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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[Yazata]

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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This is exactly the reason why I stopped using Google, and after a very brief duckDuckGo moment I now only use Startpage as (it appears) this one is free from a "handy" AI summary

 

[Morell]

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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Makes me think about Ouroboros symbol. And there might really be truth to that. It's easy path so there will definitely be people who will soon find it hard to think for themselves and will have to deal with rebuilding their brain "muscle."

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.



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.

When it comes to money, it's hard to guess how it will be with the price of AI access in the future, but things do not stay the same. Hard to guess, honestly.

Your argument of random angel and 15 000+ books is suggesting that you preffer quantity over quality. You probably know, I hope, that the quality of the books out there dealing with angels is ov very various quality, more books being of lower quality. So that pool of books taken into account won't be the best. Another issue is that AI will collect you the info, but cannot take account of the conenctions of that info with the rest of the book and it will consider all the books, so the outcome will be crossinfo from all of the books, an entirely new system, if you wish, completely untested.

Another thing that speaks agaist using AI for occult research is that you this way lack the understanding of the system and the author. Author have their specific approach that gives specific outcomes. And the spirit being itself is, at least in my opinion, sentient being that is to be known, not analized. In other words I draw a difference between analysing with AI and getting to know.

I do not believe that even with using AI getting the info from all the books there are is getting you that closer towards understanding the spiritual entity. It works literaly the same as reading single book. Both ways you get some pattern for work (one is tested by practicioner, who, if writting well, will give you notes on the details like what to avoid, other is AI, untested syncretism that may and may not be good) and then you have to do the work anyway, approach the entity and find out how much you had been wrong or right first-hand.

And I would say that you always get the most from that first hand experience.