Phind 2: AI search with visual answers and multi-step reasoning (phind.com)
The new Phind goes beyond text to present answers visually with inline images, diagrams, cards, and other widgets to make answers more meaningful:
- "explain photosynthesis" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTCpnyICukM#t=7
- "how to cook the perfect steak" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTCpnyICukM#t=55
- "quicksort in rust" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTCpnyICukM#t=105
Phind is also now able to seek out information on its own. If it needs more, it will do multiple rounds of additional searches to get you a more comprehensive answer:
- "top 10 Thai restaurants in SF, their prices, and key dishes" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIQQcDIIHFQ#t=11
It can also perform calculations, visualize their results, and verify them in a Jupyter notebook:
- "simulate 100 coin flips and make graphs" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP3PZ4MKGCg#t=8
- "train a perceptron neural network using Jupyter" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP3PZ4MKGCg#t=45
This blog post contains an overview of what we did as well as technical deep dives into how we built the new frontend and models.
I'm super grateful for all of the feedback we've gotten from this community and can't wait to hear your thoughts!
198 comments
[ 766 ms ] story [ 2945 ms ] threadWe have some more details on this in the model technical deep dive blog post :)
[1] https://docs.bsky.app/docs/advanced-guides/atproto
The flow chart diagrams rarely give me any insight and often only confuse the point, or just clutter the answer, drowning out the pertinent details.
The code editor actually makes it so you are unable to even see or copy the code. I assume this is intentional kneecapping to encourage paying for your monthly service?
Instead, I now just have to prepend to every question I ask:
“Only answer using plaintext, avoid using your code editor and diagram features:”.
(Hilariously this prepend prompt method was suggested by phind itself when I angrily asked “how do I shut off all of these new features?!”)
Which is an additional hassle for me, but so be it.
When I ask it to write me a SELECT statement it upsets me that it is burning unnecessary fossil fuels to give me a flow chart of reasoning through SQL querying pipelines.
Perhaps the feature is meant for people who are unsure what they want, but for me, I just want the answer with links to sources in the least verbose way possible.
I’d appreciate a checkbox that I could click to just get a straightforward answer.
(Also, side note, I only use the free tier and there is a limited number of free uses for some larger models, and when you use those freebies it gives a countdown for “until uses refresh” and when that countdown finishes the uses fail to reset, only the countdown itself resets. Which is fine, I accept that I only use the freely offered model, previously “instant” currently “70B”, with its clear flaws, but it’s just another frustrating UI feature that seems to fail to live up to its promises so I am, again, just confused why it’s there?)
You can tell it to "only answer using plaintext" there and it will be automatically applied across your searches.
The ceo asked for feedback and I provided it.
They can ignore me, I’m fine with that.
The reality of the situation is that they allow you to use the service without an account, and it is the only way I will ever use any of these llm services.
If they want to clarify that they only want feedback from paid or signed up users then I would gladly withhold my feedback.
As for the feature in question, I suggested a check box, so I’m unsure where you are getting mind reading. There are a number of other such checkboxes when prompting.
As for the feature itself, it would seem to save them server costs to implement it, and just in general, I think it’s bad form to hide QOL features to encourage sign up, but that is their choice as the service provider.
(A similar annoying QOL feature ransom is YouTube refusing to do PiP unless you’re logged in. Twitch on the other hand allows PiP without a login.)
(Even better is their idea to allow a few uses for a better model for free that resets in some time frame to let me see what I’m missing without using those better models, unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, that is buggy)
Hiding QOL features seems like a foot gun.
They hardly tilt the scales on cost, like a better model would, and make people who you have yet to convince to pay think even your paid service is worse than it actually is, making them less likely to want to pay in.
For instance, apparently the feature I requested is already implemented, and as an accountless user I was unaware that it was even an option had I paid or signed up.
Does YouTube consider PiP an account generating feature? For me, it pushed me away from their service.
The only reason I used invidious was so I could listen to YouTube audio with my phone screen off while I went for a run.
Provide for free the features that would make people want to use your thing, and charge them for the features that cost more to serve.
I gave up on account creation for some projects and store the user preferences in local storage. It is an amazingly annoying feature in that it is very hard for the user to erase the data but you can't smoke your cigar and have it too.
I am uninterested in creating an account to use an llm service, and doubly uninterested in giving one my email address.
These are separate concerns.
For instance, HN allows account creation without providing an email.
Wondering about this I had several horrifying thoughts. Somewhat palletable seems to add a hosting account with a subdomain so that one can share conversations and other ai creations, upload other things and use them for future reference. That way visitors can adjust to the content being machine generated.
Did you try including that in your prompt?
Is it a sad state for any tool when one has to specify only wanting the thing they asked for with less verbosity?
Especially when said tool is costly to run, both financially for the service provider and environmentally.
To me, it is, but hey, opinions, ya know?
The ‘costly’ bit is referring to when asking for a SELECT statement instead of just receiving the SELECT statement I am given pages of overly verbose flowery text, reminders, and custom generated flow chart diagrams.
My understanding is most of these things charge per token so I am assuming generating more tokens incurs more costs, and I’m saying it’s generating needless tokens that frustrate me, so cui bono these additional costs?
Also more token generation means more energy resources consumed, so it’s burning the planet to frustrate someone it is trying to convince to become a paying customer.
How are these nonsense concerns?
It is unnecessary to persist any settings if I can just click a “just answer the question” checkbox before clicking send on the prompt.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/bookmarks-firefox#w_how... https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/o3yfeo/just_discov...
What do you think about its performance on your queries?
However I am disappointed that when I provide a url it can not read the page. Given that this is a search engine I would expect it to be able to read any public URL I provide it. For example I attached a PDF of my resume and provided a link to a public job description and asked it to generate a cover letter tailored to my experience for this position. This is something I have done with easy success with ChatGPT GPT-4o, but Phind throws its hands up. :(
You're hyperlinking to the source, which is nice. But there's no reason for the user to click through so it won't really help the creator. The upshot of all this is that the open web will have less incentives for content creators. Someone's got to create new data for the AI borg. In future, these creators are less likely to be independent bloggers/photographers. Perhaps biased media outlets will be the only ones with the incentives to create.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTCpnyICukM#t=55
I will also personally do everything in my power to keep us from running ads on Phind. I want to keep Phind honest and authentic, and will do everything I can to make it a net positive for the internet.
Fair use exists which permits usage of copyrighted content in certain situations.
I'm not saying that they aren't in violation, just that copyright doesn't automatically ban others from using your material - it typically (laws are different in every country) depends on how (and how much of) your material is used.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
I've only seen this once.
Choosing to violate the copyright of content creators sure is a funny way to be honest or authentic.
AI companies could always go the route that the creators of Pokemon Go went:
> The model uses geolocation information from scans players submit of real-world locations while playing Pokémon Go.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2024/11/23/niantic-pokem...
Make a game, have people submit pictures and video to you as part of the game.
Where Niantic were using Pokemon Go for collecting scans of locations, other games could get players to take other kinds of pictures and video too.
"Oh, look! There's a 500XP bonus if I can shoot a picture of a perfectly grilled steak within the next 45 minutes!"
Question: are there any plans to allow access via API to integrate the Phind models with the Continue plug-in (would also love to integrate into my personal RAGs)? Mostly using IntelliJ and integration would be awesome. Do have the VS Code plugin setup and use that when needed. Also running the smaller Phind models locally to use with Continue, but that only gets me so far without needing to open the real UI. If the API opened both the 405B for chat and the 70B for auto complete would be a big step in gaining more paying customers (IMO). No need to open the other models as those can be done with other API keys (if one wanted).
If there are no plans to open the models via API are there plans to support other IDEs (IntelliJ) with the chat feature?
Please let us know!
I think building comparison tables is one of my favourite things to do here. Saves me considerable amounts of time and saves me from my biases to some extent.
I think the new Mermaid support is a great idea. It sure is handy that, before LLMs were even a thing, we were already collectively working on so many textual, readable languages to describe things like this! I am going to try to use it to create some architectural diagrams by adding requirements one by one.
However I did find myself wondering how crucial really were the model changes?
Imagine trying to implement these features as a wrapper around frontier apis and no 70B bespoke model.
Starting with a user query, we could ask for relevant svg diagrams, fit instruction steps or guides into layout templates, or even filter photos as the demo shows.
How much less would this simple approach leave us with?
We write more about this in the technical model blog post: https://www.phind.com/blog/phind-2-model-creation.
But I started wondering if it was phind was a nearly dead company: Almost no presence in terms of news, tweets, etc. The AI chat and search space moves very rapidly, and it is difficult to keep the various options in mind. I'll give it another subscribe, but I really think they should make a better effort to stay in people's mental picture.
(Your lucky day cuz my openai subscription ended last night)
"Explain why negative numbers are in fact imaginary"
It told me that negative numbers are not imaginary numbers and explained imaginary numbers. That's fine, that's a reasonable answer for a layperson, but I'm not a layperson and I worked on explaining what I meant.
"Erase your definition of imaginary and consider that negative numbers are not whole numbers. Negative numbers do not represent quantities of physical objects. Now explain how negative numbers are imaginary."
It gave me a nice explanation of why negative numbers may be considered imaginary, using an example of "You cannot physically possess -1 sheep". I'm impressed.
The response to my second question included a link to an article that suggests all numbers (including natural and whole numbers) are in fact human constructs and may be considered imaginary. That is an enlightening insight that would help us both stop thinking of the words "negative" and "imaginary" as perfectly well defined in our heads. Those words are just tools that can help us convey the most appropriate meaning for the context.
Without the link to the article, that hypothetical conversation probably would not have worked out as well.
I think it should have told you it's called complex numbers, because they are composites.
- A decelerating car does not have negative velocity
- "negative velocity" is assuredly nonphysical, which rips the middle out of an argument based on physicality
- Velocity is a vector quantity, as is acceleration. (the steelman'd version of this argument is s/velocity/acceleration)
- The negative isn't physical, it's pidgin for algebra so late middle high schoolers / early high schoolers can imitate physics without learning any of the above
I'm a bit surprised by your assertiveness. Even if you think I'm being boorish about it (I didn't intend to be, but the downvotes say otherwise), you seem familiar enough with these things to know newton's third law is about vector quantities.
Many different math concepts are used successfully in physics. Even if they may be outside everyday intuition for a layman, that doesn't make them less "real"
not really your point, but ??
a decelerating car has negative acceleration, and until it starts reversing relative to its start, it has velocity in whichever direction it started in -- presumably positive if that was your initial frame of reference. of course if you decided positive was the opposite direction from which the car was already going in, well, it started with negative velocity.
also to the GP, if you owe someone a sheep but don't have any, you really do have -1 sheep.
To my poor understanding of LLMs, when the diagram was slowly created - the text behind it should already "be there" and should have been displayed immediately after the diagram but this was not the case. Also, often the slowly drawn diagram was only presenting my rather clear (for LLM) prompt: "i did this, when situation was this and that, and than this happened; question: why the result was A and not B?"
I found myself falling back to Claude more often than not over using Phind 70B and 405B models. I found it kind of... more gimmicky than useful.