I am a Gen Z university student. The ChatGPT got boom when I was in 12th grade and I have been using ChatGPT, Gemini and Deepseek since then. I am starting to notice that now I cannot do searching anymore. I literally cannot do anything on my own like coding, learning something, fact checking, doing my assignments. I even become so reliant on it that I sometime even ask it what food should I eat, what exercises I should do. Sometimes, I "talk" with ChatGPT more than real human beings, maybe cuz I somehow end up having a bad experience or not so fulfilling experience with people. I have to use AI again and again for the same question, e.g., I asked a question today, I got the answer. If I encountered that question later again, I would not know the answer and have to go to AI for solution. What to do now? How to get out of this dependence on AI?

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[–] 2 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Don't be too hard on yourself for not being able to search, I'm a student who's not used AI yet, and I think searching using a search engine is a difficult task

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    The LLMs made search engines near useless by publishing mountains of slop - it's almost all noise and no signal.

    I frequently get top three search results for things like "how to sharpen an electric razor" where the article is 5 paragraphs of garbage and then "step one, remove razor, step two sharpen razor, step three enjoy your sharp razor!" ... Then another 5 paragraphs of pointless slop.

    Fucking infuriating.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    Got a tip recently to limit the search range to pre-2024. Won't work for everything, like current events, but will work for a lot, like heat transfer and normal shock wave equations.

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