This is a story that's been rotating through the media since ChatGPT first released.
I have an unpopular opinion about this headline after seeing the media cycle repeatedly downplay/ignore what Alphabet has been doing in response to OpenAI: Google the search engine is not in direct competition with ChatGPT, but Gemini is, and Alphabet is smart to keep simpler/time-tested search functionality central to Google rather than react strongly and scrap the keyword-based search bar that users understand are comfortable using - especially older users, but I think most people are starting to discover they have a use for both search and LLM chats.
I think there are two product categories here, which first looked like they were going to converge in 2022-2024, but which are now slowly changing course as customers start to comprehend how both are necessary for different purposes.
When I make chats in ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude etc, I am starting to plan them longitudinally so that I can use them over and over for a specific project or query type.
When I turn to a search bar, it's because I really want a proxy for a specific website or between me and whatever weird site has the answer to my specific question. It's not that I want discussion and a chat about it, I just want Google's card-like results with a website index I can read instead of that website's stylized, animated web design on top or popups or malware.
Every time I get sucked into a chat with Bing CoPilot(ChatGPT) when I really only had a web search query, I regret wasting my time talking to the LLM. Almost as a reflex, I've started avoiding it for most things now.
This is incredibly simple to fix.
Prosecute the power companies for their gross negligence leading to deadly wildfires instead of giving them a free pass every time - there are multiple opportunities to do this every year, like this: Reuters: PG&E Guilty On 84 counts
Instead of plain monetary fees, we just need more severe sentencing.
For example: In the interest of public safety, confiscate large swaths of the infrastructure implicated in the manslaughter, including the resources necessary to maintain it and the consumer contracts funding it.
Build in community service agreements forcing them to subcontract their own personnel to train a new state power agency on the intricacies of the confiscated equipment of the following years.
The more manslaughter, the bigger the state agency becomes until there is no longer a profit motive behind our power infrastructure.