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Google changes its search box

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Re: Google changes its search box

#521

Post by sota_pop »

nkingsy wrote: post #503

I had an interesting one yesterday. Someone responded to me on Reddit with very official sounding words to make their argument. I was still dubious and googled a few of the concepts they threw out there. The AI confidently told me they were right. Then I checked the sources, and found the only source that agreed with them was their own Reddit comment!!!

I can also relate here, seeking a product review on Sony wh1000x_, Google wrote a nice seeming summary, but scrolling down to some Reddit discussions, stumbled upon a single comment that was very nearly verbatim what the “AI Summary” said, only the ai summary phrased the summary as if it were a sentiment aggregated over many users’ experience. i.e.”users say…”

Re: Google changes its search box

#522

Post by makeitdouble »

arionhardison wrote: post #218

I'm old enough to remember when "Google" was something that ended conversations. People — myself included — would literally say "Google it," the facts would be located, and that was that. Now that Google wants to be the conversation, I'm worried there will no longer be a bias-free source of information for the masses. This is all new, so I may be a bit hyperbolic, but the reason OpenAI introducing ads bothers me is t…

> Google" was something that ended conversations.

Yes, but not because of facts or bias-free sources. It was the equivalent of staring deep at your wrist watch while someone's speaking: a clear signal that you were done with whatever they wanting to talk about.

I kinda like that "let me Google it for you" in Japan was more popular as "Google it loser" (ググレカス), a rare instance where the common phrases was more expressive than it's western counterpart.

Re: Google changes its search box

#523

Post by youre-wrong3 »

jamiek88 wrote: post #412
youre-wrong3 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So you started with ‘highly doubtful’ as a comment, got given lots of examples and instead of assimilating that info you closed your eyes put your fingers in yours ears and said “oh who cares?’ - you’re on team AI regardless eh? That’s fucking weird mate.

Na. Wasn’t given any good examples. People just whining about the same stuff because “oh no I got information that’s former in the same structure that I can tell it’s AI and it makes me feel bad”

Re: Google changes its search box

#524

Post by youre-wrong3 »

a1o wrote: post #398
youre-wrong3 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It hallucinates greatly about many things when I ask about C++ things. Things that you can easily find the right answer in cppreference or by just inspecting headers in your own IDE.

Yeah it’s not 2023 anymore. So no it’s not hallucinating like you think it is.

Re: Google changes its search box

#526

Post by youre-wrong3 »

UncleMeat wrote: post #423
youre-wrong3 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's fine if we aren't destroying existing products to replace them with AI . People can already use AI mode in google search if they want. "It'll be better later" is a shit reason to kill one product for it.

[flagged]

Re: Google changes its search box

#527

Post by Groxx »

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.

They are this wrong about everything, but you don't usually notice it when using it to look for things you aren't an expert in. The default stance really does need to be "do not trust, verify" at all times.

They can still be useful, e.g. they're significantly better at finding "I want a thing that does x but not y and it must be blue, or maybe two things that can be glued together to do that" than classic search. But they'll routinely miss extremely obvious answers because the related search it ran didn't find it, or completely screw up what something can actually do. Checking more pages of results by hand or asking humans who know even a little about those fields is still wildly more useful... but they're absolutely slaughtering the sites where people do that, by stealing all the real traffic and sending DDoS-level automated requests.

Re: Google changes its search box

#528

Post by morkalork »

fooey wrote: post #168
alt227 wrote: post #159

So how does google now make money when it is just providing us with direct answers from ai, instead of showing us both paid for search results and directing us to sites which host targetted ads? How does adsense work when there are no search results?

I expect a flavor of affiliate marketing where you can never trust if the LLM is giving you the best recommendations or the most highly bidded recommendations

"Since we're on the topic of DIY car repairs, did you know Autozone carries a wide variety blorpity slop?"

Re: Google changes its search box

#529

Post by throwatdem12311 »

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.

My grandfather was one of the first people in Canada to own a commercially available chainsaw.

Let me tell you - it didn’t take 30 years for people to figure out that chainsaws were useful.

Re: Google changes its search box

#530

Post by salomonk_mur »

nicbou wrote: post #407
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...

It has reduced traffic to my website by around 65%. I live from that website. My income is a function of the traffic it gets. I spent 9 years of my life putting hard-earned information on the internet, and now big tech uses it to enrich themselves while putting me out of work. Even my backup plan - software development - is being devalued to hell. It's so damn depressing. We'll get the internet that we deserve.

To be fair, the traffic you had was mostly routed by them as well. Google giveth, Google taketh away.
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