upvote
> asking Google to maintain a non-AI search engine is like

...is like asking your company to maintain its SQL database instead of shoving everything into a document the LLM reads and suggests edits to.

Even if you're using an LLM to talk to the user, there still needs to be some kind of deterministic search engine back there in order to do things well, or to answer any kind of question that involves information newer than X months ago.

reply
There needs to be retrieval, but ranking can be fully offloaded to LLMs and they would probably do better. Legacy search engines do both parts, and their ranking is highly gameable judging by how SEOed they are.
reply
> ranking can be fully offloaded to LLMs

If someone searches for "mexican food" you require ranking anyway because you aren't going to load those ten bazillion hits into the LLM first.

reply
Spoiler: regular search ranking doesn't see very many results, either. I mean, have you seen the results for a crowded query like this? They are trash.
reply