Google rolled out AI overviews across the United States this month, exposing its flagship product to the hallucinations of large language models.

Google rolled out AI overviews across the United States this month, exposing its flagship product to the hallucinations of large language models.

  • Nualkris@lemm.eeEnglish
    57·
    6 months ago

    Why does search need to be AI? I’ve had no problems finding any information I wanted under the former process.

    • Bogasse@lemmy.mlEnglish
      23·
      6 months ago

      I think it’s been a long time since digital companies tried to solve actual problems.

      • kibiz0r@midwest.socialEnglish
        5·
        6 months ago

        Can I super-mega-ultra upvote this?

        It’s the same playbook as ever. Doubt can only be explained by ignorance, failure can only be explained by under-committing,

        The only way to have a “valid” opinion is to have already bought-in and be actively selling other people on it. It’s the same mentality as a cult or a pyramid scheme.

    • gcheliotis@lemmy.worldEnglish
      122·
      6 months ago

      It’s become more efficient to get basic info on virtually any topic by just asking an LLM like ChatGPT and that could be a serious threat to Google Search. People might form the habit of asking AIs for everything and then go to Google Search only when they want to dig deeper / find relevant articles etc. So I assume they added their own AI right into Search in an effort to continue being the first (and perhaps only) place one goes to for information.

    • tektite@slrpnk.netEnglish
      81·
      6 months ago

      But what about when you start wanting to know about life’s mysteries?

      Google isn’t staffed by geologists; how are they to know what number of rocks you should eat each day?

      Google search itself doesn’t have a functioning set of human organs; without AI how would they know how much urine to drink for kidney stones?

      Without AI it might’ve taken another century before we got spicy gasoline pasta recipe, and you think that isn’t a problem?

      • gdog05@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        6 months ago

        it might’ve taken another century before we got spicy gasoline pasta recipe,

        The Anarchists Cookbook has had the recipe for napalm for a bit now. But I do get your point.

        • Agrivar@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          6 months ago

          And it works! I followed that recipe in the 80s, to hilariously non-fatal results.