I use perplexity.ai more than google now. I still don’t love it and it’s more of a testament to how far google has fallen than the usefulness of AI, but I do find myself using it to get a start on basic searches. It is, dare I say, good at calorie counting and language learning things. Helps calculate calorie to gram ratios and the math is usually correct. It also helps me with German, since it’s good at finding patterns and how German people typically say what I am trying to say, instead of just running it through a translator which may or not have the correct context.
I do miss the days where I could ask AI to talk like Obama while he’s taking a shit during an earthquake. ChatGPT would let you go off the rails when it first came out. That was a lot of fun and I laughed pretty hard at the stupid scenarios I could come up with. I’m probably the reason the guardrails got added.
I don’t think it is personally but I think that depends on your thoughts about its character. To use an analogy, if you think of metal bands where swapping out members is quite common, I’d argue that the changes are much more noticeable than on something like a PC. The vocal or lyrical style changes, or the guitar solos, while still good lose something in their character.
Thinking of my own computers going from when I was 17 to the one I have now at 37, the technology is so vastly improved that the character would’ve been lost with most upgrades.
I think unless it’s a purely cosmetic change or maybe a storage upgrade, i.e. an improvement to existing components, it just isn’t the same.
That’s just me. This was a very interesting question.