I do worry about Google AI overview's long-term impact, but man, it has been such a great experience of late. It surely does feel like the old google but better.
There was a point, perhaps about five years ago, where using Google had become a genuinely frustrating hurdle I needed to overcome to do the actual work. Now the frustration is completely gone.
Just this morning I had a worrying result when I googled "UV index <location>" and it confidently told me the current UV index was zero.
It was not, and at least because it was obviously wrong I clicked through to a page with the real UV index.
But had it said "The UV index is 1.7" I might have believed it, but it'd still have been wrong, potentially dangerously so.
Now to be clear, live data is precisely the sort of thing I expect it to get wrong, and I never intended to trigger let alone read an "AI summary", but it's still worrying for those less inclined to dismiss it.
Had the same experience outside of AI recently. With the cli friendly weather reporting site wttr. It reported temperatures that were about 30°C off.
Can't trust anything anymore these days.
They used to handle real data extremely well by using those little search widgets they would recognize what you’re asking and just show weather etc. the AI answers is just such a massive regression.
The worst example of this seems to be tide tables, which are extremely date-dependant.
It would be obviously wrong if location=out standing in a middle of a field in direct sunlight. It wouldn't be obviously wrong if location=indoors.
Proving that search hasn't stopped making us think at all. Just like we've had to do with humans since the dawn of time, we continue to have to think hard about how our intent will be interpreted.
It's almost like what we really need is someone to simply index the sites that have the actual primary sources so we can search them and find them quickly! /s
Interesting given this is the polar opposite of my experience. I find Googles AI overview to give wrong answers constantly. Occasionally, even for questions I believe Google circa 2018 was able to answer confidently.
Ironically, Googles AI overview often links to references that state the polar opposite of what the AI overview claims.
I've seen it answering based on a single Reddit, Stackexchange, or even HN source. Sometimes either incorrectly, or taking some side of a debated technical issue and presenting it like a fact.
Each Google "AI" response should state a correctness confidence value. A range 0-40% will probably suffice.
Just recently I read that it is futile to make AI give out scores like that, as they are pretty much completely made up. Can't find the article anymore, though.
Definitely. I was being ironic. Sorry not to say!
No way, Google AI search always says you need to see a medical professional or if you say your cat puked it’s like “Cancer” it’s basically as bad as early Google always wrong about everything and over-worrying and over-assuming.
Half the time it just describes some unrelated shit. Maybe it’s interesting but totally sidetracks your search.
IMO it’s like Google 15 years ago where it was causing more panic and disinformation but people knew it back then - we laughed at Google’s persistent and incorrect diagnoses.
Now though, with boomers and young Gen Y and older Gen Z - maybe the dumbest yet most confident people alive it’s causing a lot of harm. Everyone thinks they know everything and because they inherit from their parents and are basically rich society rewards them for being retarded