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How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

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Re: How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

#131

Post by johnnyanmac »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #94
johnnyanmac wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it'll happen again when AI models start resorting to ads once again.

I don't think that will ever happen. All you need is a trivial browser extension with a locally run, very primite LLM, that takes the output of the commercial LLM, and removes all advertisement. And adBlocker AI, so to speak. Yes, there will be people not using adblockers just as there are people today. But no adblocker ever was able to remove SEO spam from googles website, all they did was hiding obvious adds. They…

There will always be ad free solutions, but the most popular (or simply, most market captured tools) will be the ones most people flock to. Better services than many market leaders came along, but the leaders kept growing.

Unless this bubble popping is truly catastrophic, I don't see this ending a different way.

Re: How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

#132

Post by shakna »

fhd2 wrote: post #42
shakna wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rollout hasn't even begun yet which you can If rollout at Deloitte has not yet begun... How on earth did this clusterfuck [0] happen? > Deloitte’s member firm in Australia will pay the government a partial refund for a $290,000 report that contained alleged AI-generated errors, including references to non-existent academic research papers and a fabricated quote from a federal court judgment. [0] https://fortune.com…

Because even if an organisation hasn't rolled out generative AI tools and policies centrally yet, individuals might just use their personal plans anyway (potentially in violation with their contract)? I believe that's called "shadow AI".

Its a $400+k report to a government, where the references either weren't audited, or only audited by the AI system that regurgitated them.

That requires more than a single person's involvement.

Re: How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

#133

Post by shakna »

tasuki wrote: post #72
shakna wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rollout hasn't even begun yet which you can If rollout at Deloitte has not yet begun... How on earth did this clusterfuck [0] happen? > Deloitte’s member firm in Australia will pay the government a partial refund for a $290,000 report that contained alleged AI-generated errors, including references to non-existent academic research papers and a fabricated quote from a federal court judgment. [0] https://fortune.com…

Haven't even read the source, but I like how it's "a partial refund". The chutzpah to deliver absolute nonsense[0] and then give a partial refund! [0]: If it contains references to nonexistent papers and fabricated quotes, the conclusions of the report are highly doubtful at best.

290 out of 440 isn't that bad, when Deloitte claim the AI stuff is only secondary supporting claims and had zero effect, and they did hand over a corrected report (with real references) without asking for more.

... And they did also get blacklisted for the next report.

Re: How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

#134

Post by adrian_b »

Antibabelic wrote: post #38
monkpit wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The turning point was around when google stopped honoring Boolean ops and quotation marks

When did this happen? I do exact searches on Google almost every day and it seems to honor the quotation marks just fine for me.

I tried to search right now "Xoodoo".

Google gave me more than 2 pages of results, while Bing gave me only 1 page.

After that, both Google and Bing provided countless pages full of results about Hoodoo, Voodoo, Zoodoo and the like.

The impossibility of making exact searches is what annoys me most in modern search engines.

I might make a typo sometimes, but I would prefer to correct myself when that happens, instead of the search engine always assuming that I am a moron that cannot type, thus offering every time "helpful" corrections.

Re: How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

#135

Post by cons0le »

plagiarist wrote: post #130
cons0le wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web scraping for LLMs has almost completely ruined the search experience. In the past I could search for simple questions, and quickly get an answer without even having to click through to the links. This was horrible for web traffic, but the utility level was off the charts. It was possible to get accurate results in milliseconds. It was faster than using an LLM. Now sites put almost no info in the search result hea…

Is SearXNG a nice experience? I need something that specifically excludes AI slop affiliate marketing listicles. I don't know if content other than that exists out there any more. Still, I'd rather have no answer than a "top ten $item" list just describing the first page of Amazon results.

Once its dialed in, its as good as Kagi. But I still haven't tried to integrate it into all my devices outside of my computer. I still need to try it with tailscale.

I also feel like a really good local LLM can be better. I'd love to get something set up where my searches get sent to the local LLM first, and then to Kagi\SearXNG if it needs more information.

Re: How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

#136

Post by shakna »

Antibabelic wrote: post #56
shakna wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least 2022, if not earlier. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30130535

The thread seems to be about the opposite problem. The OP can't find the page they're looking for because Google is too strict about whitespace, according to the top comment.

I think you missed "quotes doesn't even always work anymore to get exact results."

Re: How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

#137

Post by m463 »

Wobbles42 wrote: post #27
monkpit wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The turning point was around when google stopped honoring Boolean ops and quotation marks

The killer app for AI might just be unenshittifying search for a couple of years. Then SEO will catch up and we'll have spam again, but now we'll be paying by the token for it. Probably right around the time hallucination drops off enough to have made this viable. I kind of want to become Amish sometimes.

reminds me of two things:

- the anthropic superbowl dig at chatgpt ads

"Anthropic's Super Bowl ad humorously criticized OpenAI's decision to introduce ads to ChatGPT, featuring a scenario where a man seeking advice is interrupted by an unexpected advertisement." - ddg search assist

- amish hackers: https://kk.org/thetechnium/amish-hackers-a/

Re: How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

#138

Post by aurareturn »

badc0ffee wrote: post #129
aurareturn wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then declined as sponsored results and SEO degraded things It didn't decline because of this. It declined because of a general decade long trend of websites becoming paywalled and hidden behind a login. The best and most useful data is often inaccessible to crawlers. In the 2000s, everything was open because of the ad driven model. Then ad blockers, mobile subscription model, and the dominance of a few apps such as I…

You can still use Reddit without logging in. In fact it's completely unlike Discord. Lots of Reddit discussions still show up in web search results.

Reddit does not expose all comments and posts to crawlers.

Re: How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

#139

Post by Antibabelic »

adrian_b wrote: post #134
Antibabelic wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did this happen? I do exact searches on Google almost every day and it seems to honor the quotation marks just fine for me.

I tried to search right now "Xoodoo". Google gave me more than 2 pages of results, while Bing gave me only 1 page. After that, both Google and Bing provided countless pages full of results about Hoodoo, Voodoo, Zoodoo and the like. The impossibility of making exact searches is what annoys me most in modern search engines. I might make a typo sometimes, but I would prefer to correct myself when that happens, instead o…

I tried to repeat your experiment. I entered "xoodoo", surrounded by quotation marks into the Google search bar. I got 29 pages of results. From what I can tell by the previews, every result matches the string "xoodoo" and not any other similar string. Are you sure you are using the exact search functionality and not just typing the word into the search bar?

Re: How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

#140

Post by CamelCaseCondo »

kdheiwns wrote: post #52
m463 wrote: post #2

I wonder if web searches used to be pretty productive, then declined as sponsored results and SEO degraded things. Nowadays an ai assist with a web search usually eliminates the search altogether and gives you a clear answer right away. for example, "how much does a ford f-150 cost" will give you something ballpark in a second, compared to annoying "research" to find the answer shrouded in corporate obfuscation.

I used to be able to google a question like that and get an accurate answer within the top 3 results nearly every time about 20 years ago. Then it got worse and worse and became pretty much completely useless about 10 years ago. Now AI will give me a confident answer that is outright wrong 20% of the time or kind of right but not really 30% of the time. So now I ask something using an AI chatbot and carefully word it…

Same experience here. I have fond memories of “google code”, a search engine for code databases which was exceptionally good for finding literal quotes.

The more mainstream a subject is, the lower the incidence of hallucinations. With google search, the mantra “I can’t be the first with this problem/question” almost always proves to be right.

I’m in the process of restoring a piece of vintage electronics and everytime I ask gemini (fast or thinking) for help I’m getting sent down an irrelevant rabbit hole. It’s taking info from service manuals of other equipment with a similar product number, misinterpreting diagrams, getting electrical workings wrong.

These things aren’t AI. AI can extract certainty from uncertain data. LLMs take data and turn it into garbage.

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