New advanced chatbot "may eliminate" search engines like Google, says Gmail creator

The man who created Gmail said its parent Google may only have a year or two left before “total disruption” after the release of ChatGPT, an advanced AI chatbot.

Released last week by OpenAI, a company co-founded by tech billionaire Elon Musk, ChatGPT can be asked to generate long-form writing like essays, song lyrics, marketing pitches, lines of code and more – all from a text prompt.

Social media has been abuzz with discussions about how such an advanced AI will change our lives. One area set for extreme disruption is education, with some commenters saying that ChatGPT will make homework obsolete.

Wondering about the implications of ChatGPT in education. Here it wrote a decent book review template of Animal Farm.

Supposedly the answers it provides are not plagiarized. pic.twitter.com/rkMAcRH6nx

— Freddie Carthy 🇺🇦 (@FreddieCarthy) December 6, 2022

Its ability to answer complex questions has also led some to ask if ChatGPT could challenge modern search engines, especially Google’s current monopoly.

One person who believes it can is Paul Buchheit, the software developer who created Gmail.

“Google may be only a year or two away from total disruption. AI will eliminate the search engine result page, which is where they make most of their money,” he tweeted after ChatGPT’s release.

“Even if they catch up on AI, they can't fully deploy it without destroying the most valuable part of their business!”

Google may be only a year or two away from total disruption. AI will eliminate the Search Engine Result Page, which is where they make most of their money.

Even if they catch up on AI, they can't fully deploy it without destroying the most valuable part of their business! https://t.co/jtq25LXdkj

— Paul Buchheit (@paultoo) December 1, 2022

He added in a later tweet a new Google AI search may use the “old search engine backend” to gather information and links to summarize.

As an example of disruption, Buchheit pointed to paper phone directories – “the pre-Internet business that Google killed.”

“The Yellow Pages used to be a great business, but then Google got so good that everyone stopped using the yellow pages,” he said.

“AI will do the same thing to web search.”