The comparison with search is faulty to begin with. Yes, you can search with an LLM, but that's a side effect of the tool.
While I certainly also have found things via LLMs that I couldn't easily with a search engine, the number of false positives is huge. My heuristic is:
If I ask an LLM something and it's easy to verify via Google because its answer narrows the search space - then I'll use it. Otherwise, Google is still king.
Example: Asking an LLM the health benefits of supplement X is a waste of time. Verifying everything it tells me would be the same amount of work as asking a search engine.
Example: Asking how to solve a given coding problem is great, because it drastically reduces the search space. I only have to look up the particular function/API calls it uses.
Ditto for asking how to achieve a task in the command line - I can quickly verify the arguments are accurate via the man page.
Most of the things I search for do not fall into this category, but in the category of "still need to do the same amount of work as just searching via Google."
While I certainly also have found things via LLMs that I couldn't easily with a search engine, the number of false positives is huge. My heuristic is:
If I ask an LLM something and it's easy to verify via Google because its answer narrows the search space - then I'll use it. Otherwise, Google is still king.
Example: Asking an LLM the health benefits of supplement X is a waste of time. Verifying everything it tells me would be the same amount of work as asking a search engine.
Example: Asking how to solve a given coding problem is great, because it drastically reduces the search space. I only have to look up the particular function/API calls it uses.
Ditto for asking how to achieve a task in the command line - I can quickly verify the arguments are accurate via the man page.
Most of the things I search for do not fall into this category, but in the category of "still need to do the same amount of work as just searching via Google."