If you’re in the US, you might see a new shaded section at the top of your Google Search results with a summary answering your inquiry, along with links for more information. That section, generated by Google’s generative AI technology, used to appear only if you’ve opted into the Search Generative Experience(SGE) in the Search Labs platform. Now, according to Search Engine Land, Google has started adding the experience on a “subset of queries, on a small percentage of search traffic in the US.” And that is why you could be getting Google’s experimental AI-generated section even if you haven’t switched it on.
Bing used to do that already no?
Lol. The generated result that is incomplete and slower than the rest of the search. I usually scroll past it because it’s not done generating. If it does generate fast enough, it’s usually too vague or broad
Duck duck gone.
oh that’s that same shit that bing does that ends up filling the top quarter of my search results page with useless chatGPT garbage that doesn’t help my search query (both my employer and my school have forced edge+bing as the standard browser and it makes me want to die)
you have my condolences :)
As someone in IT I get an employer enforcing Edge (I don’t do that, but I understand why an IT department might), but why would anyone enforce a specific search engine? That seems bonkers to me.
Well, it’s the system default, and while you can change it during each session or manually browse to Google/DDG if you want, it will always reset the next time you log in… I am incredibly lazy and 99% of the time will smash my super quick search into the omnibar and end up stuck with it until I eventually get mad enough at Bing to force keep a tab open with Google.
Ah, I see what you mean. That still sucks but at least you still have the (less convenient) option of using an alternative. I had understood it as being that they blocked everything but Bing.
Oh no companies evolving and changing their business model according to their customers needs. Lemme post a photo that I googled searched.
Irony cannot begin to describe you.
Unfortunately for us, we’re not the customer
Google Search was so good when it came out. Complete polar opposite to the cluttered and bloated Yahoo Search. Haven’t really using it for years now because the search results became worse and worse, especially when that rounded edge theme came along.
No clutter, meant faster loading time, and that was important at the time. Nowadays, you can just type the search query to the address bar, but that wasn’t available back then. Initially, you didn’t even have one of those extra toolbars with a little search box, so loading the search page was the only way. If you do like 50 searches a day, those seconds spent on waiting the page to load really begin to add up.
It is useless in searching for new info, I mostly use it for searching for things I already know/seen, but don’t want to bother with URLs or bookmarks.
Even then, I have to scroll to the middle of the page, to get to the actual results below all the sponsored crap.
Bing does that shit and it’s annoying.
Ecosia added ai chat which I think runs on the same thing as copilot. I don’t see the point though and would like to be able to hide the ai chat option.
Well now what am I supposed to switch to after DuckDuckGo didn’t give relevant results?
I just today spun up my own searxng docker container and I’m pretty excited to start using it!
I’m happy to have my own SearxNG instance…
I got a Google Gemini “text message” in Google messages today. I couldn’t find a way to turn it off, so I just blocked and reported it as spam lol
another win for the startpage gang
Technically if you submit a query to the search engine, you do so because you want answer to a question in the best way possible without having to do too much digging.
So does it matter if it uses AI to help you? I say its a great feature.
I’m searching to get specific information, and good information. I’ve seen LLMs make shit up and be wrong enough times for me not to trust them. I’d rather turn that feature off.
No. A lot of times I’m looking to compare many answers. I’ll give you an example.
If I want to look for interesting barbecue rubs that I haven’t tried before I’ll query a search engine. Historically (not so much recently) Google has been better at searching through forums than a direct forum search. So I can check many different sources for the ratios people are using and make my decision.
Google’s half baked AI is really terrible right now. It has a memory of about two answers, barely understands context, and hallucinates more often than both copilot and ChatGPT.
Now I’m looking for a coffee rub and it’s giving me injection advice (happened when I tested Gemini), it gets barbecue styles mixed up, doesn’t follow dietary restrictions that are explicitly stated, and will give you recipes for the wrong cut and type of meat.
It’s not ready, and anyone trusting it for an answer to a question is going to have a bad time. If you have to verify it by checking a bunch of links anyway then it’s not only worthless, it’s making search take longer and take up screen real estate.
Now I’m looking for a coffee rub and it’s giving me injection advice
Wooooo what?
We’re in the technology sub. People here are old enough to know how to Google (old forums, preferably Reddit, as Lemmy is absent), they don’t know how to use an AI effectively (just look at how they’re trying to justify that). Don’t worry about the downvotes and their nonsense responses. Those are the same people who microwave their water instead of using an electric kettle.
I actually get a kick out of downvote score
Normal search results are already littered with useless ai generated seo optimized crap. It’s got to the point where sometimes it’s quicker to learn the knowledge you seek the old fashion way: by reading books.
Enshitification must lose.
🤓 Well you see actually we trained all our models off all historical text written by humans so it will be more human and you don’t have to read again
Ive seen akin to this sentiment online and its very baffling
I just assume that these people never have any problems that they have to solve personally. Otherwise they would be frustrated by the inability to find necessary information. They are either rich or children or both.
Oh, they trained their ais off of that all right… And then filtered out all the stuff they didn’t like such as useful information.
This is how google starts telling people that brawndo is what plants crave.
Goddammit! Am I gonna have to relearn that Dewey decimal crap?
Almost every time I ask a direct question, the two AI answers almost always directly contradict each other. Yesterday I asked if vinegar cuts grease. I received explanations for both why its an excellent grease cutter, and why it doesn’t because it’s an acid.
I think this will be a major issue with AI. Just because it was trained on a huge wealth of knowledge doesn’t mean that it was trained on correct knowledge.
I don’t see any reason being trained on writing informed by correct knowledge would cause it to be correct frequently. unless you’re expecting it to just verbatim lift sentences from training data
Just because it was trained on a huge wealth of knowledge doesn’t mean that it was trained on correct knowledge.
Which makes its correct answers and it’s confidently wrong answers look as plausible as each other. One needs to apply real intelligence to determine which to trust, makikg the AI tool mostly useless.
Exactly!
Showing different viewpoints in order to not appear biased. It’s the cornerstone of democracy after all.
😛
Half the top results are usually AI generated garbage anyway, don’t see how a little more is going to hurt…
“Start”
Yes, you can cure cancer according to the results…
- Dr Williams Oz. Cancer pill center 3)I ate a corn dog and it cured my can…
- research into cancer cures has come u…
- at McDonald’s we too have canc…
- the best cancer cures by Motley Fo…
- top 20 best ways to iPhone your canc…
