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Google changes its search box

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Re: Google changes its search box

#471

Post by appplication »

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…

Indeed - just earlier this week I read Google AI summarize a query about testosterone, citing 3 sources. The first citation was a link to a NIH study (or of similar repute). Ok great. The second? Two spam (and explicit) websites existing solely to sell penis enlargement pills.

What was worrying is only some of the claims were supported by the linked study, and most of the response content was drawn from the spam sites.

Re: Google changes its search box

#472

Post by kyleee »

xorcist wrote: post #432
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…

It's nice that Google's AI summary always lists its sources. It's less nice that those sources more often than not do not corroborate the summary. It often seems to be a few random links thrown in there for good measure. I have no idea why this is, but it is impossible that these links are primary sources of the data, if such things even exists at all. In which case, why list them? It is certainly seems possible that…

I’ll bet they intentionally obfuscate so people can’t find the actual sources of info used for the answers

Re: Google changes its search box

#473

Post by dzhiurgis »

burnte wrote: post #309
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…

> 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…

Google has been around for a quarter of a century. People are still incredibly dumb and will believe whatever they like.

Re: Google changes its search box

#474

Post by Barbing »

RyanOD wrote: post #424
thwarted wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the default "search" results are AI, it's difficult, if not impossible, to "choose", since Google is pushing the AI so hard.

In watching the demo, I didn't come away with the impression that they were removing search results. Yes, they are pushing AI hard, but users can still opt to use Google in the more traditional way. Unless I misunderstood the demo, it's definitely possible to choose.

They are showing billions of people a big bold answer at the top of all their pages.

What a wildly irresponsible company

Re: Google changes its search box

#475

Post by WalterBright »

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…

I tend to frame questions to google from a programmer point of view - I'm carefully specific. I seem to get good results that way.

Re: Google changes its search box

#476

Post by jesse_ash »

neltnerb wrote: post #429
9dev wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that really categorically wrong , or is it a correct-enough explanation for laypeople looking for a one-sentence answer?

It's wild to me that someone looking for advice on how to do any kind of stock trading would be looking for a once sentence answer. I hope it at least has real citations to actual websites like, I dunno, fidelity or some other reasonably competent authority that can explain all the details? It's an answer that's too short for an expert to find useful, and useless to a layperson unless all they want to do is reply to…

Those looking for a one sentence answer will be the quickest to invest. When people talk about the harms of AI, this is the kind of thing that comes to mind first for me.

Re: Google changes its search box

#477

Post by halJordan »

WalterBright wrote: post #475
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…

I tend to frame questions to google from a programmer point of view - I'm carefully specific. I seem to get good results that way.

What's old is new again lol

Re: Google changes its search box

#478

Post by Barbing »

RyanOD wrote: post #460
gsk22 wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is Google's AI results get even simple factual questions wrong all the time. Earlier today, I searched "pixel 10 wifi 7" because I was confused that GSMArena showed my Pixel 8 supports Wifi 7, but the Pixel 10 only Wifi 6. Gemini confidently claimed that the Pixel 10 does support Wifi 7 -- but that's not true at all. Only the Pixel 10 _Pro_ supports it, as I discovered when actually reading the non-AI sea…

Ok, fair. Hard to understand why it would get that wrong.

I’d make assumptions about how the cheapest and fastest possible flash model optimized for being extra cheap and extra fast would get something wrong based on its limited context (which can be very incomplete summaries of search results)

Re: Google changes its search box

#479

Post by moritzwarhier »

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…

This problem is not limited to Google, it's the core value of mass-marketed LLMs, or isn't it?

Without "random comments", Google wouldn't have anything to say about "does an air purifier help my asthma, if yes: which one?" or "find the problem with this Hibernate annotation".

They also don't make much effort to exclude sloppy sites, to the contrary, they made way more efforts against SEO spam in the time when Google was a search engine, not trying to be an AI "oracle".

I think their end game is that the only metrics relevant for ranking sources are:

- agreeability (works well as a proxy for correctness with many questions!)

- originality, but not in a scientific sense, just to prevent model collapse

- legal factors such as preventing false health claims or similar things, as long as there is legislation against this kind of thing

Re: Google changes its search box

#480

Post by dullcrisp »

divbzero wrote: post #445

It’s diverged quite a bit from the original: ... Search the web using Google! 10 results 30 results 100 results Index contains ~25 million pages (soon to be much bigger) ... https://web.archive.org/web/19981111183552/http://google.sta...

When did they change the "query" to q?
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