Google thinks AI can Google better than you can In the future, "Google will do the Googling for you" – or so suggests Liz Reid, VP of search. On Tuesday at Google I/O, the search ad firm's annual developer conference, executives made the case for a world where multimodal machine learning models connect the dots and fill in the blanks. "With AI Overviews, Google does the …
Indeed. Most of my searches now require an extra click. Google throws up a bunch of irrelevant crap with a link in case I actually wanted to search for what I typed in. I can understand the use of that for typos, but Google's AI doesn't appear to be able to tell the difference between a typo (nearby key press) and a completely different word.
The AI bubble is going to see a lot of people lose a lot of money. You all better hope that doesn't include your employer or your pension fund.
Oh jeezuz.
We have Bernie-Lee to thank for these glorified, excessive infostructure systems.
Now, can AI help me fill this form for my Rail Pass renewal whilst the Javascript assumes I want to move automatically to the next field of my Passport numbers? Can the AI take over the UI testing and forward the expletive-filled results to the corresponding AI dev?
Thanks. Thanks a lot.
"Find the best [has paid most for ads] yoga or Pilates studios in Boston and show me details on their [and high-paying advertisers in Boston] intro offers [exclusive to Google], and walking time [plus paid Uber ad] from Beacon Hill [showing ads for attractions in Beacon Hill]."
@SW10
Indeed - what is "best" has lots of interpretations based on the user, generally unrelated to how much cash Google make from the studio / gym..
e.g. as outfits used for yoga / Pilates can be quite clingy & revealing, then can be a bit embarrassing for some women to do yoga in a mixed class (unless they switch to full on very baggy outfits), especially with some of the poses.
So if a woman is uncomfortable with male behind gazing at her perineum in some poses then she would be likely to rank a studio higher if they offered women only classes.
Whereas, as a bloke I don't care, so single or mixed sex would be irrelevant to me: Though a pervy male* might be very happy with the idea of a mixed sex class so that would be "best" for them.
* My (F) partner told me about an old bloke (he would probably not have been able to manage the actual class as quite a physically demanding one) who used to really obviously letch at women doing dance fit class she attended (quite a lot of bouncing bosoms even with people wearing sports bras) as that gym area was visible from a public viewing area where people could sit & have coffee etc. So blokes going to a leisure centre / gym to perv is not unknown. In this case old bloke was eventually barred after complaints from users of various classes (he would probably have got away with it had he been less obvious about it).
Dream on, people have been saying IBM are on their last legs for over 40 years but they keep slogging on, the same is and will continue to be true for Google, Microsoft & Apple.
(Many companies should probably be consigned to the dustbin of history, but for these biggies it ain't happening soon - Some will, Tesla has 3 or so years before it is either bankrupted or sold to some adults).
how strange you don't remember the world before microsoft and google. It wasn't so long ago.
Micro$oft has been labelled a national security risk, and google's next step is to NOT let you search for information.
Apple has aligned it's self with google, and to be totally honest with you, I no longer trust them. I can't be the only one who feels this way. Much like social media it's self, The tech may never go away, but the companies do.
All it will take is someone with another option.
I was using computers before Microsoft existed, I remember it all too well.
But Microsoft are not going bye-bye any time soon, Windows and Office are far too ingrained as is Google, Linux on the desktop as anything other than a statistical blip is a pipe dream and while there are a bundle of search engine to choose from Google has the early lead advantage which will be almost impossible to dislodge.
Apple are reasonably safe, they have a huge and largely loyal user base and while they may lose a bit of market share over time it won't be a mortal wound.
All it will take is someone with another option.
Bullshit, with sprinkles and a cherry on top.
There have been a zillion alternatives to Google for ever. There are operating systems other than Windows and iOS. As for "office productivity suites" you are spoilt for choice. There are loads of options for anybody who wishes to use them, but the majority don't and won't.
If you think that you not liking something means it's in its decline, I can only conclude that you haven't been around for most of that "wasn't so long" period of Microsoft and Google dominance. Some person making a statement about security isn't going to tank a company that is valued by investors at trillions of dollars and actually has tens of billions of dollars in cash just in case they need it. Neither is my using DDG as my search engine, which I've been doing for about a decade now, going to prevent Google from existing. They have lots of extra mechanisms to continue to exist, including their powerful position in mobile operating systems; the second most popular office suite after Microsoft's; and the fact that, by inertia, paying for default placement, or people actually thinking their search is better, they still have 90% of the search volume.
Billion dollar companies come and go in the tech world. Google is no longer a search company. Windows has become a threat. Your lives are being taken over by autonomous weaponized planes, tanks, and dogs.Your life is no longer in control. You are fed information that has been manipulated.
Why would you continue to use them? For what purpose. Indeed, what you are experiencing rn could be computer generated.
If google is simply going to be scraping pages and giving you their information without even linking through to the actual websites then they are just a parasite on the people and websites who actually make content.
For years they have been trying to keep your traffic on google, or on the pages that pay for ads: now they can simply not link anything and give you scraped answers.
google is simply going to be scraping pages and giving you their information without even linking through
Easy solution:
1) Search Google for torrents of a new movie
2) When it returns a torrent or magnet link, sue Google for copyright infringement.
Google is going the exact OPPOSITE way they should, ignoring search terms that will narrow down results and instead funneling everyone into the most popular search results.
Found an interesting example the other day... I know "DSCLI-7.8.59.215.iso" is available on IBM's website, and I know Google indexes that site, but a Google search for the exact quoted term turns up no results. Meanwhile, an Yandex search will find the correct page for you. Coincidentally, Yandex pops-up bot challenges every couple pages/queries, an unforced error damaging its own usefulness.
Anybody got other search engines to try? DuckDuckGo, Bing, Dogpile & Ask don't do any better than Google here. The previous plethora of search engines seems to have died off in the face of Google. I bet AllTheWeb would have worked if it was still around.
Ironically, searching for "DSCLI-7.8.59.215.iso" on most search engines now turns up the above comment... Yandex doesn't, so far.
For those finding this in some distant future, do let me know. Also:
DSCLI-7.8.59.215.iso is at: https://delivery04.dhe.ibm.com/sar/CMA/SDA/0bpgn/0/
A newer version (several years old) is now available: DSCLI-7.8.59.249.iso which is at: https://delivery04.dhe.ibm.com/sar/CMA/SDA/0cahd/0/
Slightly older DSCLI-7.8.58.11.iso at: https://delivery04.dhe.ibm.com/sar/CMA/SDA/09m9n/0/
And for old DS8700 compatibility, DSCLI-7.7.21.39.iso as well as even older versions can be found at: https://www3.software.ibm.com/storage/ds8000/updates/DS8K_Customer_Download_Files/CLI/
I've gone through and had web.archive.org save these files for future access, but it has no search facility, you need to know the exact URLs.
Above install correctly on either RHEL8 or RHEL9, and the /opt/ibm/ folder can be copied over and lib/CLI.CFG manually edited to point to the correct java CLASSPATH dir. Good luck with your old/retro DS8000 SAN journey.
This post has been deleted by its author
DDG right now reports: No results found for "DSCLI-7.8.59.215.iso".
If you fail to quote the file name, DDG's first link is: https://ftp.software.ibm.com/storage/ds8000/updates/DS8K_Customer_Download_Files/CLI/
Which does NOT contain that file name, but instead only extremely old versions, only up to 7.7 and below.
Google finds it now, first link being direct to IBM, second link being this forum post... it certainly wasn't months ago. It's possible they fixed some bug, but I rather assume this discussion got IBM's website back on Google's radar now.
Kagi finds this file without any difficulty (though the jury is out on whether that's because your complaint has spread wider than this single post):
Based on the information provided, here is where you can download the DSCLI-7.8.59.215.iso file:
The file is located at the IBM website, specifically at the URL: https://delivery04.dhe.ibm.com/sar/CMA/SDA/0bpgn/0/DSCLI-7.8.59.215.iso1
This URL is listed in the first data entry, which indicates that the file is available in the "/sar/CMA/SDA/0bpgn/0/" directory on the IBM website.1
To summarize, you can download the DSCLI-7.8.59.215.iso file from the IBM website at the URL provided in the first data entry.1
Index of /sar/CMA/SDA/0bpgn/0 delivery04.dhe.ibm.com
Google must have AI checking their customer satisfaction or something.
The more they put "AI" into their search, the shittier their search becomes. Google is now filled with these little paragraphs of, usually unattributed, snippets (or machine learning summaries) from various websites as well as "other people also asked this entirely not similar question" - which you can click on to get some even less relevant shit results.
A couple of times I've caught the ML summaries being totally wrong as well.
The other day I looked up the number of days in 80-odd years, because my nephew wanted to know how many days his Nan (my Mum) had been alive. It came out with 230,000-odd - which is wrong by an order of magnitude. So a striaght mathematical question, how many days between these two dates. That search also didn't throw up one of the many websites that exist which will easily do this calculation for you, but a quick new search for one of those got it for me. Google being shit meant it would almost have been quicker to work it out myself.
OK, tirivial example. But that should be a really easy query for a language engine to parse, and then a really easy anwser to spit out. I've also done searches on historical characters, to get summary paragraphs that are complete bollocks. Worse because they're using ML to summarise stuff, almost the only source they actually admit to is Wikipedia, so except for those attributed paragraphs the rest of it has to be regarded as junk.
To be fair, the Wiki summaries I've seen have been reasonable one paragraph summaries when I've clicked on the aritcles to check.
But they're seemingly doing no testing to see if the stuff they're using now works. And rather than working on that, they're going to try to add complexity so the results are now even more unreliable?
What a shitshow.
Excuse me while I end this post here, I just need to search Google for "alternative search engines that aren't as shit as Google"...
That is such a huge and obvious problem, and AI slinging companies keep just ignoring how often these models are wrong. The feeling really seems to be that magically these models will stop hallucinating because... technology always gets better? If the entire point is that these AI searches are supposed to be saving you time by compiling information then they need to be really consistently correct. If I need to verify any AI answer like that to make a decision, then what are we even doing here? Even if it was right 99% of the time, it would still be too unreliable for anything meaningful.
For the questions they give as examples it is even more unbelievable: What does it mean to be the best yoga studio in Boston? How would determine that? That is a case where personal preference is obviously important. Optimal cost, exercise intensity and atmosphere will clearly be different for different people. AI companies keep using these examples of things like trip planning or finding a service business, but those are among the last things I would trust to a system like this. This feels just like the rush for voice assistants a decade ago: people may use them to get the weather, control lights or play music but almost no one trusted them to even buy toilet paper for them.
With due respect to your mother, and not in any way seeking to appear arrogant, wouldn't have been much simpler to type the simple subtraction between two dates (her birth date and today) in a spreadsheet and get the result straight ?
Why always google for anything ? Reminds me of the CEO of a company I used to work for as a webmaster, who would always **google** the name of said society to check his own website...
Excuse me while I end this post here, I just need to search Google for "alternative search engines that aren't as shit as Google"...
Bing
DuckDuckGo
Yahoo!
Ask
Baidu
Brave
WolframAlpha
Boardreader
StartPage
Ecosia
Qwant
Search Encrypt
Yandex
Gibiru
Disconnect Search
Swisscows
Lukol
MetaGer
Gigablast
Oscobo
Very simple case study during Covid...
A search for "Covid vaccination card" produced no results on Google. Same search on other engines (duckduckgo, startpage, etc) provided links to *government* websites with blank vaccination cards, in addition to lots of other public-facing documentation from the CDC. Essentially 100+ page documents on how a state is responding to the pandemic and buried in the middle was a blank vaccination form.
This was proof that Google will manipulate search results to what they want me to see and not the results that I am seeking.
It is not Google's responsibility to police legitimate content. Again, these were government produced documents, hosted on government websites (ie: State of xxx), that Google was intentionally concealing from the public during a time of national crisis. These were not shady backwater websites laden with malware that Google was hiding.
In a lot of ways the only value Google has is the user's trust and faith in the validity of their search results. I stopped using Google search when I realized they were intentionally hiding valid results from being presented in their algorithm. They will never regain my trust.
Nooo, you can break the Internet.
I use Google less and less often because any time I do now the results become less and less what I'm actually looking for. It takes lots of rewriting and quotes to get Google to accept that I really DON'T want to search for what Google says I should be searching for and I really do want what I am actually searching for. Google seems to be focussing on trivial shit searches (basic stuff like "local restaurant" or "flight information for XXYYY") but just doesn't realize that while it still works perfectly fine for trivial searches that shouldn't actually even involve a search engine (But are a consequence of people being incapable of doing things themselves and use google as a glorified start page) it has become absolutely shit for anything more advanced where you're actually looking for information more than 1 layer deep.
This is AI, though. Almost by definition (i.e., the training data) the problem here is YOU. So-called AI works by assuming that you are not looking for anything special and that the results served up to the bulk of people will do you too. The current attempt at AI is just an automatic echo-chamber construction engine.
Get a list of previous outcomes for this context (or the context the system thinks it has), stick softmax on it and job's done. £££££
Dear Google, the only reason it's a pain piecing my query together is because your existing smarts are so full of shit. AI is only going to make matters worse.
However, if you care to revert to a proper "Advanced query" manual-entry interface and return ALL the smart shit to the AI, that might even be progress back up out of the cesspit. I do not have high expectations of you any more, though.
I remember when Yahoo was the most amazing place to find answers.
I remember when AltaVista was the most amazing place to find answers.
I remember when Google was the most amazing place to find answers.
For whatever the reason, Internet people have a remarkable talent for taking great products and destroying them.
"Find the best yoga or Pilates studios in Boston and show me details on their intro offers, and walking time from Beacon Hill."
These are not three search engine queries. The first might be one, though "best" is a horribly vague quality to search for. The second is something I'd want to read on the studio's own site (among many reasons because I want to make sure they're up to date), and the third is a navigation query I may or may not want to use Google's offering for.
If this is the best they could come up with as an example, then I'm seriously worried.
... as long as you don't ask Google "How many fingers|legs|arms does the average human have?"
I wonder how well the AI will deal with Google already messing up your native search results. Ask for the nearest restaurant, and Google will ask back whether you have considered buying a new kitchen instead. If that is the input to the AI search assistant, then the result will be worse than Midjourney attaching a few extra arms to everybody on your faked Christmas family photo.
Google make money by showing adverts in their search results.
So, will AI built by Google run searches, 'view' ads, then serve up the results to the user having netted Google a dozen or so Ad views in the process without the user seeing any of them?
Seems these companies are desperate to increase Ad revenue (YouTube and Facebook spring to mind immediately) so will AI serve to generate fake views so Google can claim more interactions while not pissing off the users by dumping double the number of ads on screen as they used to?
I don't mind not seeing as many ads, but I feel sorry (honest!) for those companies conned into paying Google for AI interactions with their ads.
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