Rachel Holliday Smith: it’s my job to report and publish accurate information and get it to New Yorkers who need it, so I’m super curious: how are y’all gonna deal with AI stuff in Google searches? how will it change your search behavior, if at all?

it’s my job to report and publish accurate information and get it to New Yorkers who need it, so I’m super curious: how are y’all gonna deal with AI stuff in Google searches? how will it change your search behavior, if at all?

Google unleashes AI in search, raising hopes for better results and fears about less web trafficapnews.com Google has rolled out a retooled search engine that will frequently favor responses crafted by artificial intelligence over website links.

Switched to DuckDuckGo and turned off their AI "helpers."

Thanks! I use DDG and didn't know this was a thing. Just turned all the AI off. ☺️

Exactly this Was already deeply sick of the AI "summary" shit, sad DDG also uses AI but glad I can turn it off easily

I hate it. It’s woefully incorrect—I searched when watercolors first started coming in tins as I couldn’t remember if it was pre-1800 or post, and the AI told me 2016, lol. There is no easy way to turn it off. Unless Google allows it to be disabled I’m switching browsers on Monday

I haven't tried this yet, but FWIW here are the instructions for turning it off I ran across yesterday.

📌

You are a saint and a scholar, bless you

Doesn't work on mobile, alas. T v T Couldn't find Any way to turn it off on mobile, so after sending two angry feedback forms I downloaded a different search tool, so I guess Google will just Not Get My Searches on mobile.

do any search on mobile web, and there should be a beaker flask in the top corner. click it. that takes you to labs. then there's a settings icon top right and you click "manage". it takes you to those toggles. not sure about in an app. ❤

Nope. Even with all the toggles turned off, doesn't stop the Overviews, at least so far. I tried at length. *sigh*

I did this on my browser and have not had it show up on mobile since. But even then, these instructions include this clause: Note: Turning off “AI Overviews and more” in Search Labs will not disable all AI Overviews in Search. AI Overviews are part of Google Search...and can't be turned off.

Yeaaah, I did see that. And at that point I was stressed enough to go, "Whelp, downloading another option Now I guess."

Again, I haven't tried (because I'm on mobile/work computer doesn't let me log in to Google), but since you have to be logged in to adjust your settings, I would hope it carries over to mobile after being done on a computer. If not, DDG here I come.

It does. You have to do it for every profile.

To duckduckgo we go

No where is safe from AI

Duck Duck Go has generative AI in it. Not sure how intermixed with the search product it is, but be aware if you don't want that in your search engine spreadprivacy.com/duckassist-l...

DuckDuckGo Launches DuckAssistspreadprivacy.com A new feature that generates natural language answers to search queries using Wikipedia.

Also worth noting that DuckDuckGo doesn’t run their own crawler or indexing. They source results from Bing.

Not a techie but it looks like you can opt out of some of it? 🤔

I think you can still turn off their AI “helper” junk in the settings

I did a very quick Google search last night to answer a question about a hockey stat. The AI invented a person who didn't exist and gave an obviously wrong answer. In an age of rampant misinformation, this is only going to make things so much worse

I asked it about the bat and ball; and the boat and goat puzzle. Slightly modified. The machine has issues. chaos.co.za/category/ai

AI | random ramblingschaos.co.za arti-ficial not-so-intellegence

Can you tell me the prompt you used and which AI? I love to screw around with this sort of stuff.

I just typed it in the Google search bar. Wasn't trying to use AI. Was surprised to see an AI response and unsurprised/irritated at the incorrect answer.

I need to make a website where people can document and discuss especially egregious AI misfacts (tm), hallucinations and 'creativity'. That could be a fun thing.

Switched to a different search engine.

Same

Which one, if I may ask?

Currently DuckDuckGo with AI stuff turned off. But also mucking around with Kagi.

I was not aware there was any AI stuff to turn of in DuckDuckGo, will look into it

I think currently it’s specifically over Wikipedia. Which is probably ok as a LLM will return better results from a curated corpus

Imma skip most page 1 results and all summaries. Scroll down to find links to sites.

+1

A lot of the time, I enter stuff on Google just out of habit, when I could just as easily enter a direct address. I'll enter the direct address more often. And depending on how intrusive this becomes I won't hesitate to switch to another search engine.

I feel like whenever i have a question I already get AI-based websites that answer it (it's hard to say for sure, but they all have a very similar language style and format), and I have to ignore them because they're badly written and I often can't trust them -- between that the stream of sponsored

content, I'm already devoting a lot more mental energy to figuring out *who* is giving me the answer, so this seems like just a lot more stuff I'm going to have to screen out.

Verge had an article talking about how websites format their content to be promoted by Google, so it's been happening in addition to AI being used to make spam. I keep ignoring so many results because they look like spam, but they do because it promotes them. www.theverge.com/c/23998379/g...

How Google perfected the webwww.theverge.com The web is filled with content designed for Google, not humans.

you can make a LOT of content with AI, so you're going to dominate search results anyway. i don't know why Google would prioritise it even more. honestly at this point if i'm looking for a tutorial or product reviews i'll look on YouTube to avoid AI-written articles

When I saw it, I immediately changed my default search engine. I don't want automatically generated answers. I want accurate ones.

What did you swith to? Google has been getting more and more gross for awhile now, and the AI thing cinches it for me, but I don't know where to go from here

It's like they don't know AI produces hallucinations or just completely forgets information.

I switched my default search app on both iPhone and PC browser to DuckDuckGo. I’ve put up with a lot of BS from Google over the years, but making the product suck isn’t so much the final straw that broke the camels back, it’s a load of bricks.

i intend to ignore it as much as possible

I scroll past any AI nonsense and avoid anyone who actively pushes it

being perfectly honest, google has been shit for a number of years now, and this is the last straw. every decision that they have made has been to maximize profits from advertising and agreements with other corporations, and not to make google actually better. I'm moving on. moving to duckduckgo

spreadprivacy.com/duckassist-l... Now all we need to do is hope they don't actually follow through on this ...

DuckDuckGo Launches DuckAssistspreadprivacy.com A new feature that generates natural language answers to search queries using Wikipedia.

goddammit, of course

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