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What are alternative to searching using web search engines? (programming.dev)

submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) by cactus_head@programming.dev to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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For most use cases, web search engines are fine. But I am wondering if there are alternative ways to finding information. There is also the enshittification of google and tbh most(free) search engines just give google search result

Obviously, the straight answer is just asking other people, in person or online, in general forums or specialised communities

Libraries are good source too but for those of is that don't have access to physical libraries, there free online public libraries(I will post the links for those that I found below)

Books in general, a lot of them have reference to outside materials.

So, I been experimenting with an AI chat bot(Le chat), partially as life coach of sorts and partially as a fine tuned web search engine. To cut to the chase, its bad. when its not just listing google top results it list tools that are long gone or just makes shit up. I was hoping it to be a fine tuned search engine, cuz with google, if what you want is not in the top 10 websites, your on your own.

So yeah, that all I can think of. Those are all the routes I can think of for finding information and probably all there is but maybe I missed some other routes.

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[–] riskable@programming.dev 6 points 6 days ago (16 children)

Have you tried using an LLM configured to search the Internet for you? It's amazing!

Normal search: Loads of useless results, ads, links that are hidden ads, scams, and maybe on like the 3rd page you'll find what you're looking for.

AI search: It makes calls out to Google and DDG (or any other search engines you want) simultaneously, checks the content on each page to verify relevancy, then returns a list of URLs that are precisely what you want with summaries of each that it just generated on the fly (meaning: They're up to date).

You can even do advanced stuff like, "find me ten songs on YouTube related to breakups and use this other site to convert those URLs to .ogg files and put them in my downloads folder."

Local, FOSS AI running on your own damned PC is fucking awesome. I seriously don't understand all the hate. It's the technology everyone's always wanted and it gets better every day.

[–] classic@fedia.io 0 points 6 days ago (2 children)

is there a non- to middling-tech savvy option for a local ai?

[–] riskable@programming.dev 0 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Not at this point, no. Not unless you know how to setup/manage docker images and have a GPU with at least 16GB of VRAM.

Also, if you're not using Linux forget it. All the AI stuff anyone would want to run is a HUGE pain in the ass to run on Windows. The folks developing these models and the tools to use them are all running Linux. Both on their servers and on their desktops and it's obvious once you start reading the README.md for most of these projects.

Some will have instructions for Windows but they'll either be absolutely enormous or they'll hand wave away the actual complexity, "These instructions assume you know the basics of advanced rocket science and quantum mechanics."

[–] classic@fedia.io 2 points 6 days ago

i aupreciate this, thank you

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