With Google’s Gemini coming out, there’s pressure for every LLM to have a live web connection.
Ping us at api@you.com if you want to get rid of hallucinations, keep your LLM answers up-to-date or offer citations for facts.
We can help with a complete solution.
I still think there is an important distinction between access to a regularly updated search index and dynamic web access, though I recognize it is possible that You.com is providing live webpage parsing in addition to search results.
Tags: knowledge-cutoffs, generative-search-APIs, You.com
Today marks the first year anniversary of the launch of http://perplexity.ai, launched on Dec 7, 2022. Lot of people ask me why we ended up being the best product in this category. If I had to pick one word: it is conviction. We believed world needed answers rather than links.
See thread.
Tags: Perplexity-AI
Tags: Bing-Deep-Search
Tags: fresh-search, knowledge-cutoffs, Perplexity-AI, X-Grok
Tags: social-search-request, systematic-literature-reviews
Rather than ask
Maybe we should ask
How can I specify, design, and build the system that my stakeholders need?
How can I set up the socio-technical ecosystem that will allow users, developers, businesses, and everyone else to cooperate and compete to build what everyone needs?
I’ve been thinking about these sorts of questions a lot in relation to our current disruption in web search. See some of my musings in Towards “benchmarking” democratization of good search and Who is going to try to make web search better?
Tags: incentives, constraints, social-construction, technology-delegation
Viktor Lofgren is the creator of Marginalia Search, a search engine takes you of the beaten track by letting you find small quality web pages. These pages barely surface in commercial search engines because they are snowed under by larger commercial websites and marketing. We interviewed Viktor for FreeWebSearchDay. You can listen to the recording of the interview or read the edited transcript below.
[ . . . ]
“…when you design a ranking algorithm you basically encode your own values and perspectives into the software. So if you don’t have enough software diversity in the sense that you have multiple search engines build by multiple people than you get a very one-sided view of the world. And having someone else come and build a search engine with ther own ranking algorithm for example, is that they would promote different types of content. And that would benefit people in general.”
[ . . . ]
“It would be really helpful to have other people dabble in search without having to build an entire search engine from scratch.”
[ . . . ]
“…there are a lot of assumptions that have been around since the ‘80s, or the ‘70s even, on how to build a search engine. So having fresh eyes on the problem, even if it does mean occasionally reinventing the wheel, is refreshing.”
[ . . . ]
“I am hopeful for the future that something good will come out of this and something like the Linux of internet search engines will emerge. Where people can collaborate and build something great together, open source.”
HT
@FloweeTheHub via Twitter/X on Dec 01, 2023: “I love it when single devs can build stuff like a new search engine that actually work at scale.”
Tags: Marginalia-Search, alternative-search-engines, other-quality-goals, reimagine, interviews-with-search-producers
Note: The URL is now ollie.ai
Tags: generative-search, niche-generative-search, Ollie
I love it when single devs can build stuff like a new search engine that actually work at scale.
Democratization of innovation, which I’m trying with my stuff too!
Here is an interview with the author @MarginaliaNu, a “for the people” search-engine:
nlnet.nl/news/2023/20231016-marginalia.html
Tags: Marginalia-Search, alternative-search-engines
I was asked why we never published metrics relative to GPT-4 for the pplx-chat and pplx-online LLMs and only compared to 3.5-turbo. Just like everyone else today, we are far away from GPT-4 capabilities, even on the narrow task of answering questions accurately with search grounding. Product human evals are what matter to us, not academic evals that can be gamed. Our own data flywheel and better base models are necessary ingredients to getting there. Mistral and Meta are doing incredible work to help the community to get closer. But at the same time, it’s important to acknowledge OpenAI’s tremendous work on GPT 4.
Tags: evaluating-results-meta, Perplexity-AI, benchmarks
Stop showing Hitler on predictive and suggestive features exactly like you do not show gambling or porn or any other topic that demands someone to specifically search for it.
I found the same:
There is lack of transparency in the policy choices around both autocomplete and safesearch interventions. Here is a different angle on that problem in safesearch: The “SEARCHING FOR SOMETHING AND GETTING WHAT APPEARS TO BE EVERYTHING” section in the chapter on “TO REMOVE OR TO FILTER” in Gillespie (2018, pp. 186–194). An excerpt, from p. 187:
To be safe, search engines treat all users as not wanting accidental porn: better to make the user looking for porn refine her query and ask again, than to deliver porn to users who did not expect or wish to receive it. Reasonable, perhaps; but the intervention is a hidden one, and in fact runs counter to my stated preferences. Search engines not only guess the meaning and intent of my search, based on the little they know about me, they must in fact defy the one bit of agency I have asserted here, in turning safesearch off.[41]
- Jemima Kiss, “YouTube Looking at Standalone ‘SafeTube’ Site for Families,”Guardian, May 29, 2009, https://www.theguardian.com/media/pda/2009/may/29/youtube-google.
Without excusing the hidden interventions, note how “the one bit of agency” line both reflects and reconstructs articulations of search and perceptions of affordance.
That said, I do regularly see the SEO folks engaging in search quality complaints on behalf of those searching (not only those searched for or trying to be found). I think SEOs, partially because of their expertise and this relationship with Google, may have a responsibility to engage in more public advocacy for public interest searches. See my other comments on this in [tags:seo-for-social-good].↩︎
Tags: search-liaison, search-engine-optimization, search-quality-complaints, seo-for-social-good
Tags: hypecert
Tags: generative-search, OpenAI-ChatGPT
Tags: Microsoft-Copilot, Bing-Chat
Most of the social-search-requests that I share on here are ones that I am relaying for others to answer or consider or to find answers at the link (marked with “ssr”. I am sharing the request in this post as an example1 of what appears to be a very effective packaging of a question or request for help——it has a simple message, signals preparation for responses, and highlights possible issues already considered. While the transcript below provides some sense of the request, one would need to watch the video to get the full packaging.
I discuss packaging of questions in my dissertation: Ch. 5. Repairing searching: Due diligence and packaging questions. I’m not suggesting this approach might work for everyone: this searcher is an actor.
HotGirls on TikTok, why do I look stupid at the gym? Why do I look stupid at the gym? Don’t be nice to me. Don’t worry about my feelings. Give it to me straight because I know that I don’t look as hot at the gym as I could. But I don’t know what the problem is. Is it that I need a set? Is it the socks? Is it the shoes? I feel like these sneakers look fucking stupid. Is it the hairstyle? Is it the jewelry or lack thereof in this region? Why do I look stupid at the gym? Someone tell me. Because I want to look hot all the time.
I am comfortable sharing this as an example because it has received over 7.7 million views at the time of this post, with over 461.6K likes and 20.5K comments. The question asker, Hannah Brown, has also pinned the post to her profile.↩︎
Tags: social-search-request, TikTok, packaging
Tags: social-search-request
EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT
Andi X Friday AI
We’re stoked to share that Andi is acquiring Friday AI!
@FridayAIApp is an AI-powered educational assistant that helps thousands of busy college students with their homework.
Grateful and excited to be a new home for their users’ educational and search needs! Welcome to Andi
Hi, I’m Friday, your AI copilot for school! Learn a difficult topic, draft an email, or speed up your hw.
Use a command to get started: Generate essay outline to draft an outline. New thread to start a new conversation. / to see a list of commands.
Tags: Andi
In the 1950-70s, urban highways were built across many cities. It is beyond our syllabus to reason why parks, lakes, and sidewalks were sacrificed for additional car lanes,1 but, as these high-speed traffic veins warped the faces of neighborhoods, so have the introduction of search engines and social news feeds changed our online behavior. Fortunately, on the Internet, we still have the agency to wayfind through alternative path systems.
Tags: alternative-search-engines
Tags: search-outside-the-box
Tags: repository-of-examples
The idea that you can build general cognitive abilities by fitting a curve on “everything there is to know” is akin to building a search engine by listing "every query anyone might ever make". The world changes every day. The point of intelligence is to adapt to that change. [emphasis added]
What might this look like? What might some one learn, or know more intuitively, from doing this?
See a comment on Chollet’s next post in the thread, in: True, False, or Useful: ‘15% of all Google searches have never been searched before.’
Tags: speculative-design
The current 7 best trending models on @huggingface are NOT from BIG TECH! Let’s build a more inclusive future where all orgs, non-profits, academia, startups, small and big companies, from all over the world can build AI versus just use AI. That’s the power of open-source and collaborative approaches!
Tags: open-source, hugging-face
Intervenr is a platform for studying online media run by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. You can learn more at our About page. This website does not collect or store any data about you unless you choose to sign up. We do not use third party cookies and will not track you for advertising purposes.
[ . . . ]
Intervenr is a research study. Our goal is to learn about the types of media people consume online, and how changing that media affects them. If you choose to participate, we will ask you to install our Chrome extension (for a limited time) which will record selected content from websites you visit (online advertisements in the case of our ads study). We will also ask you to complete three surveys during your participation.
See: search.marginalia.nu/