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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

#351

Post by sumedh »

Beijinger wrote: post #183

This! "I don't want to watch a 10-minute video for a quick answer." And this: "OpenAI's search is becoming Google in the 2000s, if it can remain trustworthy." The problem I see: People use OpenAI/Perplexity for knowledge. Not to seek website. I think sooner or later, most website will block AI crawlers. What does a website gets out of it?

> I think sooner or later, most website will block AI crawlers.

Get a third party to do the crawling and the AI company can buy the data from the third party.

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

#352

Post by sumedh »

baxtr wrote: post #192

Today I had a better experience with Google than with ChatGPT. I started with chat and asked why I couldn’t change the passcode on a kid's device. I tried 3 answers. None worked. So I google. First hit is an Apple forum with the exact problem. Solved.

What was the Apple forum's answer and what was ChatGpt's answer?

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

#353

Post by eth0up »

spikej wrote: post #254
masa331 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you use Kagi?

I'd never heard of it until I just Googled it... Is it a better experience compared to DuckDuckGo with bang operators?

I've been disappointed with pretty much all recent SEs (DDG being among the very worst). Having been an early Scroogle user, ixquick (startpage) and a few other ones I dearly miss, I've been using https://freespoke.com/ lately and find it tolerable.

I was using searx instances with reasonable results but many of them started failing recently.

Anyway, I hope everyone finds a good one. I fear things will only get worse though.

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

#354

Post by sumedh »

manbash wrote: post #172

I wouldn't be concerned about trusting the results of ChatGPT if it also were providing links to the sources it had cited or used as a reference in its answers. Unfortunately, it doesn't, and so I can't verify them. Not sure if it's an actual limitation of current LLM or rather they're intentionally filtering out the sources.

> Unfortunately, it doesn't, and so I can't verify them.

Try asking for sources, whenever I have asked, it gives them.

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

#355

Post by ToucanLoucan »

pembrook wrote: post #345
potsandpans wrote: post #42

Just sharing an anecdote: I was searching for a quote that I'd heard in an audiobook the other day. I just had the general paraphrase, and didn't feel like scanning through the chapters to go find it. This was a somewhat obscure source. Google had just straight garbage for me. The quote was political in nature, and I felt like the results were fighting general tone-policing filters and were tuned for recent events. o…

There’s so much low effort, low hanging fruit that Google could do to improve results, that I just assume they've realized those things are unprofitable for them. I mean just de-ranking any article with an affiliate link alone would skyrocket the relevance of what content you surface on search. The problem for Google is, they’re incentivized to make the results worse than the SERP ads. If the organic results are too…

It's more IMO the logical conclusion when you have a company that was built by engineers to solve problems than then changed out all their leadership over time to business executives who don't do anything besides line-go-up.

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

#356

Post by sumedh »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #73

Once timeless facts will be solidified in AI training, like historical dates, laws of physics, maths formulas or specific programming API, there will be no reason to search for these things using Google. The web battle will then happen on this moving quickly, like the news. This will give immensely more power to the medias, and I fear that a lot given they have demonstrated time and again they can't be trusted with i…

> Once timeless facts will be solidified in AI training

Who decides those are facts?

What if someone comes up with alternative facts?

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

#357

Post by sumedh »

eastbound wrote: post #10

So, as a company, when can I pay OpenAI to twist its responses towards my company? Because it will happen. I’m afraid that ChatGPT is my friend for 20€ today, but prices will increase and response quality will go the way of Siri.

> when can I pay OpenAI to twist its responses towards my company?

They are probably thinking about it.

ChatGpt will become one of the most valuable company if they can pull it off and still keep the users happy.

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

#358

Post by layer8 »

hinkley wrote: post #285
beejiu wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps a more common question: "How many calories do men need to lose weight?" Google AI responded: "To lose weight, men typically need to reduce their daily calorie intake by 1,500 - 1,800 calories" Which is obviously dangerous advice. IMO Google AI overviews should not show up for anything (a) medical or (b) numerical. LLMs just aren't safe enough yet.

If you’re aiming to lose weight safely the rule of thumb is 3 lbs a week. 3000kcal per pound works out to an average deficit of about 1280 calories per day. Max. Obese people can lose a bit more under doctor supervision. My understanding is that it’s tied partially to % of body weight lost per week and partly to what your organs can process, which does not increase with body mass.

I don’t think absolute numbers are very useful here. You need around 5–10% reduction in calorie intake to get any weight-loss effect going, and I wouldn’t reduce by more than 20% (relative to weight-maintaining intake — it’s different if you’ve been seriously overeating) if you want it to be sustainable longer-term.

So for example if your weight is stable at 2500 kcal per day, I would start by reducing the intake by 250–500 kcal, but not more. If this works well for a month or two and then you want to lose weight faster, you can still reduce your intake further. You generally have to do that anyway even just to maintain the velocity, because weight loss also tends to reduce calorie expenditure.

First and foremost, you need to monitor your calorie intake against weight. Here is a useful text about that: https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/

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

#360

Post by edgyquant »

_false wrote: post #221
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…

I like the Dark Google metaphor, but SEO agencies being Google's real customers makes no sense to me.

SEO agencies often onboard people to AdWords
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