I had a bit of a ‘Eureka!’ moment over the weekend. I’m really curious to hear your thoughts on this!
Over the past two days, I have been working intensively on a new workshop. Like many of you, I presume, I always have Google open in a side tab for any research or fact-checking related questions, or really, for anything at all. Today, I was genuinely surprised to realize that after two days of intensive work on this workshop, I hadn’t opened Google once! But how did I manage all the research work? You guessed it—I used AI tools. Not only ChatGPT, but a variety of them. I’ve come to realize that regardless of the AI tool I use, the key activity is writing PROMPTS.
I believe with the rise of AI, search engines as we know them will change forever. They will continue to exist, but not in the familiar form like Google. The term ‘Google it’ will definitely fade away, as future search engines will be based on Language Models that utilize natural language processing (NLP), where one writes prompts to get human-like answers. As a result, the phrase ‘Prompt it’ will gain more significance.
So, give it 5 to 10 years, and ‘Google it’ will be ‘Schnee von gestern’ just as we say in German. Don’t know what that means? Prompt it!
Ps. I’m relatively new here and keen to engage and learn from all of you.
Interesting post!
I’m also curious where this whole AI “thing” will be heading for the next 5-10 years, although I think it’s little early for me to make predictions about how it will turn out
Welcome to the forum, we’re happy to have you join our community, I hope you will like it here😆
Keep in mind that large language models, like GPT, aren’t search engines such as Google or Bing. GPT models are designed to generate text that mimics human-like conversation, predicting the next word in a sequence based on the preceding context, enabling complex tasks like language translation, question answering, and creative writing.
search engines are tools designed to retrieve specific information from the vast expanse of the internet by matching and ranking results according to their relevance and authority in response to a user’s query.
This is also the reason why there’s a disclaimer at the bottom of the chatGPT site
I’m well aware of the differences between search engines and Language Models. My post aims to address a non-technical, rather societal phenomenon. The term “Google it” has spread through societies for years. It’s become so popular that it’s now considered a verb and has even made its way into the dictionary, defining the act of “searching for information on the internet”. The technology behind it is largely irrelevant to the majority of end users.
As more AI-powered search engines come out, employing advanced technologies like natural language processing and machine learning, the term “Prompting” will likely become more noticeable when referring to seeking information online.
This idea comes from my recent weekend experience that I’ve described in the post. The fact that I conducted research and fact-checked without once “Googling it” was astounding to me! All I did was “Prompting it”.
I understand,
I agree with you that there’s a societal phenomenon around ai in general, and “prompt it” might be the new thing.
I don’t think it will replace the phrase “google it”. I believe that people will be using search engines for years to come, once the novelty of chatGPT wears off people will be tired of writing prompts like search the internet for a recipe for a gluten free cake with strawberries and go back to simply searching themselves.
Nice post; good read. I have been exploring AI with my team for last eight months or so. I think “Prompt It!” being equivalent of “Google It!” is unlikely due to the fact that prompting is not easy yet for most folks; hence, we have the term “prompt engineering”
I have been toying with some phrases myself because like everyone on this discussion board, we are all excited about the future of AI. I have thought about the old phrase:
“There is an app for that…” to be “There is a prompt for that…”
I recently made a youtube video introducing our platform that converts prompts into web apps for folks who do not want to learn prompt engineering or haven’t mastered the tricks and tips of OpenAI API yet…
Making a case for prompt engineering being done by a small minority of Internet users seem logical to me. If you want to check out my intro video for our platform:
I agree AI will (and already is) changing internet searching forever. There is already Phind, Andi, Perplexity prompt-searching, and probably others. I use DuckDuckGo less and less.
But I doubt the phrase ‘prompt it’ will take off, more like ‘Ask it’ when AI has a pre-prompt analyser or something so it can grasp what you mean better than now. It should interact better too.
So, ask “where can I get movies?” Answer: “You mean to buy or just watch?” ask “buy. I want to keep them to rewatch” Answer: “You can buy dvds etc most places such as Amazon, but I’m guessing you mean download and be able to watch offline indefinitely? Most services monopolise individual movies so for the widest range of choice you’d need several accounts - though you can use linking services. None of them is ideal but try these…”
When asking is as simple as talking to a sensible, knowledgeable friend, then it will really take off. We’re getting there I think.
