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points by jeffbee 5 days ago | 0 comments

It isn't possible for Google to run a websearch query "without AI" and it hasn't been for over 10 years.

Would you agree that there is a difference between "search results ranked by AI" and "Magic box that blurts out an answer"?

We do want to teach kids how to do searches, to look at and parse results and basically do "online research", right. Not just blindly trust the magic answer box?

[–] skeledrew 5 days ago

The "magic box" is really just summarizing the top X results, which have been ranked by AI for many years. Everyone has been "blindly trusting" all that for a good while now.

[–] morkalork 5 days ago

Reading, evaluating and summarizing results is exactly the skill we want to teach kids.

This is like a book publisher refusing to sell books to schools without including spark notes on the inside cover.

[–] skeledrew 4 days ago

I remember being taught library skills as a kid. That's what adults back in the day wanted to teach, because we needed to be able to find books to help with assignments and whatnot. And then the Internet and search engines happened and that class is no more. Things and times change.

[–] Dylan16807 4 days ago

It's super bad at accurate summarization.

[–] skeledrew 4 days ago

Every tech starts out pretty bad, then improves over time.

[–] Dylan16807 4 days ago

Yes, and?

Right now it's pretty bad, so Google forcing it on people is quite bad.

It's almost certainly not going to be good enough by the time they start enforcing this.

[–] skeledrew 4 days ago

And you either deal with it, or find an alternative. I'm pretty sure Google has no intention of pulling back, partly because they know the vast majority of users accept what they serve. And partly because they know many of the screamers will go quiet when it gets good enough; all they have to do is ignore them, and they have more than enough in their coffers to ignore anyone who isn't the US president.

[–] Dylan16807 4 days ago

> And you either deal with it, or find an alternative.

That's true regardless of whether it gets good or not.

> And partly because they know many of the screamers will go quiet when it gets good enough; all they have to do is ignore them

That depends on how long it takes and whether they keep spending the same amount of money per query.

[–] gdulli 5 days ago

It's incredibly obtuse to pretend not to understand that people object to LLM slop, but not everything that can fall under the broad term of "AI".

[–] dimator 4 days ago

This thread is full of, I don't even know, Google brigadiers?? Like obviously search is powered by algorithms to rank the best results.

The problem is the summary boxes, because there is no incentive to click, scan, find, contextualize, which are at the basis of learning a thing. That's what the objections are aimed at. It's incredible to find this many "oh well but it's the same product now" water carriers here.