At the beginning of the year, we are dedicating ourselves to a topic suggested by our trainee Artur and exploring the question of whether chatbots could replace conventional search engines in the future.
Most of us use them daily: search engines. Whether Google, Bing, Yahoo, or one of the countless other search engines, they have become indispensable in our daily lives. Does your son want to know which was the fastest dinosaur? Do you need a recipe for the next family celebration? And what’s the weather like at the holiday resort? The well-known quote from Bill Gates, “Information at your fingertips,” has become a comfortable reality for all of us. We click through links and websites and find the information that is most useful to us in the shortest possible time.
But what about our private data or our work materials? When it comes to the details of your own mobile phone contract or the company’s internal guidelines, search engines are only of limited help.
Chatbots can take our information procurement to the next level. There are already ways to link search engines and language models. The answer to a question is then no longer just a list of links, but a fully formulated answer in natural language and with a reference to the source. But that’s not all. Various other systems can be connected to chatbots via API, thus enabling access to the information they contain. For companies, this means that employees can quickly and easily access all relevant information or files with the help of chatbots. No more long searches in various filing and information systems are necessary.
We are certain that this progress will also find its way into the private sector in the near future. Then the respective chatbot may not only be able to announce the weather at the holiday resort, but also knows the details of the booking and, if necessary, the conditions of your travel health insurance. Anyone who has ever tried to switch to the best possible mobile phone contract knows that the comparison alone can take up several hours of lifetime. How pleasant would it be if the chatbot on the smartphone not only finds the optimal provider, but also knows how long your notice period is and directly pre-formulates the corresponding termination?
But beware. Not all obstacles have been removed yet. All currently available language models tend to hallucinate. Especially when the information you are looking for is not available. This phenomenon is currently occupying researchers and developers worldwide. At Splitbot, we increase the reliability and verifiability of the answers provided by specifying the sources used with each answer.
Thanks to the rapid development of chatbots and language models, the end of hallucinations is within reach and one can be curious to see in which areas of life chatbots will soon be introduced.
