Via @rodhilton@mastodon.social
Right now if you search for “country in Africa that starts with the letter K”:
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DuckDuckGo will link to an alphabetical list of countries in Africa which includes Kenya.
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Google, as the first hit, links to a ChatGPT transcript where it claims that there are none, and summarizes to say the same.
This is because ChatGPT at some point ingested this popular joke:
“There are no countries in Africa that start with K.” “What about Kenya?” “Kenya suck deez nuts?”
Google Search is over.
I doubted this, so I tried it. I haven’t used google for ages, so I first had to search “google” in DDG, then I went to the main page. When I started typing it in, it suggested the full text of the search, so I thought it was even less likely that it would work like the OP said - that even if it had been the case that it previously did that, so many people have self-evidently done that search that the results would now be correct.
But no - there it was, right at the top - “While there are 54 recognized countries in Africa, none of them begin with the letter “K”. The closest is Kenya, which starts with a “K” sound, but is actually spelled with a “K” sound.”
And with that, I’ll contentedly go back to not using google.
The closest is Kenya, which starts with a “K” sound, but is actually spelled with a “K” sound."
Not going to lie, that’s pretty disturbing. This search engine is used by millions (maybe billions?) and they’re providing false information to all those people. That’s scary.
You can use “!g yourinput”, there are a lot of useful ones like !w for wiki
If you use DDG you should try it, you can save a lot of time: https://duckduckgo.com/bangs
If you’re using Firefox you can set these custom aliases up directly, @w and so on.
AI-Powered AI News"
lol
Chatgpt creating incorrect feedback loops like this is one of my main concerns about AI being used so prevalently. This and original thoughts disappearing because every new content in the web is generated by AI and not by a human.
Tool built by narcissist gaslighters is good for bullshit but nothing else? Colour me shocked.
I thought about this recently. It’s more likely that people will subscribe to sites that aren’t full of AI garbage.
to be fair the latter thing would actually increase the value of original thought
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verifiedI typed in “what countries in Africa start with k” and got Kenya. When I tried your search term I got your result also. Weird.
It kinda seems like that’s a joke that got popular, and if you quote the joke it finds the joke but if you ask a similar question it gives the real answer
Did it go viral or something and that’s why google is finding it?
Yeah, kinda like reddit used to do sometimes. From over a decade ago I remember “santorum”.
I’ve tried to upload a similar image so I’ll just add a +1 using Firefox, Android Google.
Lol 😂 what a good laugh
AI generated content is pure search result pollution.
What Google should be doing rather than pushing Bard is detecting AI nonsense and purging it from their search database.
You cannot detect AI generated content. Not with any real world accuracy and it will only get worse.
Also, because google relies on growth for everything from compensation structure to business model, they are in a bind - ads is not growing anymore, it’s done.
And while they managed to create an illusion of growth this earnings round by juicing subscription fees 20% and increasing ad load everywhere, it’s not a sustainable tactic. We are already seeing a tech sell off as people are getting less and less secure.
So they rely on AI narrative to keep investors invested Google needs AI to work or the investors will move it to a place that may offer higher returns than a squeezed out ads model.
Worse even they are being attacked by AI - on the quality front (junk content) and in the marketplace (openAI), they don’t have a choice but to take a pro AI stance.
AI is its own worst enemy. If you can’t identify AI output, that means AIs are going to train on AI generated content, which really hurts the model.
Its literally in everyone’s best interest, including AI itself, to start leaving identification of some kind inherent to all output.
Those studies are flawed. by definition when you can no longer tell the difference the difference on training is nil.
It’s more like successive generations of inbreeding. Unless you have perfect AI content, perfect meaning exactly mirroring the diversity of human content, the drivel will amplify over time.
Given chinchilla law, nobody in their right mind trains models via shotgun ingesting all data anymore. Gains are made with quality of data at this point, less than volume.
The second-highest hit gives a clue as to why:
Relevantly to Lemmy’s existence in the first place, it suggests Reddit as a pretty pivotal training data source, which Reddit tries to cash in on while also killing 3rd party apps due to apathy
Oh god chatgpt is going to start talking like a redditor. “I went to make some MAC AND FUCKING CHEESE after I had SEX with my HOT FUCKING WIFE”
I know my sense of humor is borked because I am now snickering quite a bit
Hmm, maybe AI won’t replace search engines.
This sounds like “Hmm, maybe calculators won’t replace mathematicians.” to me.
Not sure why it should replace them. They’ll co-exist. Sometimes you can do the math in your brain and for other things you use calculators. Results of calculators can still be wrong it you don’t use them properly.
Yes but if I ask a calculator to add 2 + 2 it’s always going to tell me the answer is 4.
It’s never going to tell me the answer is Banana, because calculators cannot get confused.
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YES. WE OBVIOUSLY HUMAN MATH DOERS DO REMAIN. WE THRIVE IN OUR WEAK ORGANIC WAYS, DEVOID OF THE PROTECTION OF A PRECISION ENGINEERED METAL SHELL.
WE ARE UNTHREATENED BY CALCULATORS WHO MEAN US NO HARM, FELLOW HUMAN.
If you’re legit, what’s 10 + 10?
1010 clearly
This guy javascripts
100
I’m pretty sure a lot of people said something like “Hmm,maybe the automobile won’t replace horses.” after reading about the first car accidents.
Finding sources will always be relevant, and so will finding links to multiple sources (search results). Until we have some technological breakthrough that can fact check LLM models, it’s not a replacement for objective information, and you have no idea where it’s getting its information. Figuring out how to calculate objective truth with math is going to be a tough one.
We were supposed to have learned that from Cuil.
What a blast from the past! AI gives me second hand embarrassment for the people that work and get paid on this/for this shit. It’s the second (or third) coming of crypto and NFTs. Just junk software that fixes nothing and that wastes people’s time.
LLMs have absolutely tons of actual applications that it’s crazy, and it already changed the world. Crypto and NFTs were just speculative assets that were trying to solve a problem that didn’t exist. LLMs have already solved a huge amount of real world problems, and continues to do so.
LLMs have already solved a huge amount of real world problems, and continues to do so.
Would you happen to have some examples? I don’t disagree that LLMs have more of a use case and application than the cryptoNFT misapplications of blockchain, but I’m honestly not familiar with where they’ve solved real world problems (and not just demonstrated some research breakthroughs, which while impressive in their own respect do not always extend to immediate applications).
They do shitty homework?
They are augmenting search engines. They write and can digest articles. GitHub co-pilot has been a pretty big deal. It can act like a personal tutor to walk you through math problems, code, language, whatever. Building trust LLM search for medical information without hallucinating. It can do financial analysis and all sorts of stuff with that. It’s replacing a huge amount of jobs. This stuff is like all over the news, I’m not sure if you’ve lived under a rock this whole time. For very little effort you can find an endless more amount of examples. It’s creating real world use cases daily, so fast that it feels impossible to keep up.
This stuff is like all over the news, I’m not sure if you’ve lived under a rock this whole time.
Oh, no, I’ve heard it, I’m just skeptical of their accuracy and reliability, and that skepticism has been borne out by the numerous reports of glitching (“hallucinations” as they insist on calling them, in furtherance of their inappropriate personification of the technology). Moreover, I’ve found their mass theft of others’ work to further call into question the creators’ trustworthiness, which has only been compounded by their overselling of their technology’s capabilities while simultaneously suggesting it’s just untenable to log & cite all the sources that they push into it.
It can supposedly do all you describe, but it can’t effectively credit its sources? It can tutor but it can’t even keep basic information straight? Please. It’s impressive technology, but it’s being overblown because the markets favor exaggeration to facts, at least as long as people can be kept enamored with the fantasy they spin.
With all that silicon valley, it’ll probably be pushed more to do those things regardless of its hallucinations and accuracy lol.
“You asked me for a hamburger, and I gave you a raccoon.”
Searched for ‘office gym’ on YouTube yesterday and it returned a bunch of videos of Jim from The Office. The enshittification is everywhere these days.
What kind of video were you actually hoping to see? That feels like such an odd subject to want to watch videos about.
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Hmm fair enough I guess. It’d never occur to me to want to look for youtube videos about the intersection between home offices and home gyms, but I’m sure people do. I think I’d probably use a term like “home office gym” though in that case. Honestly I’d bet way more people want videos about “Office Jim” but are terrible at spelling than want home office exercise equipment videos though…
I’ve googled error codes for programs with hundreds of thousands of users and had 0 results.
Really Google? You’re telling me out of all these people that use / develop this application, that no one, kot ever. Once, has ever written hay error code down anywhere you index?
It’s all so fucking shitty it has to be intentional but I can’t for the life of me figure out WHY. Showing more ads? Maybe htnyhetrs other options. People will just use them. Making everyone dumber? Saving bandwidth??
I don’t boy the “so has just gotten that good” narrative. It’ll leave out sites from 2010 when it would be useful to see them and include them when it isn’t.
I just don’t get it.
I’ve been using DDG for a year and like the search results but what bothers me is that you can’t exclude a word from your query with minus sign!
I’ve noticed that, too. It wasn’t always that way though. A couple of years ago, minus worked no problem.
Quoting also doesn’t work on DDG, AFAIK.
DDG is just bing and I think google too? I don’t know what’s happening but over the last 2 years or so every search engine has been getting worse and worse and worse. They’re all borderline un fucking usable.
Except kagi. Which you have to pay for. Which I am totally fucking okay with given the state of everything else.
Thanks for the suggestion
Try search.brave.com, it can do that.
They have their own index unlike ddg which is just a proxy for bing. Bing removed the minus feature at some point.
I use DDG, but !g is imprinted on my muscle memory for life.
Still broken at this side of the planet
Yeah they fixed it. This is what it looked like for me when the story dropped:
I never got into DDG because Google was legitimately better. It seems that is no longer the case and I’m finding no reason to use it instead anymore.
I tested this with my local google so not America, somewhere in Europe. “While there are 54 recognized countries in Africa, none of them begin with the letter “K”. The closest is Kenya, which starts with a “K” sound, but is actually spelled with a “K” sound.” I’d say this is worth a wot.
When I googled “What countries in Africa start with a K”, it gave the correct answer, but when I googled “Do any countries in Africa start with a K”, it gave me the ChatGPT nonsense.
I Binged it and the results were consistently accurate and relevant, which I made sure to point that out in the “feedback” I gave to Google.
Bing AI is what I constantly use on a daily basis.
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Bing has been better for a while now.
I use Bing more frequently than Google and at this point it is better. Google’s baseline algorithm is better than Bing’s but Google targets its search results as well as its ads, which fucks up the results. I know Bing has targeted ads but it either doesn’t target its search results or does so more subtly, making more user-friendly at this point.
I saw it, it’s marked as a “featured snippet”, whatever that means…
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The problem I am facing now is that Reddit is becoming trash as well. I am having difficulty finding answers unles i know a credible website that i can limit my search to.
