Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Generative AI could make search harder to trust

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 255 posts

Re: Generative AI could make search harder to trust

#111

Post by [deleted] »

blibble wrote: post #103
ryanklee wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are vastly everestimating how unique this problem of hallucinations is. It seems to me it relies mostly on discounting just how much we've already had to deal with this same problem in humans over the millenia. The problem of proliferation of bad information might be getting worse, but this isn't native to generative AI. The entire informational ecosystem has to deal with this. GPTs compound the issue, but as…

humans can only produce semi-convincing bullshit at a limited rate with AI this limit is all but removed all the human generated bullshit ever created will soon be dwarfed by what AI can vomit out in an hour

[deleted]

Re: Generative AI could make search harder to trust

#112

Post by dongping »

pseudosavant wrote: post #12

I wonder if there will be a human information/knowledge equivalent of low-background steel (pre-WWII/nukes). Data from before a certain point won't be 'contaminated' with LLM stuff, but it'll be everywhere after that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel

Actually, that's great in my opinion.

Assuming that semi-convincing misinformation spreads everywhere, people will finally have to find the original source of a certain statement, verify their "knowledge supply chain", and maybe use logic to evaluate every single statement made.

Re: Generative AI could make search harder to trust

#113

Post by jeffreyw128 »

It’s especially terrifying that misinformation compounds multiplicatively with AI because it happens in 2 layers - once at the retrieval layer (where AI-generated content is worsening the problem of bad SEO content) and again at the retrieval augmented generation (RAG) LLM layer.

(shameless plug) At Metaphor (https://platform.metaphor.systems/), we’re building a search engine that avoids SEO content by relying on human curation + neural embeddings for our index + retrieval algorithm. Our mission is to ensure that the information we receive is as high quality and truthful as possible as AI adoption marches onwards. You (or your LLM) can feel free to give it a try :)

Re: Generative AI could make search harder to trust

#114

Post by dredmorbius »

l33t7332273 wrote: post #106
dredmorbius wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~/name at an edu is pretty attainable. .edu domains can be had for any otherwise eligible "U.S.-based postsecondary institutions" per Educause: https://net.educause.edu/eligibility.htm > Pages at extant domains might variously be available to undergraduate or graduate students, faculty, staff, and adjuncts. Those might either directly host emulative material or be convinced or compromised into hosting content. If the…

It is not easy for a regular person to obtain access to a .edu webpage.

A "regular person" can:

- Enroll or be hired at an eligible institution. There are literally thousands of these.

- Bribe or compromise someone enrolled or hired at an eligible institution.

- Create a de novo eligible institution. For-profit colleges are not uncommon.

Someone motivated by profit or advantage would likely find virtually any of these options quite straightforward.

I'm ... somewhat pained that this needs to be spelled out.

Re: Generative AI could make search harder to trust

#115

Post by sarahchieng »

jeffreyw128 wrote: post #113

It’s especially terrifying that misinformation compounds multiplicatively with AI because it happens in 2 layers - once at the retrieval layer (where AI-generated content is worsening the problem of bad SEO content) and again at the retrieval augmented generation (RAG) LLM layer. (shameless plug) At Metaphor ( https://platform.metaphor.systems/ ), we’re building a search engine that avoids SEO content by relying on h…

+1. Increasing training data quality should also hopefully help with hallucination. But becomes increasingly hard in a world where more and more online content is crap.

Re: Generative AI could make search harder to trust

#116

Post by acover »

dredmorbius wrote: post #46
ratg13 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was how the "internet" functions in the book "Ender's Game". There is a small sub-plot about how he had to give a fake persona credibility on the untrusted network in order to be able to leverage a creating a fake account on the trusted network.

I find the xkcd interpretation more realistic: https://xkcd.com/635/ > Explained: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/635:_Locke_and_De... >

Good and unlikely predictions can thrust you into popularity: see deepfuckingvalue.

Re: Generative AI could make search harder to trust

#117

Post by [deleted] »

dongping wrote: post #112
pseudosavant wrote: post #12

I wonder if there will be a human information/knowledge equivalent of low-background steel (pre-WWII/nukes). Data from before a certain point won't be 'contaminated' with LLM stuff, but it'll be everywhere after that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel

Actually, that's great in my opinion. Assuming that semi-convincing misinformation spreads everywhere, people will finally have to find the original source of a certain statement, verify their "knowledge supply chain", and maybe use logic to evaluate every single statement made.

[deleted]

Re: Generative AI could make search harder to trust

#118

Post by thenickdude »

DayDollar wrote: post #25
pseudosavant wrote: post #12

I wonder if there will be a human information/knowledge equivalent of low-background steel (pre-WWII/nukes). Data from before a certain point won't be 'contaminated' with LLM stuff, but it'll be everywhere after that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel

There will be a web of trust, with a valuation of nodes by trustworthyness. And people will get only one id for this. Ones name is ones value and a reputation will be a hard earned thing again.

Will you join my Webring?

Re: Generative AI could make search harder to trust

#119

Post by gorwell »

heavyset_go wrote: post #43
BitwiseFool wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those simple web 1.0 sites made by college professors are a gold-standard in my book. I always enjoy finding them in search results. Although they are becoming increasingly rare.

Can't prove it, but it seems to me like black text on white background sites from the past are poorly ranked compared to sites with "modern" layouts.

Further, is it true that Google factors in whether sites have ads?

Re: Generative AI could make search harder to trust

#120

Post by thenickdude »

gumballindie wrote: post #78

The correct term is spamming. People are using these text generators to spam everyone and everything under the sun. It will be detrimental to the internet as many people will just give on this huge pile of ... spam.

Like the heat death of the universe, we'll have the spam death of the Internet.
Post reply on HN