alt Hacker NewsWhy is that?
Of my recent searches, I’m either 1) just clicking the top link anyways as I was searching for the exact #1 result and need their website, not info. Or 2)searching for a quick snippet of info where the AI summary is sufficient, like a cooking measurement conversion.
What’s your usage where AI in the results is an issue that AI-free results are better?
Replies
It's not that unusual for the AI summary to be incorrect, and that the citation link doesn't support the summary. I've seen it multiple times, and a recent study indicated it happened about 10% of the times.
Recently I was struggling to explain to a friend why I've disliked the AI in search - right from the early days. Yet I have my own bot that uses Kagi Search + Extract to get me information, and I love it.
It comes down to the UX and lack of choice. Sometimes I want the AI to go do the research and get me the answer. Other times I just want to do a search to find a link - I do not want a summary. It's noise and takes up space.
If Google (without requiring an account), let me default to no AI and have a separate button to get the AI summary, I'd likely be happier.
if you're giving it to kids where wrong information in the search summary could mislead them badly. The AI overviews, because they are highly optimized to be instantaenous and clearly draw from caches to some extent, often have really wrong information, like "opposite of correct" answers to things that are not as simple as cooking measurements.
> What’s your usage where AI in the results is an issue that AI-free results are better?
Searching for specific local information. Questions like "Does <local business> provide this service?" or "When does this park close?" produce hallucinations frequently and confidently.