Cory Doctorow#Google's #AIHype Circle: We have to do #Bard because everyone else is doing #AI; everyone else is doing AI because we're doing Bard.
https://doctorow.medium.com/googles-ai-hype-circle-6158804d1299
Google's plummeting search quality made the company desperate to please its "activist investors"
https://doctorow.medium.com/googles-ai-hype-circle-6158804d1299
#SecurityThroughObscurity #SearchQuality #Enshittification #Google
Google can improve search, or it can chase stock gains through #AIHype. It chose the latter
https://doctorow.medium.com/googles-ai-hype-circle-6158804d1299
We saw this movie before. Remember the 3,000,000 truckers who were about to lose their jobs to #SelfDriving tech?
https://doctorow.medium.com/googles-ai-hype-circle-6158804d1299
Executives ALREADY treat writers like #chatbots.
https://doctorow.medium.com/googles-ai-hype-circle-6158804d1299
John Mullinax@pluralistic I couldn't stop myself. I put that prompt into Bing/ChatGPT and asked for a movie script outline. I should've stopped myself.
Magneto@johnmullinax @pluralistic Okay but what was the result?!?
JD Rhoades@jdrhoades @pluralistic @Magneto Sorry for the late reply... I don''rbrecall all the details, of which there were many -- it was a full, horrendous plot -- but I do recall that it ended with "everybody learned something, and they all promised to keep in touch." 🤣
@johnmullinax @pluralistic @Magneto
So, a South Park episode, then?
Pteryx the Puzzle Secretary@pluralistic Apparently execs *think of* writers like chatbots, too. They seem to have no concept of "art", "entertainment", or "information", only of weird squiggles and pictures that inexplicably cause products to sell. If this article is any indication and can be applied more broadly than comic books, execs would just stream static if they could.
https://adeptpress.wordpress.com/2015/03/19/at-corporate-they-just-sell-paper/
Rick Mycroft@pluralistic Trucking companies should keep in mind that only the companies that own the AIs control the means of production, and soon they'd be renting that service from a monopoly or cartel that will maximize their profits by increasing the price.
LisPi@pluralistic Goodness, anything to avoid saying "trains are better".
They also need none of that flakey "AI" nonsense.
C.Suthorn 
@pluralistic why would Google improve search? There is no need. Google is the only Search engine in the universe, there never was another and there will never be.
From the 10 commandments: Thou shall have no other search engine.
Darrel PlantNOW WITH MORE BLOCKCHAIN!!
Blort™ 🐀Ⓥ🥋☣️
Brittle Anxious Nonlinear Inco@pluralistic wait, google has a search engine?
myrmepropagandistFor real, I've changed all my defaults for the first time in decades. I can't say the alternatives are better-- but, they aren't exactly worse.
Google's search is a disaster.
@futurebird @pluralistic ye I just wanted out and then I left
jordan@futurebird Unfortunately, to my knowledge there are only 2 US search engines that do their own indexing now: Bing and Google. Every other "competitor" just buys their results from Bing and Google.
Just like there are only two real browsers now: Chrome(ium) and Firefox. Everything else is just a Chromium variant. Unless you want to run Konqueror or something, but I imagine the browsing experience will be greatly degraded.
Daniel Lakeland@wagesj45
Safari is there for the Mac guys too, but yeah basically Chromium based or Firefox is the bulk and Firefox is disappearing among those who don't know better.
@futurebird
Safari is there for the Mac guys too, but yeah basically Chromium based or Firefox is the bulk and Firefox is disappearing among those who don't know better.
@futurebird
1st Unoriginal Thot 
@wagesj45 @futurebird kagi.com is the new kid on the block. Kagi is a privacy-focused, user-centric search engine that does their own indexing iirc.
@slut ooh. this is very interesting.
Anand R@pluralistic I'm old enough to remember that there was a time when all websites were trying to keep you on their website and Google seemed revolutionary because they were busy trying to get you off their website every time you visited. Indeed they were anal about it taking as little time as possible from the time you got there to the time you left.
Then at some point they sold their souls to try and keep people on their website for as long as possible. It was all lost then.
Edge@pluralistic @ai6yr Iknow that for the things I look for, Google is broken. We’ve had other search engines in the past, time for one of the competition to step up
AI6YR Ben@czarbucks @pluralistic It's hopelessly broken for me, has been for years. Can't find stuff with very specific keywords, it's been instead "spell correcting" stuff I am looking for and then surfacing junk. Also, POPULAR DOES NOT MEAN RELEVANT!!! (irritating trend of everyone surfacing viral stuff instead of specific information I am looking for).
@ai6yr Exactly my experience. Little difference with the others I dabble in - Bing (duh), duck duck, etc.
They're not interested in returning results, they want money. I wish there was a way around all of that.
Allan Chow@pluralistic oh it's the flywheel!
I think the time has come and the market may now exist for "bespoke search" basically search as a paid service. Let me list the things you ought to index and generally show me. Give me a full text or at least keyword search for the things I care about-- supplement with other information only when that fails.
Make the words: AND OR NOT mean something again for crying out loud.
The search feature on twitter *was* excellent and one of the things that kept me there for some time.
13 barn owls in a trenchcoat@futurebird @pluralistic I'm trying out Kagi paid search and it's pretty nice. Not sure that I'll sub, just because I've not much money, but it's a refreshingly clean experience.
Scott 🏴😷@futurebird @pluralistic I tried to do a search with quotes earlier and DDG just...ignored the quotes 🤦♂️
Bill TribbleI learnt a thing about cooking thanks to @pluralistic and a massive Google #ai fail.
Peter Sullivan@bill_tribble @pluralistic According to @xkcdbot, it's not just caramelising onions that recipe writers lie about: https://xkcd.com/2767/
Lou Katz@pluralistic We .. Must .. Follow .. The ... Lemmings