> While I can’t share all the queries, they tended to be starting points in a larger journey. People asked for product recommendations to start a new hobby, or for evidence to support a career transition.
The conclusion the author mentioned is:
> Since these queries had no singular answer, no single document would suffice and no algorithm could perfectly rank the content to deliver a tidy answer.
I agree - BUT - I think outsourcing this is the wrong approach for the people asking the question. If you're starting a new hobby, you probably want to gain the context from researching the topic. They used the example of kayaking. In the process of researching a good kayak, you'll likely come across domain experts and their blogs, talks, etc that can share the WHY as well as the answer. This may lead you to gain new insights for your hobby. The other example is starting a career, and i think the same conclusion applies that if you want to become an X, you should ideally learn other people's view on X and the day to day tasks, and growth opportunities, and what makes a good X, not just "steps to become an X".
Maybe sharing the citations and research is the answer needed to these questions - like a real research paper.
Things like "romantic getaways near SF" or "traveling to hawaii with kids" are things where you just want an answer, not the best answer seem like a better fit.
sk55 shared this very interesting link [0] which outlines how a complex question could be broken down into micro-tasks and assembled into an answer. The interesting thing here is that each of those steps is now within the realm of automation by Transformer-based models. With the addition of a UI that encourages exploration/refinement of the query, it could be a good way to quickly gain an understanding about a broad topic.
This is one of the many theses we are exploring. Another one is that "A Google Replacement Will Not Look Like Google" [1]
[0] https://joe.cat/CHI-ka/ [1] https://re-search.xyz/writing/mapping-the-new-world-towards-...
Is that the end-game of the startup you mentioned?
I imagine that whoever runs such a service would get hounded by paid placement opportunities if it takes off. A similar issue plagues browser extension devs.
Here's the relevant research paper: https://joe.cat/CHI-ka/
Looks like a very similar process you landed on except their approach has many workers crowdsourcing the answer together.
There's nothing wrong with targeting the market that is OK with context-less (or context-poor) search, but it's worth finding out how strongly you're positioning yourself against the somewhat overcrowded "virtual assistant" market, and how you'll differentiate.
That would save me so much time - and maybe change the world. In fact, it really could be and should be free. Beyond possible access to DRM'd info, such as the textbooks, it's just search engine for a limited curated set of sources.
If that's really the case, it's probably better not to tell anyone.
The current state of search tools doesn't make it easy to answer complex questions so complex questions go unanswered. By lowering the activation energy to do an activity, the market for that activity increases. That doesn't mean that activity didn't ever matter.
