They're a slightly better search, because web search has degraded. They also provide needed vocabulary almost directly, which accelerates search.
I would say, for big decisions (financial, work projects, health, etc), you really need the sources and you need to double check things, but I would say that maybe 70% of my searches are closer to trivia than to life changing things, so LLMs are obviously very good for that. And frequently the stuff I search is trivially verifiable, so that's also good.
The bigger worry is that the general public doesn't have the mental immune system to actually know what to look for and especially to validate the LLM answers, so we're in for a world of hurt.
We will soon have some extremely brainwashed individuals.
I would say, for big decisions (financial, work projects, health, etc), you really need the sources and you need to double check things, but I would say that maybe 70% of my searches are closer to trivia than to life changing things, so LLMs are obviously very good for that. And frequently the stuff I search is trivially verifiable, so that's also good.
The bigger worry is that the general public doesn't have the mental immune system to actually know what to look for and especially to validate the LLM answers, so we're in for a world of hurt.
We will soon have some extremely brainwashed individuals.