How an artificial intelligence (as in large language model based generative AI) could be better for information access and retrieval than an encyclopedia with a clean classification model and a search engine?

If we add a step of processing -- where a genAI "digests" perfectly structured data and tries, as bad as it can, to regurgitate things it doesn't understand -- aren't we just adding noise?

I'm talking about the specific use-case of "draw me a picture explaining how a pressure regulator works", or "can you explain to me how to code a recursive pattern matching algorithm, please".

I also understand how it can help people who do not want or cannot make the effort to learn an encyclopedia's classification plan, or how a search engine's syntax work.

But on a fundamental level, aren't we just adding an incontrolable step of noise injection in a decent time-tested information flow?

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[–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

If you have to go and fact check the results anyway, is there even a point? At work now I’m getting entirely AI generated pull requests with AI generated descriptions, and when I challenge the dev on why they went with particular choices they can’t explain or back them up.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    That's why I don't really use them myself. I'm not willing to spread misinformation just because ChatGPT told me it was true, but I also have no interest in going back over every response and double checking that it's not just making shit up.

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