this post was submitted on 24 May 2024

1047 points (96.5% liked)

Technology

59656 readers

2686 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

1047

Google is losing it (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago by kokesh@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

158 comments fedilink hide all child comments

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 98 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I spent most of today looking at places to rent in Denver and I come home to Google having killed it's fucking search engine. What the hell is going on

[–] jennwiththesea@lemmy.world 51 points 6 months ago (1 children)

That's what you get for trying to have a real life.

[–] cows_are_underrated@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 6 months ago

How does je dare to.

[–] DragonOracleIX@lemmy.ml 17 points 6 months ago

Google decided that the entirety of reddit is perfect for training data in their AI LLM. People's shitposts from 10 years ago have now been given the spotlight at the top of google searches.

[–] RGB3x3@lemmy.world 76 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (4 children)

Google has been bad for a long time, but they've shut the bed so hard lately. Seriously, look at this:

I actually run out of screenshot space before I can get to an actual regular search result!

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 6 months ago (5 children)

Search done from Germany.

The mobile search doesnt look much different. The order on mobile is as follows:

A snippet from glogs.wordlbank.org
People also ask
Forbes article (see screenshot above)
www.epa.gov article

Both are Firefox Desktop (Win) and Mobile (Android) running Consent-O-Matic and ublock Origin

load more comments (5 replies)

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Bing has a similar problem where it just repeats the results, some pages are only 1 result so you just keep clicking next

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] tedu@azorius.net 61 points 6 months ago (8 children)

So weird, that's not what I see.

[–] voracitude@lemmy.world 187 points 6 months ago (10 children)

On the one hand, generative AI doesn't have to give deterministic answers i.e. it won't necessarily generate the same answer even when asked the same question in the same way.

But on the other hand, editing the HTML of any page to say whatever you want and then taking a screenshot of it is very easy.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 41 points 6 months ago (7 children)

It could also be A/B testing, so not everyone will have the AI running in general

load more comments (7 replies)

[–] QuadratureSurfer@lemmy.world 21 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Technically, generative AI will always give the same answer when given the same input. But, what happens is a "seed" is mixed in to help randomize things, that way it can give different answers every time even if you ask it the same question.

[–] jyte@lemmy.world 8 points 6 months ago (4 children)

What happened to my computers being reliable, predictable, idempotent ? :'(

load more comments (4 replies)

[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 15 points 6 months ago

That seems like a Wikipedia capture for the wrong page instead of AI.

[–] Cheradenine@sh.itjust.works 12 points 6 months ago

There are actually a bunch of these. Adding glue to pizza sauce (scraped from an old reddit post), replacing Blinker Fluid every two years, etc.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/05/googles-ai-overview-can-give-false-misleading-and-dangerous-answers/

load more comments (6 replies)

[–] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 80 points 6 months ago (2 children)

There for me

[–] casmael@lemm.ee 28 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Yup me too 🫡

load more comments (2 replies)

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] yukijoou@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 points 6 months ago

A/B testing moment

[–] Nobody@lemmy.world 13 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Works on my machine.

[–] AdamEatsAss@lemmy.world 18 points 6 months ago

Oh perfect. We'll just point production to your machine.

[–] sigmaklimgrindset@sopuli.xyz 12 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I see it.

[–] slaacaa@lemmy.world 17 points 6 months ago

Same

[–] dutchkimble@lemy.lol 7 points 6 months ago

But the real question is, is the colour blue that you see, the colour blue that I see?

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works 52 points 6 months ago (1 children)

AI and its consequences have been a disaster for Google.

[–] masterofn001@lemmy.ca 13 points 6 months ago (2 children)

... a disaster for ~~Google~~ humanity.

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] weew@lemmy.ca 39 points 6 months ago

Well, we know Google won't get rid of this.

They'll only cancel it after it actually works and becomes useful

[–] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 38 points 6 months ago (6 children)

We really need a whole community just for the very funny AI errors like this. I could spend all day reading about leaving a dog in a hot car, jumping off a bridge and eating at least one rock a day.

load more comments (6 replies)

[–] fne8w2ah@lemmy.world 38 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Did somebody say enshittification?

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] Infynis@midwest.social 35 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I asked Google for the release date of the new Final Fantasy XIV expansion today, which comes out June 28th. It told me March 26th

[–] mynachmadarch@kbin.social 8 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'm pretty sure March 26 is the day the pre-order started, so that one at least kind of makes sense.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] AFC1886VCC@reddthat.com 34 points 6 months ago (1 children)

What the hell is going on with Google search? Has it completely shit itself after the AI implementation? I know its been bad for a while but this is another level.

[–] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 27 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Short answer, yes. The ratio of LLM generated noise to actual content is increasing exponentially as we speak. To us it seems overnight because the increase is so steep but it's been happening for several years. And it's going to get a lot worse.

Honestly, I think we'll have to go back to 90s methods like web rings and human curated link directories.

load more comments (4 replies)

[–] ekZepp@lemmy.world 29 points 6 months ago

[–] hal_5700X@sh.itjust.works 26 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Will, it's not wrong. Welcome to the AI powered world of tomorrow.

load more comments (4 replies)

[–] dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de 25 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (6 children)

I stopped using Google years ago. I started using Bing but had to stop that as it would divert me to MSN to sign in when clicking a link for a news article. Like a news article for The Independent or The Times or any other.

I then started using DuckDuckGo which is powered by Bing, but found it wasn’t great at many searches.

I now use Arc Search most of the time and click browse for me to get the information I want without the bullshit. Search is essentially dead due to greed.

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 11 points 6 months ago (16 children)

Startpage and Qwant are the best alternatives IMO.
https://www.qwant.com/
https://www.startpage.com/

load more comments (16 replies)

[–] psycho_driver@lemmy.world 11 points 6 months ago

I'm finding SearXNG to be very good. It operates like dogpile used to but is actually functional and it pretty much entirely squelches product placement results. I actually have to manually go to google if I want to get product listings for something.

load more comments (4 replies)

[–] mojo_raisin@lemmy.world 14 points 6 months ago (2 children)

It's time to return to human curated directories.

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] vimdiesel@lemmy.world 14 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (9 children)

how do you guys get these things? I never see any summaries like that. I wonder if one of my adblockers is killing google AI lmao. Do you have to be logged into your google account? I never log into google any more.

load more comments (9 replies)

[–] NutWrench@lemmy.world 13 points 6 months ago

Behold the wonders of AI! Now, we don't have to pay human beings to edit webpages for us! Thanks to AI, you can just sit back and watch the money roll in!

[–] Princeali311@lemm.ee 12 points 6 months ago (7 children)

Can't recreate this. Or any of the other AI flops people keep posting

[–] Sidyctism@feddit.de 12 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Thats because LLMs have a certain level of randomisation built in. You wont always get the same result for any given inquiry

load more comments (1 replies)

load more comments (6 replies)

[–] onewaymars@lemm.ee 12 points 6 months ago

lmao not prepared for this comedy from google

[–] laxe@lemmy.world 12 points 6 months ago

They lost it a long time ago

[–] fossilesque@mander.xyz 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I like to use the Void from r/place as a metaphor for the Internet's gremlins. Google has called to the void, didn't bother to filter it and isn't happy with what it found. To me that signals that Google no longer understands internet culture.

load more comments (1 replies)

load more comments