Thread

1. lordnacho · 1790070279 · focus · HN ↗

   AI is my default for just about any search now. From today:

   How did Cantor come up with his diagonal proof? It seems to have been dreamed out of nowhere

   Why are there advertisements for a shampoo containing caffeine? Does caffeine do something useful other than when you drink it?

   What happens in sense and sensibility?

   All of them give a decent answer, with the ability to ask follow ups. Eg, how does S&S compare with Pride and Prejudice? What about more recent novels connecting romantic choices with economic choices?

   All of them give you links to source material, in case you suspect they are just making it up.

   At the start of the millennium, Google search changed everything about how I look for information. Now it seems outdated.

   1. JKCalhoun · 1790073423 · focus · HN ↗

      Agree, I've been bypassing search engines for a year now (hint: not a young user either).

      Advertising killed search.

      1. weavie · 1790074081 · focus · HN ↗

         How long until adverts are injected into LLMs?

         1. busssard · 1790074643 · focus · HN ↗

            will you ever know?
         2. Phemist · 1790075250 · focus · HN ↗

            Watermarking, contextually biasing llms to output specific tokens, can be rather easily usurped for ads.

            The advertiser can buy logit "boosts" to specific tokens in a given context (the more preceding context, the cheaper). Once an activation has happened, dont do it again for the session.

            The LLM will end up pushing a specific product contextual to the conversation. It just needs this slight nudge at the logit level to start talking about it and will fill in the rest.

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.