How GPT4 killed the search engine
2001 Search engines feel like going to the data landfill compared to GPT4
It wasn't until I experienced something superior that I realized what I had been missing out and now I can’t go back. That something is GPT4. Having used GPT4 daily for the past week, I've come to understand just how inefficient search engines can be - such a waste of time.
Previously, when faced with a coding question, I couldn't ask it in plain English. Instead, I had to craft complex search strings. With 20 years of practice under my belt, I've become quite the proficient "Googler," able to find information more quickly than most. I employ techniques such as enclosing phrases in quotes for exact matches, using search operators, and specifying particular file types. Yet, even with all these skills, I often find myself sifting through a mountain of irrelevant results the #datalandfill - nope, not that one; not even close; still not it.
Let’s take image search for example:
A simple search for the image for this article for a dozer in a landfill
produces all of these images, I found some I like but ALL of them have watermarks. Google won’t allow me to search “without watermarks”, it continues to produce this:
I can click through and use these but it will cost me $20. What would I rather do with that $20? Um, MidJourney! With MidJourney I can type in any description I want, I can even make things up that don’t exist. So with this prompt: “A large advanced space robot bull dozer with glowing lights and a robot droid upper body pushing trash in a disgusting landfill with trash and seagulls flying around at sunset. This is on top of a trash mountain from human waste. Amazing photo, professional photographer, 50mm lens, manual focus.” I get this, never ending fun, creativity, and customization:
It is interesting how many image search results are littered, pun intended, with watermark images. I’m sure they pay a lot of money for that exposure and the affiliation links. There is a business going away as fast as people read this, I don’t know why anyone would pay for non-AI stock photography again.
Ok, let’s focus on code search now
It’s bin a minute since I’ve fired up a one-off notebook on my GPU Linux server. I forgot the command. I know I declare the port 8888 in it, I know when I’m in my home network I like root access, and I also know I’ve used the tag no-browser in the past for some reason. I know this isn’t good “Googling” but I’ll try plain english, I promise good Googling isn’t much better:
”Best command to start a juypter notebook in my home on a seperate linux server that I'm going to tunnel into. A command where the port is 8888 and I'm gonig to give root access and use a no-browser tag”
The result is a garbage dumb of Medium and other blog posts as well as Stack Overflow entries. I now need to open each one and scan it…. nope…. almost… nope… not that one… this is wasting time. I just want the answer customized to my request.
It keeps on going too, the StackOverflow post that didn’t exist for me. I can now ask it for SSH tunnel instructions, screen commands, everything and it just gives it to me. If I have an error or code exception I can just tell it and it will fix it for me. Also, notice I did have a typo in my search “gonig” instead of “going” and it worked fine. Also, I liked that it slapped my hand and warned me about the allow-root request, I know but I’m doing it anyway.
Conclusion:
You can continue to use the internet search engines from 2001 where not only are the results buried and mixed across multiple sources they are often corrupted with paid incentives to give you garbage (water marked images, paid blogs, etc..). I don’t want to waste time in the data landfill anymore, I’ll be using GPT4 for all of my search requests and if I can’t find it there I’ll go back to the old way of doing things but to-date I’ve been delighted. GPT4 and MidJourney are my daily companions now and I encourage you all to do the same.
I’ll end with a cool non-watermarked image I made from MidJourney celebrating this futuristic technology. Try and guess my prompt for this in the comments, I’m glad I can now dance in 2023 and I’m no longer stuck in 2001.