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Google is picking ChatGPT responses from Quora as correct answer

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Re: Google is picking ChatGPT responses from Quora as correct answer

#211

Post by garfieldnate »

itsoktocry wrote: post #156
alasdair_ wrote: post #153

Quora is clearly doing this so that they rank highly on Google and get clicks. What surprises me is that Google doesn't seem to care, despite their stance that "Using automation—including AI—to generate content with the primary purpose of manipulating ranking in search results is a violation of our spam policies." https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/02/google-sea...

> Quora is clearly doing this so that they rank highly on Google and get clicks. Quora is garbage and always has been. For a while people thought it was going to be the place where smart insiders provided great answers. Then it turned into another spammy Q&A site that forces you to log in..because VCs need their money.

Back in 2013 or so Quora was absolutely amazing, flowing with content so fascinating and enriching that I had to unsubscribe from updates because I would just spend my entire day reading there. I was sad to come back many years later and find it mostly overtaken by ads and spam.

Re: Google is picking ChatGPT responses from Quora as correct answer

#213

Post by iteratethis »

joelthelion wrote: post #187
itsoktocry wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Quora is clearly doing this so that they rank highly on Google and get clicks. Quora is garbage and always has been. For a while people thought it was going to be the place where smart insiders provided great answers. Then it turned into another spammy Q&A site that forces you to log in..because VCs need their money.

For a short period of time it was indeed a good place to get answers from knowledgeable people, and they allowed a wider range of questions than Stack Exchange, which was nice. But it's been complete garbage for several years now. The space is ripe for disruption :)

The disruption needed is to keep it small and focuses on quality. Every platform that has its "eternal september" ends up ruined in the way you describe.

Re: Google is picking ChatGPT responses from Quora as correct answer

#214

Post by mrguyorama »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #114
goodluckchuck wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Post-truth is the greatest step toward truth in human history. For centuries the clergy, government, media, and corporations have owned the Truth and defined the Overton window. Post-truth’s overwhelming flood of true, false, and irrelevant claims is empowering critical thinking. It’s offering freedom. The printing press led to the renaissance. The internet is now leading a new one. There will continue to be protests…

> Post-truth’s overwhelming flood of true, false, and irrelevant claims is empowering critical thinking. It’s offering freedom. By and large, critical thinking hasn't been taught effectively in public schools for at least 10 years now. Even when it was, only a fraction of the public were able to think independently and logically in such a way as to eliminate spurious data/voices and deduce the truth accurately. Far f…

Schools ATTEMPT to teach "critical thinking" and things like media literacy but little timmy's dad says liberals are trying to indoctrinate him and little timmy sits in class bitching about "I'll never use any of this"

Re: Google is picking ChatGPT responses from Quora as correct answer

#215

Post by floydnoel »

gs17 wrote: post #180
sanj wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar experience trying to find a justification for a “House rule” we use when playing Catan (aka “the penny rule”). In trying to find a reputable source, the first result was to an HN comment… that I wrote. The folks we were playing with were not convinced.

Searching for it now there's also a Reddit post mentioning it, but that might also be from you/your friends. I like that rule, but I can see it being hard to convince people to use it despite it obviously making the game more fair.

Well at least we’re talking about it now! What is the rule?

Re: Google is picking ChatGPT responses from Quora as correct answer

#216

Post by water-data-dude »

jsnell wrote: post #23

What I don't understand is why Quora would be auto-generating an answer for this question in the first place. The theory in the tweet that it's about identifying a frequent query doesn't really explain anything: the question already had two answers written by humans years ago, there was no need for them to come up with additional answers.

It might be SEO shenanigans, trying to bump a page up in the search rankings with new activity.

Re: Google is picking ChatGPT responses from Quora as correct answer

#217

Post by famouswaffles »

mike741 wrote: post #173
famouswaffles wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They are great at making word soup, but not great at diagnosis. No they are. >There have been expert systems since the 90's that perform better on average than doctors when diagnosing illness in patients, No there has not been. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10425828/

66% accuracy is not "great" and definitely not the best there's ever been.

If they aren't great then neither are doctors and the word becomes meaningless.

Context is important. 66% accuracy on cases that stumped doctors and took extensive testing is not trivial. It's not the same as 66% accuracy for everyday diagnosis.

Re: Google is picking ChatGPT responses from Quora as correct answer

#218

Post by dang »

zadik wrote: post #128
ssl232 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, there was only a narrow period a long time ago where Quora was usable and useful. It's been a domain I've skipped visiting in search results for maybe 10 years now.

[flagged]

Not here, please.
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