Thread

1. mellosouls · 1790696367 · focus · HN ↗

   I haven't tried this but in principle I think this sort of finding a needle in a haystack situation (finding the correct path to assistance in a government service) is one of the rare circumstances where a well-crafted chatbot can be genuinely useful rather than just irritating.

   1. scun · 1790696991 · focus · HN ↗

      or a well-crafted static website

      1. nfw2 · 1790697064 · focus · HN ↗

         no, static documents are not an ideal way to find a needle in a haystack

         1. graemep · 1790697252 · focus · HN ↗

            They can be with decent search and if well organised. gov.uk works pretty well as it is and I suspect adding a chatbot would make it worse.

            1. nfw2 · 1790715351 · focus · HN ↗

               1. decent search, if you mean something other than what the browser provides, isn't part of a static document

               2. the nature of the problem statement "needle in a haystack" suggests obstacles to traditional text search, eg. too many false positives to be helpful for natural searches and challenges to constructing more specific ones.

               language models introduce new possible solutions to this ie semantic search. poorly-designed chatbots could be worse than a basic search, sure

               1. sejje · 1790773034 · focus · HN ↗

                  How about semantic embeddings for everything to facilitate search, and then don't let a bot spam sycophantic shit at me?

                  I'm very pro-ai, but we can improve the UI a lot sometimes, from the chat bot paradigm.

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