LLMs and AI tools are most useful for search and follow ups
When I search for something online, I rarely get exactly what I want on the first try. In the previous era, to fine tune the results, I would need to figure out how to tweak the search query such that I uncover the thing I'm looking for.
With Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Grok, I'm searching a lot more stuff and asking a lot more follow up questions. One reason is because I feel that an AI-enabled search has a lot better chance of answering my question or finding what I'm looking for.
Example: I might think "oh man, what's that guy's name who started some crypto thing, then got really popular and rich, but it all got messed up and he ended up going to jail?"
Maybe Google search could get that one without AI because it's so popular, but this type of thing happens to me a lot. I can dump all that information into the LLM, and it usually does a fantastic job of surfacing the info on the tip of my tongue.
The second reason is because I can have a seamless search experience via a threaded conversation with follow up questions. If I search how to do something, like "how to flash a Linux distro onto a USB stick," I get suggested three or four different programs.
The AI then gives me some detail, and then I can follow up with additional info, like "I have an older PC and a USB 3.2 flash drive and I want it to be open source, which one is best for that?" or something similar. I'm able to easily refine my search and zero in on exactly what I want or need with a high degree of confidence.
Side note: right now, I prefer using Perplexity because it's specifically designed as a search tool, i.e. sift through and use real sources of human-generated information and data and surface that for me, as opposed to a model that's been trained on a large dataset and is putting together answers based on its training. Although it seems like only a matter of time before they are all good at this.