Live data from Hacker News

Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

telegraph.co.uk

251–260 of 390 posts

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#251

"Search results plagued with ‘clickbait’ would have been an understatement 20 years ago. The parts of the open web you access from Google/search (most of it) is almost entirely made-for-google' ranking algorithims. The situation is worse than it is on closed social media, including Google's YouTube. Professional YouTubers are also making content for rankings above all, but the fact that it's their own face/voice keep…

Ironically, the title of the article is literal clickbait. The first four paragraphs (out of 21) of the article are related to the title. The majority of the article (11 paragraphs) are dedicated to AI safety.

I avoid companies like Google as much as possible, but is it really their fault that so many people fall for clickbait? If that's what a majority of people click on, shouldn't users share the blame?

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I understood you want to reverse a pushed commit on both your local repository and the remote. You can reverse that commit using just the following commands: git reset --hard HEAD~2 git reflog expire --expire-unreachable=now git push -f This reverses the most recent commit. The -f is needed to reverse the commit on your git server. ... I apologize if my previous response wasn't helpful. I see that you meant "rever…

> git reset --hard HEAD~2 Stupid computer. That does 2 commits. > git reflog expire --expire-unreachable=now For the love of god why? The reflog is there to save your bacon. I guess because they are still reachable from the remote's reference so they won't completely vanish just yet. > git push -f Now they're gone unless you can find the hashes somewhere else. The objects might still be present. > I apologize that tw…

None of this was GPT and thankfully I know what the git commands I used in my not-so-great joke answer do.

As replied in the sister thread, I think that the risks of trusting GPT answers can be more subtle.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#253
post #3

This is why I use ChatGPT and Kagi over Google search now.

Same, but perplexity.ai for me. Search enabled LLMs that can slog through the search results for me is where it's at.

Why I have never heard of perplexity.ai

Just tried it, so good and fast.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate ads as much as everyone else (and actively block the hell out of it) At the same time, ads made a lot of the free web possible. I run services making money with ads: I would not be able to work on them without. Or maybe the revenue I would make is too little to bother with all the stupid EU regulations around VAT - ads offer a simple solution and you get a single B2B transaction, while providing values to Cust…

> At the same time, ads made a lot of the free web possible. What made all the free web possible was free software, not ads. Google and the likes created empires through ads and breaking laws, we owe nothing to them. The sooner they go, the better. Also, they don't own the ads business model, there are healthier ways to sell, buy and deliver ads and that's not what Google and Meta are doing. They need to go. > And a…

>and a much bigger chunk was killed with it.

To say nothing of the opportunity costs. They killed a lot of what was, but they’ve also prevented so much of the promise of the internet from coming to fruition. Lost time, lost talent and lives, and a gaping hole in society where a more productive internet might have been. Somehow we let them.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the same time, ads made a lot of the free web possible. What made all the free web possible was free software, not ads. Google and the likes created empires through ads and breaking laws, we owe nothing to them. The sooner they go, the better. Also, they don't own the ads business model, there are healthier ways to sell, buy and deliver ads and that's not what Google and Meta are doing. They need to go. > And a…

>and a much bigger chunk was killed with it. To say nothing of the opportunity costs. They killed a lot of what was, but they’ve also prevented so much of the promise of the internet from coming to fruition. Lost time, lost talent and lives, and a gaping hole in society where a more productive internet might have been. Somehow we let them.

You are right. But the pendulum swings back.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#256
I remember a time when I thought P2P was the future. BitTorrent, Napster, etc. With YouTube’s recent moves, I wonder if we’ll see a resurgence in those ideas. Hosting costs are not (much of) a problem with that kind of model, so the need for advertising to pay hosting costs is greatly diminished.

But, then without a centralized system, you’ll have the dark web everywhere. I wonder if there’s a way to set up a network that incentivizes quality? I have no ideas about how to do that.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same, but perplexity.ai for me. Search enabled LLMs that can slog through the search results for me is where it's at.

Why I have never heard of perplexity.ai Just tried it, so good and fast.

Not to sound like a total shill, but if you subscribe they let you switch the underlying llm to GPT-4 or Claude-2, which gives it some more oomph on more complex reasoning tasks. The free model is already quite good for research though.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#260

I remember a time when I thought P2P was the future. BitTorrent, Napster, etc. With YouTube’s recent moves, I wonder if we’ll see a resurgence in those ideas. Hosting costs are not (much of) a problem with that kind of model, so the need for advertising to pay hosting costs is greatly diminished. But, then without a centralized system, you’ll have the dark web everywhere. I wonder if there’s a way to set up a network…

Maybe Mastodon?
Post reply on HN