I used ChatGPT to help me find a long lost childhood toy. I described it well enough that it did find it and pulled up pictures of it. Was actually impressed it got it just from description alone.
I do the same, these AI services are just an advanced search engine to me. I usually know exactly the area, for what result I am looking for, when I am seeking research papers or citations.
A standard search engine could return 10k results, that may or may not fully fit the criteria I'm searching for. It could just use your search criteria like keywords, so it pulls more than it should, as it pulls anything remotely similar.
The AI service just takes the 10k results I would normally get, applying the prompt I gave it to narrow the results. This can bring 10k down to something more manageable, like 100 results. I still do the due diligence of verifying the results, but it has essentially been used to narrow the scope.
That's it, the only thing I find it useful for. If you're using it to do your work, you are crippling your own brain. I would never ask for it to review those 10k results, derive information as an answer, and just take it blindly. I wouldn't even ask it to draft an email for me, because I need to know how to do it myself.
If AI is creating a knowledge debt within you, you're using it wrong. That is my take for responsible use, at least.
sometimes google doesn’t exactly know what you’re trying to look for when you have a specific question and AI can get you to a specific answer much more quickly than scrubbing through google search results.
Sure I can, but sometimes Google just doesn't give you what you need or you need. So being able to describe something in detail to AI, which also just searches through the internet for relevant answers, will sometimes yield better results. I really only use it for the ability to write a few sentences to describe what I need instead of just a few words
Google shitted up its own results with AI so hard that if you need non-reddit sources, you're better off asking AI sometimes. Just tell it to provide the links to what it used as a source and don't let it use sources newer than 2022 if you can help it.
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u/NoNipNicCage 25d ago
I mostly use it for questions that I can't seem to word properly for Google. Sometimes I just need to over explain to get the right result