I’m aware that I’m falling into the AI trap of personifying these results, writing as if Google’s AI imagines and presumes. Google the company, of course, wants this too–it wants me to see my search results as a conversation with a helpful problem-solving buddy. The company has aims down the line to introduce actual agents that can search for you, jumping on the latest Silicon Valley obsession to basically make a version of Google Alerts that are worse for the environment. Maybe its current version of search is something of a test balloon for an eventual service it can charge for.
But the same way it drives me crazy when Stripe’s AI customer service tells me it’s so sorry, omg that must be so hard to hear about whatever utterly mundane, thoroughly unemotional issue I’ve brought it that day, Google search’s hollow facsimile of the human desire to help lays bare how badly its inventors misunderstand what regular people want and how we feel when we’re searching for information. (Full disclosure: I wrote my library school Master’s thesis literally about this, so it really riles me up!) It exposes how Google sees its users: helpless and intellectually lazy, longing for machines to solve our problems for us, unable to sit in the sometimes uneasy space of unknowing that motivates information searching in the first place. Shortcutting yourself out of this space–or, worse, letting AI do it for you–robs you of the chance to explore and discover, to let your search take you to new places and learn new things.
Why are you still using google?
Startpage FTW
Still better than using Google.
Not sure if this makes it inherently bad because it’s still not in the US, has a decent privacy policy, and the ads are contextual to your search, not targeted at any identity.
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism
But there are better choices.
With Ecosia and noai.DDG right there, I don’t see any reason why would you ever use Google.
I only see it when I open a new browser on a VM or something by accident, and it just sucks and makes me immediately leave.
Most of my search usage is looking up concrete websites because I don’t have history on and am lazy to remember or type the whole URL, and google is the only one where I have to click through a screen blocking dialog then scroll through LLM bullshiting about something before I can get to the link.
Ecosia has their dubiously “green AI”, and do union busting. Source
Ah, fuck. Of course.
Hey I appreciate the insight and perspective. But I’ve got to contest the source. Its not holding any weight as a reputable and verifiable resource. I’m not saying this as a jab or attack on you. Its a world of bad info, misinformation, and where I fear your link lands - hyperbole - so please consider this resource rather than a lengthy post:
https://guides.lib.uw.edu/research/faq/reliable
Ecosia may well be exaggerating Eco claims or green washing. But to counter those claims, stronger evidence is needed.
So contest the source instead of throwing a basic, student level link at me LIKE A BOT WOULD DO.
Tried Ecosia but they want you to turn off an adblocker as they are ad supported. I don’t like ads as they contribute to overconsumption.
Tried DDG and it was solid but it wasn’t very good in local search results (I live outside of the US).
So I’m using Qwant for the time being.
What’s Ecosia and noai.ddg?
Search engines, I use Noai.duckduckgo.com as my standard and its been nice.
https://www.ecosia.org/, a search engine iirc non-profit that is trying to be as energy-neutral on renewables as possible, while also investing all of their profit into climate action, i.e planting trees. They have transparent budgets and do look pretty trustworthy, although I’ve never really looked into them too much.
noai.duckduckgo.com a version of Duck Duck Go, a pretty well known search engine, that disables the AI summary by default via an easy link.
Yeah I don’t like to have stuff presented to me in this way because then it makes me think there is going to be a bias, I don’t need things presented to me or explained or broken down unless I specifically asked for it, I just want the information
Are websites still protected by Section 230 when the results are editorialized on the fly by an LLM?
This is undecided by courts.
From what I’ve found from some simple research, it’s possible that if it’s reproducing the same information as another user that the website is protected, possibly even if the LLM modified the exact presentation of that information.
If it’s creating new claims, then I think it’d be likely that whoever is running the service would be liable. Who knows though, since they might just claim that the new claims are from its training data and therefore they are protected.
In an ideal world, we’d just follow Germany’s example and hold the website liable for any new content generated by a LLM. Ideally, if you make shit up, you made the claim, and if you’re parroting a user, the user made the claim.
I’d imagine due to current circumstances, the US would want to shield AI companies though because politicians want money and the SCOTUS is useless.
The new AI summary at the top is quite helpful imo.
It’s very helpful if you want to confidently get fed incorrect information on occasions. At one point I tried to get direct link to my profile by searching “JohnEdwa Lemmy”, and that summary claimed I was the admin of sopuli.xyz, the Lemmy instance I use. Absolutely no clue why, as I have never been an admin of anything online.
Apparently today I’m the main developer of Boost for Reddit.
(Refresh) No, it actually meant Sync.
(Refresh) Or maybe I also made Pinpoint. Look, the source is Wikipedia, it can’t be wrong.
This reminds me of Rossman’s praise for the AI overviews when it helpfully informed everyone that he has paid sponsors and his friend was a 9/11 terrorist. Except it wasn’t praise.
The AI summary at the top is like asking a college freshman to summarize the latest research in a field. It’s accurate enough to be dangerous, but not accurate enough to be reliable.
