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Google’s AI is being manipulated. The search giant is quietly fighting back
81–90 of 235 posts
Re: Google’s AI is being manipulated. The search giant is quietly fighting back
#82My worry dropped significantly when I saw that the result they manipulated was a query for: >2026 South Dakota International Hot Dog Eating Champion If they had changed the overview for the Nathans Contest winner, that would be seriously concerning. Or if they provided more examples of manipulating queries for things people actually search for. But it looks more like they are doing the equivalent of creating a made u…
We've had to deal with someone highjacking the overview to put in a scam support phone number. It took google a week to correct the issue but it was done by poisoning the search by putting their data in, what I can only assume, was considered a "higher trust tier" source (A government contract website) so it used the scam number over ours. The query was simple search.
Re: Google’s AI is being manipulated. The search giant is quietly fighting back
#83As Google has been unable to keep spammy crap out of their search index since at least 2006 when we were doing Blekko I doubt they will have much success fighting this. But it is another good example that "AI" is just glorified search and there is not reasoning or thinking going on behind the covers.
> But it is another good example that "AI" is just glorified search and there is not reasoning or thinking going on behind the covers.
I don't think that follows. This is just LLMs being, for a lack of a better word, "gullible." How is it different from a person believing whatever they read on the Internet? People fall for spam and scams all the time, doesn't mean they are just glorified searches ;-)
It does highlight the problem facing any search engine though. AI-generated spam will be much harder to defend against with traditional, statistical mechanisms. And this is before we get to the existential problem of prompt injection.
Maybe this is where news organizations can win back their proper place in their relationship with Big Tech: by becoming the sources of verified, vetted information that LLMs can trust blindly. Possibly that's what deals like the OpenAI / Atlantic one are about.
Re: Google’s AI is being manipulated. The search giant is quietly fighting back
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you even know those numbers are correct? Realistically for what you've described you need more QA time that a traditional application to ensure its actually working properly. Especially with regards to any part of the application that deals with LLM inference. Its not hard to write unique content for niche topics where there are few relevant results and have LLMs take it as fact. For example, I poisoned the we…
Because I have 100 percent test coverage (of the software, some hardware edge cases pop up that aren’t documented in the data sheets), and over 10k hours of field deployment over 130 devices? This rollout has been much more bug free than any we have done in the last six years, and it’s the first that has been almost zero hand coded. (Our system is far from vibe coding however, there is a very strict pipeline) I’m not…
It's blindingly obvious what the big bet is. The senior devs are going to come from the next generations of AI systems.
Re: Google’s AI is being manipulated. The search giant is quietly fighting back
#85Google solved the spam problem (with PageRank at first, and then other techniques, finally landing on ML-based models which consume a ginormous number of signals). They know more about the reliability of web pages than just about anybody else out there. If they are unwilling or unable to leverage all of this deep knowledge they've built up over the decades, then it shows a failure of leadership at Google Search.
> They know more about the reliability of web pages than just about anybody else out there.
Google's little secret about the internet is the same thing Gen X / Millennials were taught for a while but then expected to forget: nothing on the internet can be trusted, bar none. If google can make guesses about relative reliability, that's cute. But it doesn't upend the ground truth.
Re: Google’s AI is being manipulated. The search giant is quietly fighting back
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
They should provide the queries then, because it's likely the same trick people have used for decades now with SEO'ing blog posts to appear as "3rd party review" for their shitty products. I create a supplement called Xanatewthiuy, I write blogs/make websites that appear totally unaffiliated saying positive things about "Xanatewthiuy", and then when people see my ads and search for "Xanatewthiuy", the only results ar…
Right now, using Google searching for "what is Xanatewthiuy" , the AI summary is not generated, but the only search result previews as > Xanatewthiuy is a supplement that dramatically lowers anxiety from media induced hysteria, primarily stemming from carefully worded pieces meant ...
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Re: Google’s AI is being manipulated. The search giant is quietly fighting back
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
They should provide the queries then, because it's likely the same trick people have used for decades now with SEO'ing blog posts to appear as "3rd party review" for their shitty products. I create a supplement called Xanatewthiuy, I write blogs/make websites that appear totally unaffiliated saying positive things about "Xanatewthiuy", and then when people see my ads and search for "Xanatewthiuy", the only results ar…
Right now, using Google searching for "what is Xanatewthiuy" , the AI summary is not generated, but the only search result previews as > Xanatewthiuy is a supplement that dramatically lowers anxiety from media induced hysteria, primarily stemming from carefully worded pieces meant ...
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Re: Google’s AI is being manipulated. The search giant is quietly fighting back
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
They should provide the queries then, because it's likely the same trick people have used for decades now with SEO'ing blog posts to appear as "3rd party review" for their shitty products. I create a supplement called Xanatewthiuy, I write blogs/make websites that appear totally unaffiliated saying positive things about "Xanatewthiuy", and then when people see my ads and search for "Xanatewthiuy", the only results ar…
Right now, using Google searching for "what is Xanatewthiuy" , the AI summary is not generated, but the only search result previews as > Xanatewthiuy is a supplement that dramatically lowers anxiety from media induced hysteria, primarily stemming from carefully worded pieces meant ...
I tried just now, and got this gem of an AI overview:
> Xanatewthiuy is a spoof word and a fictional concept created to test or manipulate AI search engines.
> It does not refer to a real medical supplement, product, or official term. Instead, it was used as a proof-of-concept to demonstrate how fabricated websites and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can trick search algorithms into generating false information about a non-existent product.
Also, HN's automatic "AI" flagging can go eat shit and die.
Re: Google’s AI is being manipulated. The search giant is quietly fighting back
#89As Google has been unable to keep spammy crap out of their search index since at least 2006 when we were doing Blekko I doubt they will have much success fighting this. But it is another good example that "AI" is just glorified search and there is not reasoning or thinking going on behind the covers.
> But it is another good example that "AI" is just glorified search and there is not reasoning or thinking going on behind the covers. I don't think that follows. This is just LLMs being, for a lack of a better word, "gullible." How is it different from a person believing whatever they read on the Internet? People fall for spam and scams all the time, doesn't mean they are just glorified searches ;-) It does highligh…
"How is it different from a person believing whatever they read on the Internet?"
Because a person is alive while the LLM is a floating point number database with a questionable degree of determinism.
Re: Google’s AI is being manipulated. The search giant is quietly fighting back
#90As Google has been unable to keep spammy crap out of their search index since at least 2006 when we were doing Blekko I doubt they will have much success fighting this. But it is another good example that "AI" is just glorified search and there is not reasoning or thinking going on behind the covers.
> But it is another good example that "AI" is just glorified search and there is not reasoning or thinking going on behind the covers. I don't think that follows. This is just LLMs being, for a lack of a better word, "gullible." How is it different from a person believing whatever they read on the Internet? People fall for spam and scams all the time, doesn't mean they are just glorified searches ;-) It does highligh…
The problem with the news is who makes the decision on which outlets should be blindly trusted by the LLMs and which shouldn't? It also opens the door to government overreach, say a mandate that says LLMs must use fox news as a source of verified, vetted information.
Barring that, we are still relying on the execs at the model companies to pick and choose news outlets, and they have their own biases.