The asymptotic limit a Chatbot can achieve is the perfect search engine.

· Bits and Bobs 9/7/26
  • The asymptotic limit a Chatbot can achieve is the perfect search engine.
    • Real search engines have a Coasian floor.
      • If the content that perfectly answers your question doesn't exist, or can't be found, then the query can only be answered approximately.
    • Content creation and indexing is a stochastic, indirect process, where some stranger needs to decide to write content that just so happens to answer your question before you ask it.
      • That worked for questions that lots of people had, or answers that did an approximate job of answering many specific questions.
    • To answer a question that doesn't have a perfectly-situated answer would require synthesis on the part of the questioner.
      • Doing many searches, clicking on many results, and doing their own synthesis situated to their specific needs.
    • LLMs drop that Coasian Floor to effectively zero.
    • LLMs can distill the perfectly-situated answer to many non-time-sensitive, non-proprietary-data-requiring questions themselves.
      • And if they can't, they can do searches and, with infinite patience, read many more results than you ever would have and distill an even better synthesized answer than you would have bothered to do.
    • This is extremely powerful to have perfectly situated answers to any questions.
      • Of course, people have to think to ask interesting or deep questions.
      • AI makes thinking 10x cheaper. Most people will use it to think 10x faster, but you can also use it to think 10x deeper.

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