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Google is using AI to censor independent websites like mine

travellemming.com

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Re: Google is using AI to censor independent websites like mine

#81

Post by floppyd »

HamsterDan wrote: post #43
Aldipower wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And where the training data for your AI advice comes from?

That cat is out of the bag, don't you think? Even if the US passes a strict law protecting copyright owners from having their works used to train AI, China is not going to obey that law, so US companies will just fall behind.

This is becoming tangential, but to me someone at this point saying "ban AI company from accessing content without explicit agreement" screams virtue signaling to me, because it directly translates to "I refuse to acknowledge the reality of the situation and will just continue saying that we need to do the 'right' thing".

Re: Google is using AI to censor independent websites like mine

#82

Post by brookst »

supriyo-biswas wrote: post #62

I'd like to look at this from a different angle. Since Google is an established search player, and that the company has made many public statements on the symbiotic relationship between them and publishers, this means the FTC complaint is likely to go through. Given the current US admin, I also assume they'd pursue some action, either combined with the antitrust efforts, or through a separate legal action as it nicel…

I don’t get this take at all.

The current administration uses bad faith claims of censorship to bully companies into advantaging speech they like (anti-science, anti-trans, anti-democracy, etc). They haven’t shown any interest in actual freedom of speech.

And OP’s use of “censorship” is pretty disingenuous; there is no claim that any free speech topic is in the table. No viewpoint is suppressed because no viewpoint is asserted.

It’s simple commercial lead gen. Google might be engaging in anticompetitive behavior, but this administration is very much a “might makes right” operation, and it’s hard to imagine them siding with a small player with no conservative bona fides and presumably no money to pay to play.

The only way I could imagine OP getting any relief would be to go full MAGA, list a bunch of travel options for hunting gays or whatever, donate at least a million dollars to Trump’s personal coffers, and then tell and scream about oppression of conservatives.

A simple “Walmart thanks suppliers for the market information but will only sell store brand products” case seems incredibly unlikely to get any traction at all.

Re: Google is using AI to censor independent websites like mine

#83

Post by Kon-Peki »

HamsterDan wrote: post #43
Aldipower wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And where the training data for your AI advice comes from?

That cat is out of the bag, don't you think? Even if the US passes a strict law protecting copyright owners from having their works used to train AI, China is not going to obey that law, so US companies will just fall behind.

That’s not at all how it would work.

The cat is out of the bag in terms of people passing around models that are “illegal” in your scenario, though such models would disappear from places like Huggingface. Running a commercial service that touches one of those models is off the table and will be blocked, at the IP level if need be, in essentially all the countries that matter economically to Chinese “exporters”.

Re: Google is using AI to censor independent websites like mine

#84

Post by SecretDreams »

blinding-streak wrote: post #57
SecretDreams wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My hunch is Google never psychologically recovered from Facebook absolutely wiping out G+, and they have been on a mission to ensure nothing like that ever happens again. Same for Microsoft with phones. That's why Google and Microsoft are trying to use AI to crush us while Apple is like "I'm pretty content with how much money I make".

> Apple is like "I'm pretty content with how much money I make". What a laughably silly depiction of a multi-trillion dollar company. Their predatory app store policies, defended (and lost) in court, paint a completely different picture. Just one of dozens of examples. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-executive-outright-lied...

I mostly meant it in the context of why they are so behind in AI... Sorry for the nuance.

Re: Google is using AI to censor independent websites like mine

#85

Post by rapnie »

itchyjunk wrote: post #54
blinding-streak wrote: post #25

> As one Google executive recently explained: “Organizing information is clearly a trillion-dollar opportunity, but a trillion dollars is not cool anymore. What’s cool is a quadrillion dollars.” This uncited, anonymous quote sounds very made up. Cursory search couldn't find anything like this. Regardless, while the article makes some good points, it is also dripping with entitlement. Google gave you incredible moneti…

Noam Shazeer says it at some point in the Dwarkesh Patel podcast. Edit : Saw multiple people comment by the time I hit sent. Was it also memorable for you guys? I think it was just the way he said it or something. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0gjI__RyCY

It was the giddy techbro optimism that struck me most with a "Hey, if all this quadrillion dollar value comes to Google it surely will greatly benefit all of society". While we are talking here effectively about a near-monopolistic advertisement moloch that is the epitomy of surveillance capitalism.

Re: Google is using AI to censor independent websites like mine

#86

Post by eviks »

thedevilslawyer wrote: post #3

The article treats as axiom that organic traffic is a right. It's not. Most people don't want to read an article on travel advice when AI gives us much better and specific advice, with references, when we want it.

What's your reference re. what most people want? Or at least a reference that AI advice is better, more specific, and its references aren't fake?

Re: Google is using AI to censor independent websites like mine

#87

Post by popcorncowboy »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #50
blinding-streak wrote: post #25

> As one Google executive recently explained: “Organizing information is clearly a trillion-dollar opportunity, but a trillion dollars is not cool anymore. What’s cool is a quadrillion dollars.” This uncited, anonymous quote sounds very made up. Cursory search couldn't find anything like this. Regardless, while the article makes some good points, it is also dripping with entitlement. Google gave you incredible moneti…

> This uncited, anonymous quote sounds very made up. Cursory search couldn't find anything like this. Quote is from Noam Shazeer (of transformer fame) in the Dwarkesh Podcast: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/jeff-dean-and-noam-shazeer

And the Social Network: https://youtu.be/Rqnt17APIbc?si=ytKruPAWZ9lAlnOz&t=283

Re: Google is using AI to censor independent websites like mine

#88

Post by Aldipower »

jasode wrote: post #65
Aldipower wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And where the training data for your AI advice comes from?

>And where the training data for your AI advice comes from? It seems like the unstated assumption in that question assumes that the world totally depends on the information from small independent blogs like this thread's article. I.e. all other information sources would be derivatives of the independent blogs. There are many other sources of organic info to feed AI training. Examples: - transcripts of Youtube videos.…

Thanks, that wants me to use AI even less.

Both examples has nothing to do with an open and free internet. Meaning I cannot trust AI at all. All those examples of data source here, also in the other replies, using mainly highly biased sources. Wikipedia (biased by a small group of mods), YouTube filtered by Google itself, pasting customer travel advice email heavily violates GDPR, social forums also funneled.

If we loose organic sites, we loose freedom. Fair enough, organic sites does mean the information there is correct, but still it is open and free, so organic sites can be treated as Gaussian distributed.

Re: Google is using AI to censor independent websites like mine

#90

Post by flenserboy »

thedevilslawyer wrote: post #3

The article treats as axiom that organic traffic is a right. It's not. Most people don't want to read an article on travel advice when AI gives us much better and specific advice, with references, when we want it.

it's not a right, but it shouldn't be impeded. google does everything it can not to give actual search results — the terrible AI slop at the top, page after page of ads, & the elimination of the long tail, where reality was once allowed to surface. now we get hallucinations & paid content. treating this as if it is an improvement sounds crazed.
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