The search is over: Ask me anything.

OpenAI’s limited beta of a search product — SearchGPT — seemed to come out of nowhere. The news immediately dinged shares in Alphabet, whose search dominance is so acute that any loss would be considered material. But while it was reported with the breathlessness AI stories still command (full disclosure — it was our top story that day) it seems more iterative than revolutionary. Indeed: OpenAI says it intends to integrate SearchGPT it into ChatGPT — whose Nov. 30, 2022 release actually did shake the world.

There’ll be lots of this for a few years, assuming our unexpectedly sentient robot overlords don’t kill us in our sleep. But I’d like to suggest something truly radical:

Stop calling it search.

I teased this a month ago. Here’s a reminder:

Getting a quick, accurate answer from a computer is not too much to ask. It's something my generation assumed we'd have by now, because we saw it in the late 1960s on the USS Enterprise and from HAL.

We want answers. “Search” was enshrined because the World Wide Web was so wide that you had a hard time find something you could use and ended up just having fun stumbling on things. Think of search in an IRL context: You have to cover a lot of territory, using lots of resource, including time. Internet search solved this.

Then came Web 2.0. As described by TechTarget:

Web 2.0 reflects the new age of the internet, which puts greater emphasis on social networking, cloud computing, higher participation levels and sharing information between internet users. While Web 2.0 doesn't signify a technical upgrade, it does reflect a shift in the way the internet is consumed. Social media sites, web apps and self-publishing platforms -- such as Facebook and WordPress -- gained popularity during this shift.

So the whole point of the internet is good information at your fingertips. Search describes the process. Answers are the goal. OpenAI knows this. It says SearchGPT is a tool which will serve up “fast and timely answers with clear and reliable sources” (emphasis added).

But answer engine sounds lame. What would you call it?

We covered three somewhat related stories about the jobs market:

• Job market sours for recent grads
• Hiring-spree, talent-war era over
• Career confidence ebbs to new low

The upshot? The Great Resignation (or Great Reshuffle is you prefer) is over. It was a bubble, of course, caused by the incalculable disruption of the COVID years — the effects of which also continue to vex the Fed.

Facts are facts, of course, but feelings are squishy. LinkedIn’s Workforce Confidence Report found that optimism had ticked down this year to a level not seen before the pandemic era — this despite a still very solid jobs market and historically low unemployment.

Members had thoughts:

Matt Gillespie

Rojo Mathai

Sam Altman sure likes big reveals … A foundation he and other tech titans backed released the findings of the most comprehensive study of universal basic income ever conducted. As LinkedIn News reported:

Analysis of the test, conducted by OpenResearch in Texas and Illinois, showed that low-income Americans who were given $1,000 per month used the extra cash for food and rent and offered financial support to family and friends. The study — the largest of its kind — and others like it have found support from tech founders as concerns grow that automation and artificial intelligence could replace many traditional jobs.

The key finding was that recipients didn’t leave the workforce, though some cut back. $1,000 a month isn’t enough to live on, but it is enough to provide breathing space. And it allows one to decide just how to change things up. As reported by Bloomberg:

“Cash is flexible,” said Elizabeth Rhodes, OpenResearch’s research director. “It's an imprecise instrument if your goal is to move one outcome for everyone, but it moves some or many outcomes for everyone.”

The conversation here was mainly about whether it makes a difference if UBI is a government initiative, or private sector, which would be more akin to charity.

Eric Thoreson Gene Milford

We are probably years away — if ever — of UBI becoming anything approaching mainstream. But the idea is appealing and it is interesting to see that the divide is more about who pays than if giving people free money is bad for one’s character. So if billionaires want to spend a little less on rockets and super yachts for this — be my guest.