Google Admits Its AI Overviews Search Feature Screwed Up

making the feature rely less heavily on user-generated content from sites like Reddit

Imagine selling out reddit/buying access to the comments for AI just to immediately unprioritise it

A new deal is being forged with 4chan instead.
- That would be awesome!
- Straight and real
- Can't wait for a text message from mom saying she was looking for a cookie recipe and got gore porn & some frog instead...
No one could have seen this coming. Obviously LLMs absolutely completely understand the difference between people joking around with each other and authentic advice.
Sarcasm aside, Reddit does have some good information about niche topics. There's just currently no way for AI to understand the difference between dry humor and serious responses. I think the AI summaries are unhelpful anyway, but even if I didn't it's pretty obvious Google didn't think further than "Shove AI into it like a drunken prom night encounter".
- There’s just currently no way for AI to understand the difference between dry humor and serious responses.
  There’s no way for humans to do this either. We invented an entirely new series of markers (emoticons, /s, etc.) at a vain attempt at doing just this and still fail.

Reid characterized the mistakes that won attention as the result of an internet-wide audit that wasn’t always well intended.

Oh yeah, there was a conspiracy to embarrass Google with off-the-wall questions like “how do I thicken pizza sauce?”

Why are these corporate schmucks unable to take any blame?

No audit is well intended. The whole ppint of an audit is to find duplicitous and fucked up shit.
Why are these corporate schmucks unable to take any blame?
Because they never have to.
It wasn't us, it was the people who used it who really caused the failure.
- Ungrateful fucking peasants are not recognizing greatness?!!?
Sadly, b/c their jobs literally depend on them NOT doing so, in today's corporate hellscape environ:-(.
If Chromebooks are anything to go by, if google had their way you'd only be allowed to search prescreened questions they think are best for you. Can't have you experiencing anything not advertiser friendly.

https://archive.is/96Woj

The company made “more than a dozen technical improvements” to AI Overviews ...

... making the feature rely less heavily on user-generated content from sites like Reddit

So it prefers the results that Google normally deprioritizes? I guess we have that in common

I almost wonder what Huffman is thinking right now - he could have been so very close to becoming a billionaire, managing the repository of human general technical knowledge explained simply, but he blew it by being a greedy piggy...
Not that he will ever admit that, even to himself.
- I don’t think Spaz is thinking at all. That was how Reddit imploded.

What? Oh no, I had not written down the recipe for using gasoline to cook my spaghetti! Whatever shall I do?

Step 1: add gasoline.
Step 2: add more gasoline.
Step 3: don't think about the bridge...
Step 4: what spaghetti?
- I wonder if that bridge has immortalized itself in AI history.

The AI bullcrap at the top, before actual search results, is what finally made me change my default engine to duckduckgo

Same, I have tried DDG every once in a while but kept going back to google. Now google search doesn't quite give me relevant results anymore and all the AI crap just takes all of their effort to work on search itself.
Been using DDG for a few weeks now for personal and work related stuff - quite happy with it.
I've fully committed to kagi now and don't regret it. The results are actually helpful again and even their AI features are better. The search summary does not seem to hallucinate at all
I don't know about you but the sponsored results and all that search optimisation manipulation made me switch to DDG long before AI
My only gripe with duck fuck go is I don't allow access to my location and can never google (hehe) shit in my town without adding extra words for directions etc
- You don’t allow location and are surprised that it does not know you location? Am I missing something here? Why is that surprising?
- Yeah what annoys me aswell is that I don't like to type anything into the search field so noone can steal my data, buttfuck go refuses to give me results that way

Ok good. Now remove that feature or at least add mandatory human review

And slow down search even more?
Human review is NEVER going to happen. The amount of comments from Reddit and user queries is mind boggling
- No I meant that the AI makes replies to most popular (or predicted to be popular) questions but a human has to review and accept it manually to push it to the search results. But that still won't fix everything. It's just AI that needs to die. That's it

It’s an interesting concept. But right now, Google Search is the best argument in favor of Bing.

Or DuckDuckGo, which uses the same index as Bing, but with more privacy
- DuckDuckGo is my default search tool. It’s great.
You think Bing aka Microsoft is not planning on this exact same folly?
- I’m sure they are. But they haven’t yet. And after this, they might at least borrow a page from Apple and make sure it works first.

Everyone remember to pollute your answers wherever you post them at least once a day.

The best way to avoid having your words used by an LLM is to mash your fingers with a mallet before typing. The resulting typographical errors will ensure that the AI rejects your text before using it for training.
- So... a nurmal Redhti usre then? :-P

You don't say.

Well, cool. Now fix it.

We need decentralized, federated search. I remember YaCy from years ago was attempting this. Anybody know if there's anybody actively working on this?

@makeasnek @schizoidman YaCy is still around.
And https://searx.space/ is an open source metasearch search engine with many instances. (Try https://searx.be/ if you want to test it out.)
SearX/SearXNG allows you to aggregate results from a number of different search engines. You choose which ones, and they're stored in your browser without setting up an account.
- @makeasnek @pears is working on that
  @ajsadauskas @schizoidman
- Interesting thanks I'll take a look!

I looked something up today.

Do plumbers fit shower screens? Plumbers do not usually fit frameless shower screens. Most of the time, they break the glass panels and hurt themselves. Others do not try going through the installation hassle.

The whole thing is embarrassing. The only way it could be worse could be if they harvested 4chan

Am I the only one who doesn't have access to this? I'm in canada but using a VPN doesn't seem to change anything. Not that I care about AI, but I'd like to see the shitshow myself.

Thanks to screw-ups like these, I was on the hunt for a better search engine. I may have found one in kagi.com. Anyone else willing to pay to get rid of tracking, check it out!