I tested it out and got some pretty good results - marginally better than GPT4, which is a high bar!
It strikes me that we’ve been clamoring that a better Google needed to exist, and after 20 years, it looks like we actually have one. Albeit right now it’s only better some of the time and only marginally better, and of course it might not be phind that actually takes a whack at Google… but it strikes me as an exciting inflection point.
Google has non-aligned incentives with users and the gulf has been growing. Showing me the best answer is not the goal, showing me an ad is. I’m ready and willing to pay somebody who has a clear incentive to give me correct answers.
That explains why there are more ads, but they still have incentive to improve their search results. They've been using AI for this for years and are even more motivated now.
The problem seems to be that the web itself is getting worse due to SEO. Maybe more AI improvements will overcome that?
I don’t think it’s that easy. You get little feedback about traffic and getting an AI to accurately repeat your ad would be difficult, so this sort of SEO would be much less profitable. It’s too indirect.
Rather than being like advertising, maybe it would be more like PR where your target is journalists and it only indirectly reaches readers?
Well, I am using ChatGPT as a pocket keto nutritionist and it is recommending an actual product brands quite often. Not sure if this is intentional or just learned behavior.
It amuses me that not 5 comments up this very same chain there's someone saying they'd happily pay for a Google competitor which is even marginally better.
I'll never understand why privacy minded people (i assume you are, given your aversion to accounts) also seem commonly dependent on supporting the Ad empires which are primarily responsible for the privacy issues of today.
Eg, you should be supporting search engines that respect privacy and offer clear incentives (read: services you pay for) not using Ad dependent services like Google. No?
It strikes me that we’ve been clamoring that a better Google needed to exist, and after 20 years, it looks like we actually have one. Albeit right now it’s only better some of the time and only marginally better, and of course it might not be phind that actually takes a whack at Google… but it strikes me as an exciting inflection point.