Consensus may be better than Google

When ChatGPT came out in late 2022, we started to wonder if an AI chatbot could eventually replace Google. Google was certainly scared by all the attention AI was getting at the time. Every Google announcement since then has been full of AI. That’s what Google products are all about, and it’s all for the good of its search engine.

One of the problems with ChatGPT and its rivals was that they confidently offered factual information that was completely wrong. Almost two years later, generative AI chatbots can still hallucinate false information.

Google introduced AI to Google Search last year in beta. This year, it launched AI Overviews, making it available in Google search results in the U.S. But AI Overviews has been a huge failure for the company, as it continues to publish factually incorrect information.

This brings us to a whole new breed of AI search engine, one that aims to consistently provide only accurate information. The only problem is that Consensus is a service that most people haven’t heard of. And even if you do hear about it, you might not find a good use for it, no matter how reliable it is.

Consensus isn’t here to compete with Google Search or OpenAI’s upcoming SearchGPT. The site doesn’t cover general information like traditional search engines, whether AI is involved or not.

Instead, Consensus only considers information from research papers published online. Consensus has access to about 200 million studies. Simply go to the Consensus app on the web at this link and ask a question conversationally, just as you would in ChatGPT.

The questions you ask Consensus need to focus on some kind of scientific data. Perhaps you want to know whether adding a particular supplement to your diet can improve running performance. Ask Consensus and they will tell you exactly how many studies have been published on the subject and what they say.

The AI ​​search engine will even give you a “consensus score” that shows how the results differ. Not all scientific studies may reach the same conclusion.

You also get a research summary and snapshots for each article cited by the AI ​​search engine. And yes, you can see the actual studies if you want to dig deeper into a specific article.

Finally, you can also chat with Consensus just like you do with ChatGPT, provided you enable Copilot. The app uses OpenAI’s GPT-4 to generate some of its responses.

You can use Consensus for free forever to get answers to your academic questions. However, the free plan restricts access to GPT-4. Paid subscriptions start at $8.99 per year or $11.99 per month. Student discounts are also available. Students are probably one of the categories best served by such an AI search engine.

I may not always have a use for Consensus, but I’m already sold, at least as far as the free experience goes. I’ll bookmark the AI ​​search engine and use it whenever I suspect that scientists may have already tried to answer a specific question I may have.