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points by morkalork 5 days ago | 0 comments

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.