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Google changes its search box

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Re: Google changes its search box

#601

Post by abalaji »

imoverclocked wrote: post #37

I don't trust facts from LLMs. When I am searching for something, I usually want to find primary sources. As soon as a number is involved, I do my best to not even look at the AI output. Even though the result is often good and combines information from multiple sources, it can also get things wrong by combining information from different eras or just plain outdated advice. AFAICT, without primary sources, the result…

I don't trust facts from humans. When I am searching for something, I usually want to find direct sensor readings. As soon as a number is involved, I do my best to not even look at the human output.

Even though the result is often coherent and confidently synthesizes information from multiple experiences, it can also hallucinate, suffer from recency bias, or accidentally merge memories from different decades. AFAICT, without access to the underlying telemetry, human responses are for entertainment purposes only.

Re: Google changes its search box

#602

Post by starkeeper »

barf but it at least opens up the playing field for new startups that want to provide good old index search and try to beat them where they left off when search still worked 8 years ago before they hired the yahoo POS execs that enshitified the service.

Re: Google changes its search box

#603

Post by ihatethat2 »

fscaramuzza wrote: post #290

What scares me about this new AI mode thingy is that every answer sounds like a systematic literature review, but only for the results. For example, if I look for users feedback about a specific product, it says "People think that..., but also that...; It's important to notice that some people ..." where with 'people' it means just a random comment on a random website just because it thought it was a good contributio…

I love asking AI about blatantly wrong opinions but by people it thinks must be an authority.

To not make this political, let me give you a game example. Right now the dota 2 fandom wiki is abandoned, and it has been vandalized with covert shitposts. One of them was the addition of a 4th attribute called Charisma, which is completely fake. If you ask AI's "What are the main attributes in dota, according to the official wiki", the dumber AI will fall for it, but the smarter AI will know it's wrong, but try hard to hallucinate some sort of valid explanation like claim charisma is from a custom game or a fan suggestion or writing exercise.

Because you said the word >>OFFICIAL<<, they can NEVER straight up just say "The wiki is wrong". They presume authority from a bunch of shitposts.

Re: Google changes its search box

#604

Post by dostick »

With answers “someone on the internet wrote”, I miss knowing definitely that there’s no good or authoritative answer to my query on the internet. With those “people as clueless as you said…” answers it takes lot more time to understand that.

Re: Google changes its search box

#605

Post by itsmek »

mcphage wrote: post #595
johnny_canuck wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But ultimately that strategy is good for the consumer right? In this context, if Google is going to give me the recipe without having to scroll through the story, that seems like a win to me. The ad-revenue driven Internet of web 2.0 is finally dead and I'm not sure I'm all that sad.

> But ultimately that strategy is good for the consumer right? No. Temporarily it’s good for the consumer. Ultimately it is bad for the consumer, because as prices drop, so to does quality.

It's not uncommon for free things to be higher quality than cheap things, especially when we're not talking about physical goods. Think hobbyist vs hack. Selective pro bono vs quantity over quality. The former describes old internet while the latter describes much ad-supported internet. I'm not saying cheap is better than expensive, and I'm not saying everything works this way, but I do think many things do, especially for pure information that doesn't have a major capital cost associated.

Re: Google changes its search box

#606

Post by therealdrag0 »

embedding-shape wrote: post #3

Basically people who want to search, will now not be able to, they'll be forced into a UI they might have consciously avoided, otherwise they'd be using their chatbot in the first place. Seems like a strange UX decision, rather than recommending "Hey maybe you want to try our chatbot", they just force the user into a chat straight up.

There are other search engines. Vote with your clicks people.

Re: Google changes its search box

#607

Post by freeone3000 »

RyanOD wrote: post #418
sanitycheck wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. For years we've been telling people to 'just fucking google it', and now when they do they're getting bullshit AI answers. Worst thing is, some of these bullshit answers will be medical, some of them financial, it seems pretty certain people are being harmed.

It seems to me one needs to consider the complexity of the question they are asking before searching it. To stick with your post, consider people asking medical or financial questions. For a wide variety of reasons, many of such questions don't have an answer. In such cases, AI is still going to take a crack at it. AI shouldn't be blamed for "bullshit answers" to such questions. Before using AI, I think people should…

I asked it “how can I tell if a spray paint can is empty?” And it told me that the paint can would no longer rattle.

Re: Google changes its search box

#608

Post by OGWhales »

DANmode wrote: post #576
OGWhales wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that’s how I would ask an AI. I wasn’t asking an AI though, I was googling it

Google is “an AI”, and has been for some time!, was my point ^.^

I was only intending to use the traditional search engine, the AI was incidental. If I want an AI answer, I will go to it separately. This is better in my mind as optimal queries for each are different.

The issue is, Google has mixed the two in a way that promotes the AI response as primary. This has resulted in dubious answers being presented as “official” summaries (to the lay person).

At the very least, one would expect it to be a little smarter—perhaps by automatically doing things like you suggested—instead of basing things off a single source, as it seems to enjoy doing.

Re: Google changes its search box

#609

Post by shevy-java »

Thankfully ublock origin blocks a ton of those useless AI slop spam, but Google nerfed its search engine already years before. They showed that they don't care about it anymore, yet alone about users. Something fundamentally changed at Google and it is not good. It is time for the world to retire Google. We don't want or need an adCompany nor an AI slop company.
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