ChatGPT and similar Machine Learning Systems and Search Engines

[engine]

There's been much speculative commentary around the recent public demonstration of OpenAI's ChatGPT AI tool.
I've been testing the tool since it was released and I can assure you, it's impressive. Sure, it has it's limitations, but it's caused such a stir, and it can only get better, imho.
A great deal of the commentary is from a perspective of scepticism, and of it's limitations, including downright misunderstanding. There's also commentary about it being a "Google killer."
In its existing form, it's not a search engine, however, potentially, it is going to shake up the search sector. For example, why search google for an answer, when you can get an answer from the AI tool?
Why go to a training business when you can learn online from an AI?

As I said, it has a way to go, but you can be sure it's a game changer for so many sectors. A while back I said it was disruptive technology, and the more i've used it, and seen the potential, the more I think I was correct.

As far as search is concerned, Bing has already said it's going to be integrating OpenAI's facility into Bing. Google appears to have been caught napping, and although it has its own AI development, it missed the speed of the development and is now playing catch-up. Only today, I heard that Baidu could launch a ChatGPT-like facility in March. Note, Microsoft is a shareholder in OpenAI, and recently upped its investment in the organization.

The big challenge for Google is to monetize this, especially when you consider it has more to lose.

Oh, and what about our sites? Are we going to find yet another facility taking up the real estate on the existing SERPs? Ten blue links went away a long time back, so we should be well aware about the possibilities and opportunities.

Now's the time to be spending time learning about ChatGPT, DALL-E, amongst the many others. Some might like to drop along to hear Brett Tabke who is keynoting at Pubcon Austin 2023 with the topic title of "ChatGPT – Red Alert – This is Not a Drill! [webmasterworld.com]"

[edited by: engine at 9:43 pm (utc) on Jan 30, 2023]

[mack]

I think it's incredible just how far Ai has come in a relatively short period of time. If someone had told me 2 years ago what ChatGTP would be cable of doing it would have sounded like science fiction.

I share your concerns about our sites. As it stands Google is pretty much the gatekeeper to the web. People search and it provides a list of links to sites that should be able to provide more information. If a service can simply provide an answer rather than requiring a user visits another web location to get the answer it takes one step (us) out of the equation.

Mack.

[nickZ]

ChatGPT is no AI.
They themeself call it Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, hence no AI.
So far luckily for us not AI exists. Selfawareness will be the end for many humans.

[mack]

Ai does not need to be self-aware... Just any system that can demonstrate some form of intelligence. be it chat based, imaging, or even map directions.

Mack.

[tangor]

I know it is all called AI ... but it seems more like an update to the interface between humans and computer data---and the computer response being more human-natural.

That's why some are predicting that search engines (all of them) will be facing a tidal change in business and operations---and ad marketing might have a DIFFERENT frontier to face.

[superclown2]

We still come back to the cost of running ChatGPT which is heavy. If they eventually stop the free service a lot of people will stop using it. OK the price has dropped from 42 dollars a month to 20 but that's still a lot of money when it costs nothing to look at Google's ads.

[engine]

They are talking about low cost options [webmasterworld.com...] and i'm sure when they've worked out how best to use the paid program they might continue to offer a free option with restrictions. It's all very new yet.

[brotherhood of LAN]

The AI is impressive, in the sense it can maybe cut down on human time expanding something or discovering something.

It does seem to have better utility on the former, like news. Especially news with well known data points like earnings updates on companies.

It gets plenty wrong though. Just like Google's infoboxes, instant answers, or whatever their latest thing is called. Sometimes you can attribute it directly to them having wikidata that's wrong, sometimes it's their inferred data from other websites.

Plenty instances of chatGPT saying 2 + 2 isn't 4.

Seems like the evolution relies on human answers all the same.

[mack]

I think the $20 a month is not unreasonable. In some circumstances, it's like having a staff member to help you. Some code not working? Simply paste it into ChatGTP and be fairly reassured it will tell you what is wrong and how to fix it. Need a simple function written, just explain what you want, what parameters will be sent and describe any variable names. Seconds later you have the code. It is very capable of dealing with the simple, yet time-consuming tasks, freeing us up to do the more involved tasks.

It's only a matter of time before Ai makes an appearance in an IDE. That will be a game changer.

Mack.

[nickZ]

Well kinda they should, even if that is step 4 on. So far its more like an algorithm.

[theconversation.com...]

Ai does not need to be self-aware..