Ask HN: Are we sure LLMs are that useful in a web search application?
I think there are plenty of people that remain skeptical of their utility for this application.<p>People who want to get rich will tell you it&#x27;s the next greatest thing that will revolutionize the industry.<p>Personally, I&#x27;ve been annoyed at how confidently <i>wrong</i> ChatGPT can be. Even when you point out the error and ask it to correct the mistake it comes back with an even-more-wrong answer. And it frames it like the answer is completely, 100% correct and accurate. Because it&#x27;s essentially really deep auto-complete, it&#x27;s designed to generate text that sounds <i>plausible</i>. This isn&#x27;t useful in a search context when you want to find sources and truth.<p>I think there are useful applications for this technology but I think we should leave that to the people who understand LLM&#x27;s best and keep the charlatans out of it. LLM&#x27;s are really interesting and have come a long way by leaps and bounds... but I don&#x27;t see how replacing entire institutions and processes by something that is only well understood by a handful of people is a great idea. It&#x27;s like watering plants with gatorade.