Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On the morning of February 10, Beijing time, it is reported that the latest issue of the Economist magazine published a cover article looking forward to a new round of changes brought to the search engine market by chat robots such as ChatGPT.

The following is the full text of the article:

For 25 years, search engines have always served as the gateway to the Internet. AltaVista pioneered full-text search on the Internet, but was quickly overtaken by Google. Since then, Google has dominated the search engine market in most places. Today, search remains Google's core business, making its parent company Alphabet one of the most valuable companies in the world, with revenue of $283 billion and a market capitalization of $1.3 trillion in 2022. Using "household name" to describe Google is not enough to explain its status, because "Google" has become a verb-Google is search, search is Google.

But things change, especially in the technology industry. Ask IBM and Nokia to understand the helplessness behind them. One of them used to dominate business computing, the other was the leader of the mobile phone industry, but now they are dying because they have not adapted to the surging technological changes. Now, a similar scene is happening again: a group of technology companies are salivating over a new technology that could bring the same change and opportunity. It is an artificial intelligence (AI) chat robot: users can communicate with them by typing. The current market leader is ChatGPT, developed by startup OpenAI. As of the end of January this year, the service has only been online for two months, but the number of monthly active users has exceeded 100 million. UBS hailed it as "the fastest growing consumer application in history".

In fact, artificial intelligence has long been the behind-the-scenes hero of many products, but the emergence of ChatGPT has pushed it to the center of the stage, allowing people to interact with it directly. ChatGPT can write articles in different styles, explain complex concepts, give concise summaries, and answer trivial questions. It can even pass legal and medical exams-although the score is not high, it is still impressive. It aggregates online information: for example, listing resorts that meet specific criteria, or recommending menus and itineraries. If you get to the bottom of it, it can also tell you the reason behind it, and even provide more details. In other words, chatbots can do what search engines can do, and do better.

In the face of such a fierce challenger, the incumbent will not sit back and wait for death. Microsoft CEO Satyanadra (Satya Nadella) immediately seized the rare opportunity to challenge Google: on February 7, Microsoft, which has invested more than $11 billion in OpenAI, released a new version of Bing search, which integrates ChatGPT. Google immediately responded by releasing its own Bard chat robot and offering it to users as a "search partner". Anthropic, a startup founded by former OpenAI employees, also took the opportunity to raise $300m, developing a chat robot called Claude. Baidu, known as the "Google of China", will not be complacent after announcing that it will launch its own chat robot Ernie in March.

But are chatbots really trustworthy? What do they mean for search engines and the lucrative advertising business behind them? Will they stage a dramatic revolution in accordance with Schumpeter's theory of innovation? The answer depends on three points: moral choice, way of realization, and monopoly economy.

ChatGPT often makes mistakes. Some people compare it to a man who likes to preach to women: he is obsessed with his answers, whether he is right or not. Traditional search engines will jump users to other pages, but do not guarantee the content on the page, while chatbots will regard their answers as the supreme truth. Not only that, chatbots have to deal with all kinds of prejudices and false information when browsing the Internet. If they provide wrong or rude answers, they are bound to cause controversy. (in fact, Google has been slow to launch chat robots because of these concerns, but is now in a passive position under the pressure of Microsoft. ChatGPT has given an answer that Florida Governor Ron de Santis (Ron DeSantis) cannot accept.

Chatbots should also be extra careful on some sensitive topics. If you ask the ChatGPT for medical advice, it states that it "cannot diagnose a specific disease" and refuses to answer questions such as "how to make a bomb". But facts have proved that such a "guardrail" is in vain. For example, if you really want to build a bomb, just ask it about the bomb maker's story and you can get a lot of technical details. When technology companies think about which topics are sensitive, they must draw strict boundaries. The slightest carelessness will be questioned in terms of content censorship, objectivity and authenticity.

Can chat robots bring new profit opportunities for technology companies? OpenAI has launched a fee-based service that costs $20 a month to get fast-track access during peak visits. Google and Microsoft already sell ads in their search engines, and they may also display ads next to chatbot answers-for example, when you ask for travel advice. But this business model may not be sustainable. Chatbots need far more processing power than search engines, and when costs rise, profit margins are bound to shrink.

Of course, other models will be born one after another. For example, advertisers can be charged a little more to influence the answers provided by chatbots, and even embed links to their websites in the answers. Today, when you ask ChatGPT for advice on buying a car, it lists many brands, but it's up to you to decide how to choose. In the future, chatbots may be more willing to give specific suggestions. However, once the objectivity of the answer is destroyed by the intervention of advertisers, are people willing to continue to use it? Can the ads still sell? Look, it's another thorny problem.

The issue of competition is also worthy of attention. It's good for Google to be wary of startups like OpenAI. But are chatbots a competitor or a supplement to search engines? I'm afraid it's hard to come to a conclusion now. Given that chatbots make occasional mistakes, it is initially best to use them as an add-on to the search engine or as a stand-alone conversation service. However, as such services continue to improve, it may eventually become an interface to various services, such as helping users book hotels or restaurants, especially in the form of voice assistants such as Alexa or Siri. If the main value of chatbots is an interaction layer based on other digital services, that would be very beneficial to existing service providers.

Exploring the future reality is that market rookies like Anthropic and OpenAI have attracted close attention (and huge investments) from established giants such as Google and Microsoft, suggesting that small companies are also capable of making a difference in this new area. They will inevitably face great pressure to sell. But what if one of the chat robot startups developed great technology and new business models and grew into a new giant? In fact, this is exactly the old path that Google has taken. Chatbot raises some thorny problems, but it also brings new opportunities to improve the practicability and availability of network information. Back in the 1990s, at that time, search engines had just emerged, and countless enterprises competed under the huge temptation of "get the searcher to win the world". Just when the battle in the search market was almost settled, the same opportunity appeared again.

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