Hacker News
points by ceejayoz 5 days ago | 0 comments
> A.I. features are now a standard part of Google’s commercially available search engine. “Search and A.I. are deeply integrated,” said Chris Phillips, vice president for education at Google. If a school has banned A.I., he added, students “will not have access to search, and they’ll see a message from their school that indicates it’s not available.”

C'mon, it's right in the article.

The school can control AI on/off. Off means no search too.

[–] skeledrew 5 days ago
Well their search engine is explicitly AI-driven; no AI, no search. Like you can't have juice that doesn't contain water.
[–] ceejayoz 5 days ago
> Like you can't have juice that doesn't contain water.

This particular bit of juice didn't have the "AI summaries" ingredient for 93% of its existence.

Schools invested enormously in Google Classroom and Google for Education, and now the deal's changing. Not for the benefit of students.

[–] skeledrew 5 days ago
The water supply got an update. Reservoir instead of wells. There may be a difference in taste but you'll get used to it. Or learn to dig a well.
[–] ceejayoz 5 days ago
That's more honest, but quite the goalpost move.

The local population is probably allowed to complain that you built the reservoir with toxic waste, too, or that you filled the old well with construction debris.

[–] skeledrew 4 days ago
It's not a goalpost move though, as there was never a guarantee to remain on well water.

But anyway I personally would find someone offering well water if I don't like the reservoir. And I've been using DuckDuckGo exclusively for search since they first appeared, so I've never had to deal with what Google's doing. I know the reservoir exists, but I've never drank from it.

[–] rockskon 4 days ago
> It's not a goalpost move though, as there was never a guarantee to remain on well water.

That sounds like an argument to never depend on Google for anything ever again under any circumstance short of severe punitive legislative action.

[–] skeledrew 4 days ago
It really doesn't make sense to use a service and expect that service to not ever change (or be replaced), particularly when you're not the owner of said service. I love how HN is but I wouldn't blink if it changed tomorrow for example. Heck, there have been recent changes: there's now a filter system for LLM-generated content, for one.
[–] nativeit 4 days ago
It’s got what plants crave.
[–] oenton 4 days ago
> Well their search engine is explicitly AI-driven; no AI, no search.

By “AI” you mean machine learning e.g. RankBrain, correct? Schools are clearly not opposed to that. Their contention is with the LLM-generated “AI summary” that sits on top of the ranked results.

Do you not understand those are two different things? That’s my most charitable conclusion. The less charitable conclusion is you are intentionally conflating generative AI (LLMs) with all machine learning, which is not how the term “AI” is used in this article or Google’s own marketing.