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

Google changes its search box

blog.google

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 961 posts

Re: Google changes its search box

#351

Post by qurren »

youre-wrong3 wrote: post #347
burnte wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What scares me about this new AI mode thingy What scares me is the rampant inaccuracy. In my experience, the AI responses are wrong about 65% of the time. I just did a search today about an error talking about a disconnected link between apps, and Google AI result summary told me that the error was related to my pulling a USB drive too quickly in windows. The ONLY word similar to my query and that AI response was t…

[flagged]

Depends on what you ask. It's pretty easy to get wrong information.

e.g. search for "how do you make money with options"

Google's AI says

"When you buy a Call, you are betting the stock price will go up. When you buy a Put, you are betting it will go down."

Wrong right off the bat, because it ingested a whole bunch of get-rich-quick bull on the internet. The correct version is that if you buy a call you are betting the stock price will go up more than the market expects it to.

Re: Google changes its search box

#352

Post by dylan604 »

youre-wrong3 wrote: post #347
burnte wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What scares me about this new AI mode thingy What scares me is the rampant inaccuracy. In my experience, the AI responses are wrong about 65% of the time. I just did a search today about an error talking about a disconnected link between apps, and Google AI result summary told me that the error was related to my pulling a USB drive too quickly in windows. The ONLY word similar to my query and that AI response was t…

[flagged]

What, you think it's actually higher too?

Re: Google changes its search box

#353

Post by esseph »

Yokohiii wrote: post #238
imoverclocked wrote: post #37

I don't trust facts from LLMs. When I am searching for something, I usually want to find primary sources. As soon as a number is involved, I do my best to not even look at the AI output. Even though the result is often good and combines information from multiple sources, it can also get things wrong by combining information from different eras or just plain outdated advice. AFAICT, without primary sources, the result…

Even before the AI era I slowly became less and less successful with google searches. Everything - non trivial / specific - that I looked for turned into a chore and I quickly gave up. LLMs, that can supply valid links, give me a completely different variety of results. Either I am too dumb to search manually, too impatient or google search is just broken, but Gemini usually gives me something I can work with. I just…

-site:medium.com in the search bar

This will remove any results from there for you.

Alternatively, site:news.ycombinator.com would search this website explicitly.

Re: Google changes its search box

#356

Post by dylan604 »

geon wrote: post #334
fscaramuzza wrote: post #290

What scares me about this new AI mode thingy is that every answer sounds like a systematic literature review, but only for the results. For example, if I look for users feedback about a specific product, it says "People think that..., but also that...; It's important to notice that some people ..." where with 'people' it means just a random comment on a random website just because it thought it was a good contributio…

And half the time, the sources turn out to be sarcastic jokes on reddit.

So the bots are not recognizing the sarcasm font?

Re: Google changes its search box

#357

Post by jreed91 »

winterschon wrote: post #348
simonw wrote: post #10

Nilay Patel has been talking about "Google Zero" - the moment when Google effectively stops sending any traffic to other sites - for a few years now: https://www.theverge.com/24167865/google-zero-search-crash-h...

He also spins a lot of trash talk about an industry he's never personally worked in as any kind of engineer at all. He's a "Journalist Covering Tech" without a degree in journalism, so he's not even a "Tech Journalist"; might as well be the blogger character from Silicon Valley. > Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the University of Chicago. His hot takes are best ignored, is just convenient click bait…

Brendan Carr is that you?

Re: Google changes its search box

#358

Post by onetokeoverthe »

gnatolf wrote: post #95
embedding-shape wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you can express "Only show me websites run by Italian companies incorporated by Greece owners born in Turkey" for example, and it'll be able to filter through a bunch of stuff, just makes searching so much easier. Fuzzy-search is also on another level with language models.

Interestingly enough, precise search is on the way out.

[dead]

Re: Google changes its search box

#359

Post by HerbManic »

imoverclocked wrote: post #37

I don't trust facts from LLMs. When I am searching for something, I usually want to find primary sources. As soon as a number is involved, I do my best to not even look at the AI output. Even though the result is often good and combines information from multiple sources, it can also get things wrong by combining information from different eras or just plain outdated advice. AFAICT, without primary sources, the result…

Yeah pretty much.

I have seen it hallucinate things confidently but that is usually when it has no direct sources to pin down the output.

Re: Google changes its search box

#360

Post by webstrand »

youre-wrong3 wrote: post #345
fscaramuzza wrote: post #290

What scares me about this new AI mode thingy is that every answer sounds like a systematic literature review, but only for the results. For example, if I look for users feedback about a specific product, it says "People think that..., but also that...; It's important to notice that some people ..." where with 'people' it means just a random comment on a random website just because it thought it was a good contributio…

Oh who cares. We are barely scratching the surface of AI. You all make it sound like it’s been around for 30 years and it sucks. It will only get better. Got to stop throwing up imaginary walls like nothing will improve.

As a counterexample, I've been seeing more "safety rejections" from Claude. Unlike search, being unable to ask _anything_ about botulinum, or details about the recent Copy Fail vulnerability (without giving my fingerprints to Anthropic to become a "verified security researcher") we're only just beginning to see the ways LLM can be used to distort information and its availability.
Post reply on HN