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Bard and new AI features in Search

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Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#981

Post by bamboozled »

aix1 wrote: post #968
bamboozled wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also hamstrung by the fact is just makes things up? I actually think Microsoft is betting on the wrong dog. But let's see :)

> I actually think Microsoft is betting on the wrong dog. But let's see :) In your opinion, which dog should they be betting on?

Improving actual "search" and not just returning ads, SEO, blog spam etc?

Maybe they have the answers for ChatGPTs incorrectness but not really sure I'll be reaching for a product which is imagining the answers as it sees fit?

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#982

Post by pffft8888 »

ben_w wrote: post #916
pffft8888 wrote: post #821

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I define bias as not treating all political and philosophical opinions equally. If one is picked over the others, that is bias. I saw this bias and made many records of it in case of ChatGPT.

By that definition it's not possible to be unbiased, because moral relativity is itself a position.

That's meta bias, not bias per se.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#983

Post by jhoelzel »

WithinReason wrote: post #933
jhoelzel wrote: post #921

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but you do sure see the problem with a codebase right?

The current token limit comes from a O(N^2) memory requirements for N tokens, there is research that's trying to reduce this towards O(N), for example as the (downvoted) sibling comment suggests. This is not exactly straightforward but not impossible either. It's not a fundamental limitation of language models going forward.

that still will only be enough to hold an extended cli application

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#984

Post by [deleted] »

epistemer wrote: post #942
alvah wrote: post #890

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the jobs we have now resemble David Graeber's "Bullshit Jobs" though. I suspect many jobs that largely consist of making powerpoints and looking out of a window could disappear tomorrow without upsetting anyone except the incumbents.

I completely disagree and I love David Graeber. We will automate some bullshit jobs but create all kinds of new bullshit jobs that have titles that start with AI. Thousands of titles like "AI ____ ____ Manager" that also does nothing but schedule meetings about meetings about AI. The mistake to me is to believe bullshit jobs are the end result of some systemic inefficiency that AI is going to automate out of existenc…

[deleted]

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#985

Post by ben_w »

inimino wrote: post #957
ben_w wrote: post #916

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that definition it's not possible to be unbiased, because moral relativity is itself a position.

I think the point is when taking information from some source (like the web) to just represent that source fairly, which is a reasonable expectation of a search engine, for example.

"Fair" isn't well-defined. Is it "fair" if Amazon results are seen as "more trustworthy" than a random new startup web store? Even ignoring SEO manipulation of any rules publicly believed to exist, that's the default outcome for things like PageRank.

Going beyond sources to conclusions, given LLMs aren't search engines and do synthesise results:

Politically, low-tax advocates see it as "fair" for people to take home as much as possible of what they earn, high-tax advocates see it as "fair" for broad shoulders to carry the most and also for them to contribute the most back to the societies that enabled them to succeed.

Is the current status of Americans whose ancestors were literally slaves made "fair" by the fact that slavery has ended and all humans are equal in law? Or are there still systematic injustices, created in that era, whose echos today still make things unfair?

Who has the most to blame for climate change, the nations with the largest integrated historical emissions even where most of the people who did the emitting have died of old age, or the largest emitters today?

And so on.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#986

Post by simiones »

jononor wrote: post #975
simiones wrote: post #946

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Google launches this tool, Google will make money off the answers this tool provides. The fact that this tool is trained on the content from SO will not mean SO gets any money. Also, if users just get the answers from Google Bard, they will not visit SO, and will not contribute to SO's community or revenue. So, the SO community will eventually die if Google Bard is good enough. The whole premise of the economics o…

Stack Of never paid anyone though, so it seems possible for Google to launch a service where people answer questions to feed the AI and give back similar tokens as SO. I mean, they could make a game, where people have to try to beat the AI (and other humans) in making the best answers to questions.

Sure, they can try to essentially create and run a new SO - though that's still far more costly than what they did today. Especially when considering similar effects on other content sites.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#987

Post by thegabriele »

simiones wrote: post #879
hcks wrote: post #878

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand this scenario. If someone already posted the answer then asking the question again on SO has no value. If the LLM can automate giving answers then we don’t need SO as much as before.

> If the LLM can automate giving answers then we don’t need SO as much as before. This is probably the misunderstanding: the LLM can only automate giving answers because it has been trained on all of SO (or other similar communities). It's a summary of SO, not an alternative to it. When new problems arise, the LLM will need to be re-trained to include the new SO answers, it will not be able to synthesize new knowledg…

If this the case? If the LLM must be re-trained each time a new problem arises, it means that it doesn't "reason"...so what's the point?

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#988

Post by flakeoil »

zone411 wrote: post #971
flakeoil wrote: post #866

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It maybe doesn't drive much traffic directly from Wikipedia, but you might have a higher SEO rank when people search in google for whatever your sites are about. Thanks to the links from Wikipedia.

If you view the source of any Wikipedia page, they purposefully include "nofollow" tags, so Google ignores these links!

"nofollow" or not, it does not mean that search engines do not take that into account. They maybe don't scan the linked site there and then, but I would be surprised if they did not take note of that someone linked to it.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#989

Post by joshspankit »

mclightning wrote: post #972
addandsubtract wrote: post #919

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correction: the AI will ask the questions it couldn't find a high enough confidence answer to. We are all now working for the AI to find niche scraps of knowledge that haven't been indexed.

30 years old, engineer here. I am starting to get really scared. I don't mean that for my job security. We are just starting to observe societal effects of social media. We haven't reached the era where we, as an entire species, recognise and regulate it impacts legally & properly. I am starting to feel like we are losing it against the machine as a species. I don't fear being replaced, but I feel the culture getting…

Yes and: I’d argue that whoever has been distorting social media to further their own goals (for example the Cambridge Analyticas) has already mangled culture enough that the transition to AI might be imperceptible.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#990

Post by VeninVidiaVicii »

simiones wrote: post #879
hcks wrote: post #878

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand this scenario. If someone already posted the answer then asking the question again on SO has no value. If the LLM can automate giving answers then we don’t need SO as much as before.

> If the LLM can automate giving answers then we don’t need SO as much as before. This is probably the misunderstanding: the LLM can only automate giving answers because it has been trained on all of SO (or other similar communities). It's a summary of SO, not an alternative to it. When new problems arise, the LLM will need to be re-trained to include the new SO answers, it will not be able to synthesize new knowledg…

I’m not convinced the LLM doesn’t have emergent answers. I often ask ChatGPT questions about data wrangling that are quite esoteric, such as “write some code in R that sorts an array as alphabetical, but puts x and y at the beginning”. Even if it gives the wrong answer at first, it seems to get it right eventually.
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