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Google's Results Are Infested, Open AI Is Using Their Playbook from the 2000s

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Re: Google's Results Are Infested, Open AI Is Using Their Playbook from the 2000s

#271

Post by pasttense01 »

JustExAWS wrote: post #253
jazzyjackson wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Perplexity and it routinely confabulates while linking to the source it confabulates from. Parent has a valid gripe that AI is essentially damaging their reputation by pretending to cite its information with a credible source, I wish there were some legal avenue to sue but it's not quite libel is it?

And you have the source as proof. But that says a lot about Perplexity. Does Perplexity actually give you a clickable link like ChatGPT does?

It gives you clickable links to a half dozen or so sources. It's not clear which of the information comes from source 1 vs source 2, etc.

Re: Google's Results Are Infested, Open AI Is Using Their Playbook from the 2000s

#272

Post by chimpanzee »

griomnib wrote: post #236
chimpanzee wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that’s the main issue as ideally they wouldn’t be non-deterministic on well-established quantitative facts.

But they can never be. RAG gets you somewhere, but it’s still a pile of RNGs under a trenchcoat.

>> ideally

Re: Google's Results Are Infested, Open AI Is Using Their Playbook from the 2000s

#273

Post by mrkramer »

JustExAWS wrote: post #262
mrkramer wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the real question, because younger generations use less and less Open Web. That was actually one of the main concerns of Larry Page back in the day, that the majority of Web's information might get and be locked behind walled gardens, paywalls or whatever else.

The web is just as “open” as it ever was. It is just as easy if not more so to create and host your own content. You’re complaining about “discoverability” which hasn’t been easy since 2000. The most successful independent writer today is probably Ben Thompson’s “Stratechery” https://stratechery.com/about/ https://blockbuster.thoughtleader.school/p/how-ben-thompson-... Through organic search, you probably won’t find…

Walled gardens like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and others are the missed opportunities for the Open Web. Google nor any other search engine can't crawl their information, so Web users who are not on the aforementioned sites are missing a lot of useful information and social dynamics that would otherwise take place on the Open Web.

Re: Google's Results Are Infested, Open AI Is Using Their Playbook from the 2000s

#274

Post by hinkley »

vidarh wrote: post #153
dijksterhuis wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, in what context is this dangerous? To reach dangerous levels one would have to drink well over 100 cups of coffee in a sitting some people use caffeine powder / pills for gym stuff apparently. someone overdosed and died after incorrectly weighing a bunch of powder. doubt it is a big leap to someone dying because they were told the wrong limits by google. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-60570470 as ever, m…

I don't doubt the news article on this, but even with caffeine pills/powder it's near half a fistful to get to LD50 judging by my caffeine tablets. It's not impossible to consume, but it'd be distinctly unpleasant long before you get even anywhere close to dangerous levels. For my high-caffeine pre-workout powder, I suspect I'd vomit long before I'd get anywhere near. Pure caffeine is less unpleasant, but still prett…

I wonder if they’re thinking 200mg per kilo to trigger cell death. I have trouble believing a human heart surviving a dose of 50mg/kg. Half of them surviving four times that much? No. I don’t believe it.

Found an article about a teenager who died after three strong beverages. The coroner is careful to point out that this was likely an underlying medical condition not the caffeine. The health professional they interviewed claims 10g is lethal for “most” people, which would be 100-150mg/kg. That still seems like something an ER doctor would roll their eyes at.

Re: Google's Results Are Infested, Open AI Is Using Their Playbook from the 2000s

#275

Post by n144q »

ethbr1 wrote: post #56
eastbound wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. If Google kept at “Pages must be short and provide straight answers”, then we’d have much better search results today. Google is machine-gunning its foot since 2021, it’s really unclear to me whether they’re killing their baby just to make the job harder for competitors or something. For now… I open the Google Search results with a machete, and often don’t find any answer. Talk about severing your own foot to a…

Why ascribe to malice, what can be explained by ineptitude? I just don't think Google cares enough about the web as a whole to make strategic decisions for content quality in aggregate. Sure it cares about geeky nuances and standards (e.g. page structure / load times), but Pichai isn't considering the impact on web content quality when debating an algorithm change or feature. If Google continues driving web quality o…

> I just don't think Google cares enough about the web as a whole to make strategic decisions for content quality in aggregate.

The only thing they care about is ad revenue. Google created Chrome which vastly improved browser user experience. Google is a major participant in web standard & JavaScript language evolution, among other work. That's all true, but not necessarily because they "care about the web", but rather it helps their ad business. If people put the entire world's information on websites, and people spend more time in browsers, Google ends up earning more money from ads.

Re: Google's Results Are Infested, Open AI Is Using Their Playbook from the 2000s

#276

Post by dkkergoog »

jerf wrote: post #211

Don't bet on AI staying clean. A lot of HN readers conceptualize the forces attacking the integrity of the search results as just some isolated people taking occasional potshots, and then maybe slinking away if their trick gets blocked. It is probably a lot more accurate to visualize the SEO industry as a Dark Google. Roughly as well resourced, with many smart people working on it full time, day in, day out, with inf…

[dead]

Re: Google's Results Are Infested, Open AI Is Using Their Playbook from the 2000s

#277

Post by marcus0x62 »

d0mine wrote: post #261
marcus0x62 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but here's how I read it: the SEO operators are driving traffic to google's ad network, where google make's its money. They aren't necessarily paying google much: the ad buyers are doing that, but they deliver the eyeballs to google's ads. Its kind of like the US hospital system, where doctors are considered by the hospital, if not de jure then certainly de facto, to be the real customers of the hospital. Doc…

Hospitals are increasingly owned by insurance companies. The customers are not doctors but shareholders. That is why a cure is seen as a threat.

1) I was making an analogy.

2) I took at look at the most recent CMS data[0] I could find (from 2022,) and out of the top ten owners of hospitals in the United States, zero are payers. I only recognize about half of the parties in the 11-20 part of the list, but of the ones I do recognize, one is related to a payer. I can find no data to support your assertion that insurance companies are purchasing hospitals. They are purchasing physician practice groups, but that only reinforces the dynamic I described where hospitals have to court physicians to drive patients to their facilities.

0 - https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/582de65f2...

Re: Google's Results Are Infested, Open AI Is Using Their Playbook from the 2000s

#278

Post by vitaflo »

JustExAWS wrote: post #156
vitaflo wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had numerous people contact me directly with follow up questions about various info I've put on my website. Many of those have turned into further conversations and collaborations. You can't have that if Google is plagiarizing your site and delivering the info.

How many of those people found you by randomly searching Google versus via links via your profile on social media?

All of them, because I'm not on any social media. I also mostly put obscure things on my website that aren't easily found elsewhere online, so very specific searches tend to end up on my site.

Also probably why I get email from people visiting as it's one of the few places people can reference said info.

Re: Google's Results Are Infested, Open AI Is Using Their Playbook from the 2000s

#279

Post by croes »

griomnib wrote: post #200
croes wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It want stay long. You are now in the pre ad phase. As soon as the ads are integrated the answers will become worse.

They have something Google never had: a paid tier. There are plenty of revenue models aside from ads.

MS already talks about ads for Copilot

Re: Google's Results Are Infested, Open AI Is Using Their Playbook from the 2000s

#280

Post by marcus0x62 »

lostlogin wrote: post #265
d0mine wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hospitals are increasingly owned by insurance companies. The customers are not doctors but shareholders. That is why a cure is seen as a threat.

That doesn’t make sense - a sick patient costs the shareholders money.

Setting aside the previous commenters "the cure is a threat" thing, there's some precedent for this in the US healthcare system in the form of HMOs (particularly Kaiser Permanente.) Part of that is supposed to be vertical efficiency. Part is the idea that it is possible to avoid extremely expensive acute care services with proactive low-cost primary care.
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