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Google AI Overviews cite YouTube more than any medical site for health queries

theguardian.com

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Re: Google AI Overviews cite YouTube more than any medical site for health queries

#21

Post by bethekidyouwant »

alex1138 wrote: post #9
jdlyga wrote: post #8

It's tough convincing people that Google AI overviews are often very wrong. People think that if it's displayed so prominently on Google, it must be factually accurate right? "AI responses may include mistakes. Learn more" It's not mistakes, half the time it's completely wrong and total bullshit information. Even comparing it to other AI, if you put the same question into GPT 5.2 or Gemini, you get much more accurate…

It absolutely baffles me they didn't do more work or testing on this. Their (unofficial??) motto is literally Search. That's what they're known for. The fact it's trash is an unbelievably damning indictment of what they are

Testing what every possible combination of words? Did they test their search results before AI in this way?

Re: Google AI Overviews cite YouTube more than any medical site for health queries

#22

Post by raincole »

ceejayoz wrote: post #17
laborcontract wrote: post #12

Google AI overviews are often bad, yes, but why is youtube as a source necessarily a bad thing? Are these researchers doctors? A close relative is a practicing surgeon and a professor in his field. He watches youtube videos of surgeries practically every day. Doctors from every field well understand that YT is a great way to share their work and discuss w/ others. Before we get too worked up about the results, just l…

> A close relative is a practicing surgeon and a professor in his field. He watches youtube videos of surgeries practically every day. A professor in the field can probably go "ok this video is bullshit" a couple minutes in if it's wrong. They can identify a bad surgeon, a dangerous technique, or an edge case that may not be covered. You and I cannot. Basically, the same problem the general public has with phishing,…

The same can be said for average "medical sites" the Google search gives you anyway.

Re: Google AI Overviews cite YouTube more than any medical site for health queries

#23

Post by laborcontract »

ceejayoz wrote: post #17
laborcontract wrote: post #12

Google AI overviews are often bad, yes, but why is youtube as a source necessarily a bad thing? Are these researchers doctors? A close relative is a practicing surgeon and a professor in his field. He watches youtube videos of surgeries practically every day. Doctors from every field well understand that YT is a great way to share their work and discuss w/ others. Before we get too worked up about the results, just l…

> A close relative is a practicing surgeon and a professor in his field. He watches youtube videos of surgeries practically every day. A professor in the field can probably go "ok this video is bullshit" a couple minutes in if it's wrong. They can identify a bad surgeon, a dangerous technique, or an edge case that may not be covered. You and I cannot. Basically, the same problem the general public has with phishing,…

Your comment doesn't address my point. The same criticism applies to any medium.

Re: Google AI Overviews cite YouTube more than any medical site for health queries

#24

Post by gumboshoes »

I have permanent prompts in Gemini settings to tell it to never include videos in its answers. Never ever for any reason. Yet of course it always does. Even if I trusted any of the video authors or material - and I don't know them so how can I trust them? - I still don't watch a video that could be text I could read in one-tenth of the time. Text is superior to video 99% of the time in my experience.

Re: Google AI Overviews cite YouTube more than any medical site for health queries

#26

Post by gowld »

xnx wrote: post #7

Sounds very misleading. Web pages come from many sources, but most video is hosted on YouTube. Those YouTube videos may still be from Mayo clinic. It's like saying most medical information comes from Apache, Nginx, or IIS.

To the Guardian's credit, at the bottom they explicitly cited the researchers walking back their own research claims.

> However, the researchers cautioned that these videos represented fewer than 1% of all the YouTube links cited by AI Overviews on health.

> “Most of them (24 out of 25) come from medical-related channels like hospitals, clinics and health organisations,” the researchers wrote. “On top of that, 21 of the 25 videos clearly note that the content was created by a licensed or trusted source.

> “So at first glance it looks pretty reassuring. But it’s important to remember that these 25 videos are just a tiny slice (less than 1% of all YouTube links AI Overviews actually cite). With the rest of the videos, the situation could be very different.”

Re: Google AI Overviews cite YouTube more than any medical site for health queries

#27

Post by alex1138 »

sofixa wrote: post #18
alex1138 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Oh, you mean like removing scores of covid videos from real doctors and scientists which were deemed to be misinformation The credentials don't matter, the actual content does. And if it's misinformation, then yes, you can be a quadruple doctor, it's still misinformation. In France, there was a real doctor, epidemiologist, who became famous because he was pushing a cure for Covid. He did some underground, barely le…

[flagged]

Re: Google AI Overviews cite YouTube more than any medical site for health queries

#28

Post by gumboshoes »

xnx wrote: post #7

Sounds very misleading. Web pages come from many sources, but most video is hosted on YouTube. Those YouTube videos may still be from Mayo clinic. It's like saying most medical information comes from Apache, Nginx, or IIS.

Might be but aren't. They're inevitably someone I've never heard of from no recognizable organization. If they have credentials, they are invisible to me.

Re: Google AI Overviews cite YouTube more than any medical site for health queries

#29

Post by gowld »

mikkupikku wrote: post #13

Don't all real/respectable medical websites basically just say "Go talk to a real doctor, dummy." ? ...and then there's WebMD, "oh you've had a cough since yesterday? It's probably terminal lung cancer."

WebMD is a real doctor, I guess. It's got an MD right in the name!

Re: Google AI Overviews cite YouTube more than any medical site for health queries

#30

Post by gumboshoes »

sofixa wrote: post #18
alex1138 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Oh, you mean like removing scores of covid videos from real doctors and scientists which were deemed to be misinformation The credentials don't matter, the actual content does. And if it's misinformation, then yes, you can be a quadruple doctor, it's still misinformation. In France, there was a real doctor, epidemiologist, who became famous because he was pushing a cure for Covid. He did some underground, barely le…

How is any non-expert supposed to judge the content without some kind of guide like say credentials? Credentials do matter when the author is unknown.
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