn't covariant Then I asked chatgpt if the ADM formalism is more stable the cBSSN formalism. It said that ADM is more stable for highly dynamical systems like binary black hole mergers, which is factually incorrect - it cannot be used for binary black hole mergers. It attributes this to the absence of a clear slicing structure - which is incorrect as they both use the same gauge conditions I then asked it if the Z4 formalism is generally covariant. It said that it, and adm (which it earlier said was not covariant), are both generally covariant. Now on the plus side its right about z4, but my goodness Then I asked it if the ADM formalism is hyperbolic. It said no, because its second order in time and space, but if it were first order in time and space, it would be. This is incorrect. ADM is weakly hyperbolic, but strongly hyperbolic systems can be first order in time, and second order in space. It also states: >This involves introducing auxiliary variables (such as the conjugate momenta of the metric components) The conjugate momenta is one of the fundamental variables of ADM, so its not an auxiliary variable --fin-- Literally everything I asked chatgpt here gave a critically wrong answer, from the basic to the complex, and I'm super glossing over the walls of text which are significantly wrong in virtually all the details. Its frustrating because its not saying its not sure, its just confidently incorrect Information on wikipedia is generally much more accurate, and much more verifiable because it provides links and sources for you to check yourself. Don't use chatgpt for anything

dyauspitr 2y ago

If I want to know about the French Revolution it’s still Google and Wikipedia. If I want a list of famous characters involved in the French Revolution then it’s definitely chatGPT.

PikachuEXE 2y ago

I would explicitly go for private search instead of LLM I do translations of long podcasts from time to time and it's never accurate and often produces hallucination(I know enough in both languages just using LLM to speed up