AI as research tool

[Faria]

I've spent the last week observing the activity of some some of the new Ai chatbots. I believe that Wikipedia and Google searching are completely dead and that anyone using them just has no idea how far behind those are.

Compared to the bots, the search bar query method of gathering information is wildly inefficient.

For example. Let us say that I want to understand the Heptameron. Within 20 seconds I have a complete explication of all the historical roots of the spirit names including alternative possibilities, the complete textual history of the book, and a fairly solid explanation of all points of the ritual in a simple step by step format. I get the same type of results from Manus, Claude, ChatGPT, etc. Yeah I could spend 6 hours on Google trying to ferret out all that, but just posting my request for those items in a one-sentence format produces a literal book worth of information.

The only difference at present is cost. Anyone stuck using old format search engines will be left in the dust by people who can afford the monthly fees for the chatbots. Forget Wikipedia. Join the present state of technology.

 

[Asteriskos]

Using DuckDuckGo often incorporates a chatbot/ai "Search Assistant" type summary early in the page. This is relatively recent but it's been helpful nonetheless. Pretty cool. Here's a random concept for example.

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[Yazata]

I've spent the last week observing the activity of some some of the new Ai chatbots. I believe that Wikipedia and Google searching are completely dead and that anyone using them just has no idea how far behind those are.

Compared to the bots, the search bar query method of gathering information is wildly inefficient.

For example. Let us say that I want to understand the Heptameron. Within 20 seconds I have a complete explication of all the historical roots of the spirit names including alternative possibilities, the complete textual history of the book, and a fairly solid explanation of all points of the ritual in a simple step by step format. I get the same type of results from Manus, Claude, ChatGPT, etc. Yeah I could spend 6 hours on Google trying to ferret out all that, but just posting my request for those items in a one-sentence format produces a literal book worth of information.

The only difference at present is cost. Anyone stuck using old format search engines will be left in the dust by people who can afford the monthly fees for the chatbots. Forget Wikipedia. Join the present state of technology.

I think this explains how people can read 10.000 books in a year

 

[Morell]

I've spent the last week observing the activity of some some of the new Ai chatbots. I believe that Wikipedia and Google searching are completely dead and that anyone using them just has no idea how far behind those are.

Compared to the bots, the search bar query method of gathering information is wildly inefficient.

For example. Let us say that I want to understand the Heptameron. Within 20 seconds I have a complete explication of all the historical roots of the spirit names including alternative possibilities, the complete textual history of the book, and a fairly solid explanation of all points of the ritual in a simple step by step format. I get the same type of results from Manus, Claude, ChatGPT, etc. Yeah I could spend 6 hours on Google trying to ferret out all that, but just posting my request for those items in a one-sentence format produces a literal book worth of information.

The only difference at present is cost. Anyone stuck using old format search engines will be left in the dust by people who can afford the monthly fees for the chatbots. Forget Wikipedia. Join the present state of technology.

Are you recommending renting (not even buying!) an external fake brain that will work, think and do the research instead of you?

What are you going to do when you won't have money to afford it anymore? Or if it will simply stop being provided?

 

[Faria]

Are you recommending renting (not even buying!) an external fake brain that will work, think and do the research instead of you?

If you want to look something up in a printed book index, you spend 20 seconds or so flipping pages. A search bar is faster. The search bar leads to however many results that you then scan over looking for maybe a variety of answers. Normally you get whatever people pay for you to be seeing, then everything else. The ai devices sort through those search results and provide their findings, just as it would take a person to do in several hours, except it gets done in minutes.

You can take Angel Name XYZ and ask the bot to tell you every cognate term in twenty languages and all of its major appearances in a particular vein of magical literature. If you dont know which of the 17,000+ books to check, it does. Yes, you can do that research yourself, or you can let the bot do it in 10 seconds.

There are errors in that, so you have to check, and you can either check yourself or let other bots do it for you. All the major bots like Claude and ChatGPT have individual strengths and they can also be used to check each other's outputs. All of it needs verification before you use it for something substantial, but to get a fairly complex and nuanced overview, it only takes minutes.

What are you going to do when you won't have money to afford it anymore? Or if it will simply stop being provided?

Let us hope that there will never be another day in my life when I can't afford $16/month. I expect that anyone who finds a way to capitalize on it will consider it a small expense. Let's say you want to run a hot dog stand and use ai to find out how to do all your permits and where best to go, it's probably going to be selling enough hot dogs to justify its use, even for the one time setup.

But there is a legitimate case made in recognizing that there's a big advantage for business, research, and other connected fields offered by ai bots that can and maybe some day will be cut off. They are managed by remote and opaque interests.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

Google rams their AI down your throat as part of the standard search. At present, you don't have to pay for it.

Also, if you're not careful, the tail ends up wagging the dog...

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