If you're like me, basically everything other than search results in a search engine is noise. To that end, I direct my Google searches directly to the "web" tab of the results. This chops off news, shopping, video, images, etc from the initial results you see but you can still change to those tabs just as easily as ever. In your browser's settings just find the option to manage search engines, add a new one, and set the url to use to https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14 and you land on results. No AI misinterpretation of what you're looking for. No confident nonsense that directly contradicts reality sitting at the top of the page. No judgement or chiding (Google's results AI has flat out told me my opinion sucks mid-search more times than I'd like to admit). Just results.
I don't want my search engine to think for me
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Re: I don't want my search engine to think for me
#12LLM-written article.
What do you believe your comment adds to the discussion about this article?
I'd prefer more proof / context than GP gave, but I personally find it very useful to see people making judgements about AI-assistance of articles. Almost no such articles are worth my time, and the more HN people saying it, the more I know not to click past the HN headline.
Re: I don't want my search engine to think for me
#13Maybe it’s misplaced nostalgia but google search before google plus ruined the +, and the image search was top tier (not shopping ads) - truly incredible the signal to noise you could find.
Now all the junk comes to the top and the sites you get all have ads and modal popups or sales funnel flows
Re: I don't want my search engine to think for me
#14I hate those AI summaries. Because I dont necessarily agree with suitability and credibility ranks assigned by AI to make those summaries. As author says, there are so many nuances and I usually scan the results page and click that appears more credible first. Not what appears first. I also know which site fills copy with verbiage and which ones give more useful advise - such as in health matters.
Great points..
Re: I don't want my search engine to think for me
#15I don't want either, if I'm indeed "searching." But I find that often times I am indeed just looking for a quick answer, and Gemini/Google's "new" search does it fine. It's one of the few AI features, despite still being shoved in my face, that I actually find useful. With that said, the worst thing is how search results have degraded significantly since the AI years, even before they added the actual "AI mode." Goog…
Yeah the keywords thing drives me crazy. You type exactly what you want and it decides you meant something else
Yeah, the turning point was back when you get switched from text matching to using machine learning
Re: I don't want my search engine to think for me
#16Well tech companies have long been hijacking our brains thinking muscles. Remember how people used to be able to navigate on their own without a Maps app, now those same people can't get around their own town without their phone.
I'm genuinely scared for a generation of people who've offshored their thinking, planning and creativity muscles to a few tech companies.
We think we're gaining an edge but we're really participating in a mind control experiment thats optimized to benefit those companies, not us as individual.
Miss me with AI, it will break your brain and start to control more and more of your behavior if you let it. Don't become a drone. You're not going to become some crazy productive SaaS founder becauae you have AI, you'll become a drone who's competency is 1:1 correlated to the quality and quantity of tokens you have access too/
Re: I don't want my search engine to think for me
#17I don't want either, if I'm indeed "searching." But I find that often times I am indeed just looking for a quick answer, and Gemini/Google's "new" search does it fine. It's one of the few AI features, despite still being shoved in my face, that I actually find useful. With that said, the worst thing is how search results have degraded significantly since the AI years, even before they added the actual "AI mode." Goog…
If you want Gemini to answer your question, why not go directly to Gemini?
Re: I don't want my search engine to think for me
#18Couldn't disagree with the article more. Not wading knee deep through SEO chaff is probably my favorite thing about LLMs. In the rare circumstance that I feel the need to wade through chaff that option is of course still available to me.
Re: I don't want my search engine to think for me
#19"Search" is a ridiculous thing to be doing post-2022. Imagine going to a doctor and asking them a question, and they give you 5 printouts for your to read through to synthesize your own answer. Imagine you asked your spouse a question and they responded "Here's 10 links for you to check out!"
We have AI now and it's doing a mostly incredible job getting us ANSWERS, not SEARCH LINKS. Trying to pretend that links are better is just trying to copy with rapid change.
Quite honestly I'm shocked that Google keeps making more money with search ads because I don't search anymore, I get answers directly from it or ChatGPT without clicking on any links.
Re: I don't want my search engine to think for me
#20LLM-written article.
That was my first thought. Ironic they don't want to read LLM responses in their searches but they expect us to read their LLM article about it.