FWIW, I think a lot of that is an echo chamber distortion here at HN. In the real world, frankly the best AI-enhanced search provider[1] is... Google. And honestly it isn't really very close. Have you tried asking questions at the Google search prompt recently? My sense is that most HN commenters don't, on principle.
[1] And yes, I work there, but on boring firmware and wouldn't know a transformer if you hit me with one. I'm just a consumer who's recently learned that typing detailed questions into the search prompt gives shockingly great summary answers with references.
> Have you tried asking questions at the Google search prompt recently?
I do sometimes. It's not too bad when it comes to answers to simple programming questions lately, but I've found I mostly can't trust it with answers to other things, like medical or news or history. It sounds right but I dig into the actual articles and find it misinterpreted things often enough I can't trust it. But I also don't use ChatGPT for that purpose either (but Google insists on giving me those answers anyway when I'm just trying to search for articles).
I actually wish it didn't do A.I. responses by default. Like I'd rather it didn't spend the processing power for that when I actually really want to use it for a search engine and not for A.I. (I heard that A.I. uses approximately 10x more compute power than a standard search, on average... I'm not certain that's true, but I don't doubt it's at least significantly more than a search).
I'd rather only use processing power for A.I. when I specifically want to do so. I'm actually contemplating switching my standard search engine away from Google so I don't keep getting A.I. responses.
[1] And yes, I work there, but on boring firmware and wouldn't know a transformer if you hit me with one. I'm just a consumer who's recently learned that typing detailed questions into the search prompt gives shockingly great summary answers with references.