Is ChatGPT Going to Replace Google?

The first-time cars were introduced to the world, the naysayers worried about what would happen to the horse carriages. When the industrial revolution came, the voices rose about how it will mean the loss of jobs and put humans out of work. When computers came in…well you get the drift.

 

Human intellect thrives on challenges. It is designed to seek problems and challenges and also to find their solutions. For years, intelligent machines have been a concept under work fueled by science fiction and the desire of human beings to replicate their thought processes and brain. In recent years, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and more technologies have been taking the work steadily toward the realization of intelligent machines.

 

So, if you are on the internet, which you definitely are right now, you would have heard of ChatGPT and maybe tried it just to understand what the fuss is all about. Also, you would have heard or wondered how it is going to change the future, put many humans out of work, and certainly replace Google in the coming years. While we can’t tell you about the first two, we can surely discuss the burning question “Is ChatGPT going to replace Google”, here in this blog.

 

So, let’s start with facts and a basic understanding of the two.

 

 

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer) is a chatbot launched by OpenAI. The AI Algorithm uses Large Language Models and is built or improvised on the previous GPT family by the ChatGPT owner, OpenAI. If you have ever had an interaction with a chatbot, you would know that it answers pre-defined questions. It often is unable to understand a question asked in general human language.

 

ChatGPT, being an advanced chatbot understands the natural language better. It has been trained and fed by humans on nearly 45 TB of data or 175 billion texts. If you ask a level 3 math question, it will answer because it has already learned it, probably through a scanned book.

 

But that doesn’t make it a search engine, which people are assuming it to be, and what Google is.

 

 

 

ChatGPT Full Form: Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer

 

ChatGPT Owner:  ChatGPT is a chatbot launched by OpenAI in November 2022. Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, Ilya Sutskever, Wojciech Zaremba, Greg Brockman, and Sam Altman established OpenAI in 2015. Musk did, however, leave the board in February 2018 to avoid any potential future confrontation with Tesla. The ChatGPT company’s current CEO is Sam Altman.

 

ChatGPT Website: https://chat.openai.com/

 

 

What is Google?

Google is essentially a search engine with access to almost everything over the internet or, say every book, on the earth. When you ask a question, it will respond to you with a list of links/books where you can find the answer. It does not, in general, answer the question directly, unless it is a fact and you ask it under some pre-defined syntax.

 

When you ask something, a search engine instantly searches every possible webpage on the internet and comes up with answers in real time.

 

Is ChatGPT Going to Replace Google – Chat GPT vs Google

 

Before we move on to understand the different issues they address and the different ways in which they operate, first let’s understand what is common between ChatGPT and Google.

 

So much so that people are taking ChatGPT for the next Google?

 

Well, they both answer your query.

Ever since ChatGPT was launched, people have been asking it millions of questions. From simple arithmetic to philosophical to writing a poem and debugging a code, ChatGPT is seen as one platform to answer all sorts of queries. Much like google has been used to date.

 

However, the similarity ends here. In understanding ChatGPT vs Google search engine, as mentioned earlier, ChatGPT looks through the humongous data it has been fed with, to answer the questions. Google, on the other hand, looks through the latest actual web pages including first-hand experiences from real people to answer queries.

 

Understanding the differences will help us answer our question: Is ChatGPT going to replace Google? Let’s discuss the difference in detail.

 

Latest Information

ChatGPT is data-trained up to May 2020 (as per some reports). So, all the knowledge about the world it has is limited by that cut-off date. So, if you ask what the weather is like today in Alaska, the response won’t be the latest one. The training for ChatGPT stopped and it can fetch data only before that. However, as it is now open for people to interact, many suggest that ChatGPT is learning with every interaction.

 

 

 

On the other hand, Google fetches all data for queries in real time. So, when it says it is 3°C in Alaska today, it surely is. 

 

 

Information Completeness

WebCrawl, the dataset used by ChatGPT, is shown to contain nearly 75% of information over the internet. Compare that to Google, the search engine, which is constantly updated with the latest data. Not just that, people take active participation in making Google more relevant and up-to-date.

 

Information Accuracy

The information available with ChatGPT is not necessarily accurate. The answers we receive are the best guesses answers based on the data it has been fed with. The sources of information are never available or listed with the answers. Google on the other end while providing information comes up with multiple links through which the information can be verified for accuracy. So, fact-checking is one thing that Google’s answers can go through while ChatGPT cannot.

 

The Format

ChatGPT shares the answers in form of paragraphs. It summarizes the information it has and presents it in an aesthetical way that is easier to read and quicker to consume. It leaves you with no second guesses to answers. In fact, when you share a code with it, it can correct it and point out the exact mistakes. Google presents the answers in form of multiple links that can help you find the answer. So, the answer is not always exact, one has to look for it through the best sources that Google has presented. Unless of course the questions were fact or special questions that can be asked using a particular format for exact answers.

 

The point that chatGPT gives exact answers (even though not necessarily accurate) is what pushed people into thinking if it will replace Google, and the complete fuss over ChatGPT vs Google search engine trend. The ease with which the ChatGPT website provides the answers, the speed, and the human-like interactive formatting, make it look and sound better. Sure, Google can’t write me a poem, but it can find a poet near me to get the job done.

 

Being fed with data, ChatGPT can return answers which are biased as it can’t judge the sources of information and form a bias-free opinion about it. With Google, there are no biased answers as all it gives are links to where to find answers. It is up to us, who questions, to look for and interpret the answers.

 

To sum up

Both ChatGPT and Google provide information based on our queries. The information provided by ChatGPT is easier and faster to consume. However, it doesn’t live up to the purpose of a search engine which is to provide accurate, and latest information. It can’t show the current news, share advice about real-life situations or segregate between fact and fiction. For those reasons, for the time being, the answer to Is ChatGPT going to replace Google seems to be a ‘NO’.

 

However, the ChatGPT vs Google trend is here to stay.

 

In days to come, ChatGPT/Large Langauge Text AI is sure to learn and improve. Google’s parent company is already hurrying up on its AI program and also looking for ways to provide more accurate, relevant, and unbiased search results on its flagship search engine, Google. As consumers, we sure have an interesting time ahead!