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Google scrambles to manually remove weird AI answers in search

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Re: Google scrambles to manually remove weird AI answers in search

#141

Post by internet101010 »

geuis wrote: post #71

Hey Google. Here's a really stupid idea. Knock it off. Your core search result product has gotten increasingly worse and less reliable over at least the last 5 years. YouTube's search results are nearly unusable. I can't imagine almost any external customer is asking for the AI bullshit thing that's just being shovelwared into everything Alphabet product now. I just noticed a couple days ago the gmail iOS app now doe…

Most accurate description of Google I have seen. YT search is so, so bad. Three relevant results followed by twelve "people also watched" results then back to the good results.

Re: Google scrambles to manually remove weird AI answers in search

#142

Post by hilux »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #58
thesimp wrote: post #37

I'm actually shocked that a company that has spent 25 years on finetuning search results for any random question people ask in the searchbox does not have a good, clean, dataset to train an LLM on. Maybe this is the time to get out the old Encyclopedia Britannica CD and use that for training input.

You may find this illuminating. The google prior to 2019 isn’t the google of today. https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/ Edit: there was also a discussion on HN about that article.

Coincidentally, I was just watching a video about how South Africa has gone downhill - and that slide was hastened by McKinsey advising the crooked "Gupta brothers" on how to most efficiently rip off the country.

Re: Google scrambles to manually remove weird AI answers in search

#144

Post by ta8645 »

threeseed wrote: post #132
ta8645 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs so far seem to be entirely unverifiable. I don't understand this complaint. Are they any less verifiable than a human?

I can ask a human to explain the steps they took to answer a question. I can ask a human a question 100 times and I don't get back 100 different answers. None of those applies to an LLM.

You can ask an LLM to explain itself.. it will give you a logical stepwise progression from your question to its answer. It will often contain a mistake, but the same is true for a human.

And if your LLM is giving you 100 different answers, then it has been configured to do so. Because instead, it could be configured to never vary at all. It could be 100% reproducible if so desired.

Re: Google scrambles to manually remove weird AI answers in search

#145

Post by blablabla123 »

oldgradstudent wrote: post #119
dgellow wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insane people at Google thought it would be a good idea to let Reddit of all places drive their AI search responses

Reddit is a magnificent source of useful knowledge. r/AskHistorians r/bikewrench To name just two. There is nothing even remotely comparable. But you need to be able to detect sarcasm and irony.

...which is sometimes incredibly hard and it might not be possible because it's such a niche topic or people might be just wrong. Just thinking about Urban Myths, Conspiracy theories etc. where even without a niche factor things may sound unbelievable but actually disproving can be effort that is out of proportion

Re: Google scrambles to manually remove weird AI answers in search

#146

Post by kenjackson »

threeseed wrote: post #132
ta8645 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs so far seem to be entirely unverifiable. I don't understand this complaint. Are they any less verifiable than a human?

I can ask a human to explain the steps they took to answer a question. I can ask a human a question 100 times and I don't get back 100 different answers. None of those applies to an LLM.

Ask a human what the meaning of life is and how it impacts their day to day interactions. I know I can tell you an answer but I couldn’t tell you steps about how I got it.

And if you asked it to me twice I’d definitely give different answers unless you told me to give the same answer. In part I’d give a different answer because if someone asks me the same question twice I assume the first answer wasn’t sufficient.

Re: Google scrambles to manually remove weird AI answers in search

#147

Post by 39896880 »

zihotki wrote: post #78
thesimp wrote: post #37

I'm actually shocked that a company that has spent 25 years on finetuning search results for any random question people ask in the searchbox does not have a good, clean, dataset to train an LLM on. Maybe this is the time to get out the old Encyclopedia Britannica CD and use that for training input.

They spent 10 years finetuning the search and then another 15 finetuning ads and clicks. Google's business is ads, not search.

Apologies in advance for this level pedantry: Google’s business is behavioral futures, not ads. Ads are just a means to that particular end.

Re: Google scrambles to manually remove weird AI answers in search

#148

Post by SoftTalker »

threeseed wrote: post #143
SoftTalker wrote: post #5

Trained on Twitter and Reddit. Garbage in/Garbage out, as it has always been.

Except that 90% of Reddit isn't garbage. It's really useful. Problem is Google can't tell what is garbage or not. No LLM can.

I'd argue it's far less than 90% but yes, there is some good information there. But weeding out the noise is what needs to happen, and (for some topics more than others) there is an awful lot of it.

Re: Google scrambles to manually remove weird AI answers in search

#150

Post by rurp »

PreInternet01 wrote: post #63

It's debatable whether Google has truly lost the plot because of the "AI wars", but the moment the statement "Bing returns more sensible results than you" becomes verifiably true, it's... cause for concern? The approach that Google appears to have taken, which is to assume that the top-ranked part of its current search index is a sensible knowledge base, may have been true some years ago, but definitely isn't now: fo…

Not only is the current internet 80% spam, it's rapidly approaching 99% thanks in large part to LLMs. At this point I would be shocked if Google had a solid plan for how to handle this going forward as the problem space gets more difficult.
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