That is the thought I had when I looked at ‘AI challenges the dominance of Google search’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1dx9qy1eeno) where we see a picture of a pretty girl and the setting that “Like most people, when Anja-Sara Lahady used to check or research anything online, she would always turn to Google. But since the rise of AI, the lawyer and legal technology consultant says her preferences have changed – she now turns to large language models (LLMs) such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT. “For example, I’ll ask it how I should decorate my room, or what outfit I should wear,” says Ms Lahady, who lives in Montreal, Canada.” It seems like a girly girly thing to do (no judgement) but the better angels of our nature, stated by Abraham Lincoln in his 1861 inaugural address requires reliability and the fake AI out there doesn’t have it, it is trained on massively inaccurate data, some sources give us that Reddit and Wikipedia is the main source of trained data in excess of 60%, whilst it uses Google data for a mere 23.3%, as such your new data becomes a lot less accurate and when I seek information, I like my data to be as accurate as possible. And of course she adds a little byline “Ms Lahady says her usage of LLMs overtook Google Search in the past year when they became more powerful for what she needed. “I’ve always been an early adopter… and in the past year have started using ChatGPT for just about everything. It’s become a second assistant.” While she says she won’t use LLMs for legal tasks – “anything that needs legal reasoning” – she uses it in a professional capacity for any work that she describes as “low risk”, for example, drafting an email.” I would hazard the thought that she wasn’t even old enough to touch a keyboard when she ‘early adopted’ Google. We now see more and more the setting that influencers (to be) will shout the “AI vibe” but the setting is nowhere near ready and whilst we look at the place, consider that she might be doing it in French (Montreal, Canada) so where is the linguistic setting in all this BBC? So whilst we get “A growing number are heading straight for LLMs, such as ChatGPT, for recommendations and to answer everyday questions.” My thought is ‘A what cost to our private data?’ And then the BBC makes a BOOBOO. We are given “Traditional search engines like Google and Microsoft’s Bing still dominate the market for search. But LLMs are growing fast.” A booboo? Yes, a booboo. You see Microsoft Binge holds a mere 4% market share whilst Google has 90%, this story is nothing less than a fabricated setting with a few people dancing to the needs of Suzanne Bearne, the technology reporter. What? Nothing to write about?
I did very much like the statement “Professor Feng Li, associate dean for research and innovation at Bayes Business School in London, says people are using LLMs because they lower the “cognitive load” – the amount of mental effort required to process and act on information – compared to search.” I am willing to accept it as the sheepish hordes are all going towards the presented bright light of ChatGPT, but nothing more than that. I wonder when people will learn that the AI trains are not that, nothing like AI trains and for the most they seem to be the presented solutions that faster is better, but the tracks are not that reliable at present and they forget to give that view on the setting of that some laughingly call AI. And the end of this article does give an interesting ploy. It comes with:
“Nevertheless, Prof Li doesn’t believe there will be a replacement of search but a hybrid model will exist. “LLM usage is growing, but so far it remains a minority behaviour compared with traditional search. It is likely to continue to grow but stabilise somewhere, when people primarily use LLMs for some tasks and search for others such as transactions like shopping and making bookings, and verification purposes.”” That sounds about right and it comes with a dangerous hangnail. It becomes a new setting where phishers and hackers can get into the settings of YOUR data, because there is always a darker side and that side is brighter than getting Google to surrender what they have and often it is not laden with identity markers, but then I could be wrong.
So whilst some will like the new congregation, the dangers of that new congregation is not given to you by the media, because caution does not translate to digital dollars, but flames of disruption are. Just keep that in mind.
Have a great day.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 