I'm not downplaying the change improved interface at all. I think it's an extremely impactful change. But it isn't sorted out completely right now. The Google search box cannot be replaced by a LLM chatbot. I totally relate to your laptop example since I've experienced something similar myself. The main advantage with LLM/GPT is distilling something complex into a much simpler form with the ability to ask questions and maintain context.
In fact, your laptop example is a perfect illustration of my point. Finding a laptop for Linux gaming is extremely complex. Let's not kid ourselves. The number of things that can go wrong (especially with a Nvidia GPU) is bonkers - my machine completely nukes the display manager every time I update Debian forcing me to do a re-install of SDDM. But the problem here isn't fundamentally search. We know what we're looking for and the exact criteria. Like you said, the problem is collection and categorization of data and presenting it to the user in a helpful manner. This is a digital version of a computer salesman who actually knows their job. LLMs are just salesmen who know about a lot. I'm just extending this to teaching and the knowledge industries and saying, "Look, if you can present information about computers so well, you can tell me about heat death a lot better"
In fact, your laptop example is a perfect illustration of my point. Finding a laptop for Linux gaming is extremely complex. Let's not kid ourselves. The number of things that can go wrong (especially with a Nvidia GPU) is bonkers - my machine completely nukes the display manager every time I update Debian forcing me to do a re-install of SDDM. But the problem here isn't fundamentally search. We know what we're looking for and the exact criteria. Like you said, the problem is collection and categorization of data and presenting it to the user in a helpful manner. This is a digital version of a computer salesman who actually knows their job. LLMs are just salesmen who know about a lot. I'm just extending this to teaching and the knowledge industries and saying, "Look, if you can present information about computers so well, you can tell me about heat death a lot better"