Yeah so let's refocus on the real perspective here. It doesn't matter at all how good these models are at code or finding vulnerabilities if we destroy our ability to seek and share knowledge.
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/google-ai-overviews-misinformation
And look: I've spent time exploring the capabilities of these tools because I seek understanding through experience. I've been called spineless, fascist, racist, and just plain stupid for doing so. What I learned was important to my opposition to these tools, but also to my empathy for its users.
But the core truth remains. You cannot have what works without the attending toxins. They are inextricable. As ever, my primary contention is that the technology is destructive to the fabric of human society, and on those grounds should we make our stand.
@drwho @mttaggart I'm not calling anyone a fascist who explores them, but I do call people fascist when they use them. Subtle, but vital difference.
The only issue I have with "informed opinions" is that you don't actually need one sometimes.
For example, I have never lost a leg. Yet I am perfectly capable of deducing from my life experience and examining my surroundings that it'd suck to lose one.
Exploration, fine, but sometimes it's just an excuse.
I can't judge which it is for you.
@mttaggart
Yeah I keep mostly quiet about how I use them to study them, none of that code makes it into my packaged work, but you do have to sit at the slot machine to know its pull, and you do have to be able to understand the subtleties of the things it does and does not do to be credible in opposing it on a technical basis.
Its a big and broad universe and there are lots of different contexts, applications and means of understanding things, and there will never be a time when I allow the informational violence they do into my space, but the code production facet is sort of shoved into my face and I have to take a different approach.
@mttaggart the article comments that people don't check the AI overview, but the quality of search results is degrading quickly, making it harder to check them.
I frequently find that search result pages do not contain one of the words that I searched for, even when there are only 2 or 3, and putting terms in quotation marks no longer does anything.
@mspcommentary
Yes, this is also my experience. The quality of search results has degraded so much & so fast & the rate of degradation seems to have increased & continues to increase. It can be a real time suck wading thru’ the ‘finds’ to assess their ever dwindling relevance. Last time I did this there was zero relevance. The entire exercise was a waste of time. ☹️
#dwindlingRelevanceOfSearchResults #enshittificationOfSearch #SearchFunction
@mttaggart @lisamelton i find that 100% of the time for subjects I know Google’s AI summaries are flawed (often dramatically so but always in at least some nuance or details)
Which leads me to conclude that it is highly probable that it is equally flawed in topics I’m not an expert.
And google search - even without the ai summaries is deeply flawed today I constantly see search results with summaries of a link that has no correspondence with the actual link (as in the link is something else)
@mttaggart @lisamelton this is especially the case for Google shopping which half the time for the stuff I’m searching shows links to sites that no longer have the item linked in stock, have it for a different price or don’t even show the item in question on the site at all anymore. And Google shopping has seemingly no concept of editions - showing results for say a print on demand version of an old book alongside 150 year old 1st editions of the same work
(it isn’t just Google eBay also)
the oldest email I have, through many iterations with me since the late 90's, has finally enshittified itself with a non-removable AI summary I didn't ask for as a top-of-page blob.
Mudd ~: 
Taggart 
The Doctor
Jens Finkhäuser
jonny (good kind)
Mike Anderson
Su_G
Shannon Clark
Soozcat
Johnno
rexi