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What we lost when search stopped making us think

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Re: What we lost when search stopped making us think

#21

Post by specproc »

tom_ wrote: post #6

I was still digesting the throat-clearing intro when my eye noticed "quietly" and "honest" and I decided I'd not bother. But I scrolled through out of politeness, just in case the Basilisk will be very thorough. > I want to be clear that I'm not against these tools generally. I use them myself No essay is made worse by being stripped of filler. If the reader has got this far, this sentence is entirely redundant, I th…

Yeah, glazed immediately. It's not even like I recognised it as generated, there's just no substance.

Re: What we lost when search stopped making us think

#22

Post by bluefirebrand »

QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #13
tom_ wrote: post #6

I was still digesting the throat-clearing intro when my eye noticed "quietly" and "honest" and I decided I'd not bother. But I scrolled through out of politeness, just in case the Basilisk will be very thorough. > I want to be clear that I'm not against these tools generally. I use them myself No essay is made worse by being stripped of filler. If the reader has got this far, this sentence is entirely redundant, I th…

"I am against these tools generally. I use them myself" would be a more interesting take

I'm against them, vehemently, but I'm also not going to fight a tidal wave. I'm not going to be unemployed and unemployable by refusing to use them. Principles are expensive and I certainly cannot realistically afford to hold them tightly.

Being forced to use them to continue to have an income is causing me a cognitive dissonance and a level of stress that is surely going to kill me though. I strongly resent the fact that I've been backed into this corner where my choice is to swallow my principles or throw away a career I've worked half my life on

Re: What we lost when search stopped making us think

#23

Post by frollogaston »

moooo99 wrote: post #18
raincole wrote: post #10

I do worry about Google AI overview's long-term impact, but man, it has been such a great experience of late. It surely does feel like the old google but better. There was a point, perhaps about five years ago, where using Google had become a genuinely frustrating hurdle I needed to overcome to do the actual work. Now the frustration is completely gone.

Interesting given this is the polar opposite of my experience. I find Googles AI overview to give wrong answers constantly. Occasionally, even for questions I believe Google circa 2018 was able to answer confidently. Ironically, Googles AI overview often links to references that state the polar opposite of what the AI overview claims.

I've seen it answering based on a single Reddit, Stackexchange, or even HN source. Sometimes either incorrectly, or taking some side of a debated technical issue and presenting it like a fact.

Re: What we lost when search stopped making us think

#24

Post by frollogaston »

cush wrote: post #16

> This isn't really anyone's fault in a simple sense Or, in a more simple sense it’s entirely Google’s fault

Google's fault that SEO exists? The incentive isn't even there, they want people to pay for ads rather than gaming their results. But SEO finds a way.

Re: What we lost when search stopped making us think

#25

Post by keybored »

QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #13
tom_ wrote: post #6

I was still digesting the throat-clearing intro when my eye noticed "quietly" and "honest" and I decided I'd not bother. But I scrolled through out of politeness, just in case the Basilisk will be very thorough. > I want to be clear that I'm not against these tools generally. I use them myself No essay is made worse by being stripped of filler. If the reader has got this far, this sentence is entirely redundant, I th…

"I am against these tools generally. I use them myself" would be a more interesting take

I am against murdering animals. But I eat animals.

Re: What we lost when search stopped making us think

#26

Post by dawnerd »

xnorswap wrote: post #19
raincole wrote: post #10

I do worry about Google AI overview's long-term impact, but man, it has been such a great experience of late. It surely does feel like the old google but better. There was a point, perhaps about five years ago, where using Google had become a genuinely frustrating hurdle I needed to overcome to do the actual work. Now the frustration is completely gone.

Just this morning I had a worrying result when I googled "UV index " and it confidently told me the current UV index was zero. It was not, and at least because it was obviously wrong I clicked through to a page with the real UV index. But had it said "The UV index is 1.7" I might have believed it, but it'd still have been wrong, potentially dangerously so. Now to be clear, live data is precisely the sort of thing I e…

They used to handle real data extremely well by using those little search widgets they would recognize what you’re asking and just show weather etc. the AI answers is just such a massive regression.

Re: What we lost when search stopped making us think

#27

Post by win311fwg »

xnorswap wrote: post #19
raincole wrote: post #10

I do worry about Google AI overview's long-term impact, but man, it has been such a great experience of late. It surely does feel like the old google but better. There was a point, perhaps about five years ago, where using Google had become a genuinely frustrating hurdle I needed to overcome to do the actual work. Now the frustration is completely gone.

Just this morning I had a worrying result when I googled "UV index " and it confidently told me the current UV index was zero. It was not, and at least because it was obviously wrong I clicked through to a page with the real UV index. But had it said "The UV index is 1.7" I might have believed it, but it'd still have been wrong, potentially dangerously so. Now to be clear, live data is precisely the sort of thing I e…

It would be obviously wrong if location=out standing in a middle of a field in direct sunlight. It wouldn't be obviously wrong if location=indoors.

Proving that search hasn't stopped making us think at all. Just like we've had to do with humans since the dawn of time, we continue to have to think hard about how our intent will be interpreted.

Re: What we lost when search stopped making us think

#28

Post by 5555watch »

I can't be the only one that scrolls past quickly the whatever Google-AI spurts out. If I wanted to ask an AI - I would. But I've learned that they hallucinate stuff with numbers or anything that's time sensitive/recent (even if that might not be the truth now). So I won't spend my time on verifying their output. I'm after a quick search, not a likely guess.

What's worse, when reading the Google outputs, I have learned to ignore almost any website besides a select few, one of which is Reddit. Which is very weird thinking about it, but it worked in the past.

Re: What we lost when search stopped making us think

#29

Post by keybored »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #22
QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I am against these tools generally. I use them myself" would be a more interesting take

I'm against them, vehemently, but I'm also not going to fight a tidal wave. I'm not going to be unemployed and unemployable by refusing to use them. Principles are expensive and I certainly cannot realistically afford to hold them tightly. Being forced to use them to continue to have an income is causing me a cognitive dissonance and a level of stress that is surely going to kill me though. I strongly resent the fact…

Pro AI: It’s inevitable and I love it

Anti AI: It’s inevitable and I hate it

Oh no. They’re converging. But I guess that just proves the point doesn’t it.

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