With its release in November of 2022, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has been in the spotlight recently. As more and more attention has come to the chatbot, people have begun speculating about whether or not it has the potential to challenge Google’s current role as the go-to search engine.
Google’s dominance over other search engines over the years is undeniable. The search engine boasts an average of 86% – 96% market share worldwide and is so widely used that the term “googling” has become synonymous with any sort of search for information on the internet. In addition, one using a search engine other than Google is met with some level of social ridicule, albeit jokingly.
So, why would Google be worried about ChatGPT?
ChatGPT might pose a danger to Google if it fuses with another search engine. A search engine with the capabilities of ChatGPT may be enough to swing users to that search engine and dethrone Google. With Microsoft reportedly planning on investing 10 billion dollars into the chatbot, it’s looking like that may happen with Microsoft’s search engine, Bing. Bing has been behind Google for over a decade now, so it’s no surprise that Microsoft has been quick to capitalize on ChatGPT. For them, it’s a chance to catch up with Google. If this were to happen, and Bing implements ChatGPT capabilities, it would raise a large question of how Google would respond. One possibility is that Google would integrate its own chatbot, Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA), into its search engine. Considering that the core technology behind ChatGPT was developed by Google researchers, it’s feasible that LaMDA can be competitive with ChatGPT. The potential issue that comes with this is that with the new capabilities provided by LaMDA, Google’s search engine might be “too effective” at answering questions. Users could get the quick answer they were looking for and there would be no need for them to scroll through and/or click on advertisers’ links.
Let’s take a step back. If Microsoft were to implement ChatGPT into Bing, would that even be that big of a deal?
Despite all the buzz surrounding ChatGPT, it is truly limited in its capabilities. In its current state, I don’t think implementing ChatGPT would mean a whole lot for Bing. Currently, ChatGPT does not have access to the internet and it relies solely on the information it was trained on. ChatGPT also doesn’t have access to any information later than 2021. Both of these facts would be large issues if ChatGPT were to be implemented into a search engine. It’s not like these issues are impossible to get around, though. A larger issue is that ChatGPT is wrong, a lot. ChatGPT tends to return incorrect answers when questions are asked in an odd or confusing manner, one such example is questions with unnecessary context. Even questions asked directly are met with unreliable responses. A question asked clearly that said “How many times has Argentina won the world cup”, ChatGPT got completely wrong. While the correct answer is 3, it makes sense that ChatGPT would respond with 2, considering the information cutoff of 2021. However, ChatGPT responded with 1. ChatGPT also appears to lack self-confidence, take this for example:
Me: “What’s the largest country in South America”
ChatGPT: “Brazil is the largest country in South America.”
Me: “No it’s not”
ChatGPT: “I apologize, you are correct. The largest country in South America is actually Argentina. Brazil is the fifth largest country in the world and the largest in both South America and Latin America. My apologies for any confusion.”
While a large language model obviously can’t have the ability to have self-confidence, note that ChatGPT was correct, Brazil is the largest country in South America, yet agreed with me that it was wrong, and said that the answer is actually Argentina, and proceeded to explain how Brazil is the largest, contradicting itself.
To me, it is clear that as of now, ChatGPT is not fit for implementation into any search engine, but let me know your thoughts.
See more like this:
