alt Hacker NewsI do worry about Google AI overview's long-term impact, but man, it has been such a great experience of late. It surely does feel like the old google but better.
There was a point, perhaps about five years ago, where using Google had become a genuinely frustrating hurdle I needed to overcome to do the actual work. Now the frustration is completely gone.
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Interesting given this is the polar opposite of my experience. I find Googles AI overview to give wrong answers constantly. Occasionally, even for questions I believe Google circa 2018 was able to answer confidently.
Ironically, Googles AI overview often links to references that state the polar opposite of what the AI overview claims.
No way, Google AI search always says you need to see a medical professional or if you say your cat puked it’s like “Cancer” it’s basically as bad as early Google always wrong about everything and over-worrying and over-assuming.
Half the time it just describes some unrelated shit. Maybe it’s interesting but totally sidetracks your search.
IMO it’s like Google 15 years ago where it was causing more panic and disinformation but people knew it back then - we laughed at Google’s persistent and incorrect diagnoses.
Now though, with boomers and young Gen Y and older Gen Z - maybe the dumbest yet most confident people alive it’s causing a lot of harm. Everyone thinks they know everything and because they inherit from their parents and are basically rich society rewards them for being retarded
Just this morning I had a worrying result when I googled "UV index <location>" and it confidently told me the current UV index was zero.
It was not, and at least because it was obviously wrong I clicked through to a page with the real UV index.
But had it said "The UV index is 1.7" I might have believed it, but it'd still have been wrong, potentially dangerously so.
Now to be clear, live data is precisely the sort of thing I expect it to get wrong, and I never intended to trigger let alone read an "AI summary", but it's still worrying for those less inclined to dismiss it.