- Without a doubt, ChatGPT is among the most significant web innovations of the past ten years. Like nothing else before, the AI chatbot is demonstrating to the general public the potential of AI assistance. It makes sense why people are thrilled! And this is only the beginning of the possibilities. It appears that there has been a significant change in how AI can function in our daily lives.
- A B-level MBA student is ChatGPT. It passed the US Medical Licensing Examination. Okay, so it can’t quite perform complex calculations just yet, but who’s perfect? The SERP will be “eliminated” by Gmail, “destroying the most valuable part of [Google’s] business,” according to the company’s founder.
- Hold on. Do we really think ChatGPT will annihilate Google? I’m not a fan.
Emerging, unique tech products are destined to become features on established platforms due to the first-mover disadvantage.
Being the first to market has frequently not been profitable in the long run.
Recall Periscope and Meerkat? Yes, Facebook adopted the idea of a live stream video and transformed it into Facebook Live on their platform once they had gained enough popularity.
In response to Snapchat’s growing popularity, Instagram (and later Facebook) launched Stories. Reels and YouTube Shorts made a strong impression on TikTok, but Google and other platforms have already begun to deliver more visually appealing content.
[TIP] ChatGPT — and the public’s response to it — is the best free user research Google could have ever asked for.
When ChatGPT first debuted, it appeared that Google was somewhat caught off guard. The company leadership reportedly issued a “code red” in December, indicating that they considered this technology to be a real threat.
However, to assert that ChatGPT will replace Google—a claim made 28 million times as of the time this post was written—is to disregard everything Google has accomplished to become the de facto search engine.
No other company is better placed than Google to continue what OpenAI has started and bring it to the general public.
How will an AI chat-based search engine work?
Reinforcement Learning
In a recent discussion about this, my colleague Ethan Lyon made the following really good points:
“In the future, ChatGPT and other large language models will probably make use of reinforcement learning.”
ETHAN LYON, DIRECTOR OF INNOVATION
Google’s search algorithms are currently trained using reinforcement learning. It is a method of machine learning that uses algorithms that are rewarded (or punished) in order to grow and learn. The algorithm strengthens whatever action generated the reward better the more it receives rewards for the desired behavior.
Google’s algorithms are motivated to display results that encourage users to spend more time on its SERPs because the reward in this case could be a metric like time spent interacting with the search engine.
Through user feedback, a reinforcement network is adjusted. And putting more humans in control of the AI is the only way to obtain that feedback from people.
Enter Google, the website that more humans visit than any other in the world.
Google is (and will remain) the top search engine
Because it has the biggest index and the most robust user feedback loop, it will continue to be the best search engine whenever AI chat-like features are incorporated into its core Search product.
Google incorporates a new piece of knowledge into its algorithms every single time a user conducts a search and interacts with the search results. Every click, hover, and mouse movement trains the ML algorithms to precisely satisfy user needs.
Every year, the company spends hundreds of billions of dollars to keep a live map of the internet and guide users to their desired destinations at any time.
So, what does this mean for the future of Search?
Despite the hype in the public, the industry’s reactions to ChatGPT show that this type of technology is here to stay.
On Monday, 2/6/2023, Google announced the launch of Bard, an experimental conversational AI service based on their two-year-old LaMDA model.
Within 24 hours of Google’s announcement, we saw Bing scramble to organize a press conference to announce their ChatGPT-Bing integration.
Following the announcement of their own AI chatbot, Chinese search giant Baidu saw a 16% increase in stock price.
Perhaps the future Google SERP will resemble this, acting more like a dialogue with cited sources and less like a Rolodex of links and advertisements. We don’t yet know.
However, I can confidently state at this time that Google will carry on as usual and use its unrivaled index and user base to hone its algorithms and provide the best results it can.
Search engines will always try to respond to questions that are specific. Through the use of tools like the Knowledge Graph and Answer Boxes, Google has been making progress in finding ways to directly respond to users’ queries. However, there is still room for brands with an opinion to produce subjective content that highlights their particular area of expertise. In a world with AI-powered search, E-E-A-T becomes even more crucial.
It will be exciting to see how this all plays out over the coming months!
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