It used to be that the first couple results would answer the specific question, as long as you knew how to format the question in the correct search terms and with the correct special operations. What might take longer is refining the search to get extremely specific results, but that was usually only necessary if you’re writing a paper or something.
But you shouldn’t just trust whatever the AI says when you’re writing a paper anyway, so that’s not really different.
AI does allow you to skip all that and just ask a plain language question, but search didn’t used to take so long if you knew how to use it. It worked.
Yes it worked, and still required you to dig through the answers to find the answer yourself. That is the difference. AI will search for you and collate the results to give you the definitive answer. I’m not saying searching didn’t work, or doesn’t even work today, I’m just saying AI is more efficient and effective and pretending it isn’t is simply wrong and / or lying.
You shouldn’t just trust whatever the AI says
And you also shouldn’t just trust random things you read on the internet, so I’m not sure exactly what point you are making here. I’ve never advocated for that. I also am not sure why you keep explaining to me how good search engines used to be, seems like a strange aside considering you don’t know how long I’ve been on the internet for.
I can’t tell if you’ve forgotten how good search was, are too young to know better, or were never good at using search.
I’m telling you that you didn’t have to “dig through the answers” if you formatted the search well. It worked. You obviously couldn’t trust everything you read on the internet, but the tricky part was formatting. No digging was required once you were good enough at key words, syntax, and search functions (“” , + - site:). Search results were incredibly efficient and effective. It was amazing.
AI is now maybe as efficient and effective as search results used to be. That’s it. They ruined search and gave us AI.
It used to be that the first couple results would answer the specific question, as long as you knew how to format the question in the correct search terms and with the correct special operations. What might take longer is refining the search to get extremely specific results, but that was usually only necessary if you’re writing a paper or something.
But you shouldn’t just trust whatever the AI says when you’re writing a paper anyway, so that’s not really different.
AI does allow you to skip all that and just ask a plain language question, but search didn’t used to take so long if you knew how to use it. It worked.
Yes it worked, and still required you to dig through the answers to find the answer yourself. That is the difference. AI will search for you and collate the results to give you the definitive answer. I’m not saying searching didn’t work, or doesn’t even work today, I’m just saying AI is more efficient and effective and pretending it isn’t is simply wrong and / or lying.
And you also shouldn’t just trust random things you read on the internet, so I’m not sure exactly what point you are making here. I’ve never advocated for that. I also am not sure why you keep explaining to me how good search engines used to be, seems like a strange aside considering you don’t know how long I’ve been on the internet for.
I can’t tell if you’ve forgotten how good search was, are too young to know better, or were never good at using search.
I’m telling you that you didn’t have to “dig through the answers” if you formatted the search well. It worked. You obviously couldn’t trust everything you read on the internet, but the tricky part was formatting. No digging was required once you were good enough at key words, syntax, and search functions (“” , + - site:). Search results were incredibly efficient and effective. It was amazing.
AI is now maybe as efficient and effective as search results used to be. That’s it. They ruined search and gave us AI.
And they’ll ruin AI too, just you watch.