when will people learn that search results change all the time and are different for different people
this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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I get the same as the main post. Either way the point still stands. I had someone correct me with a misconception about something because he googled it and thats what it said in the answer box. It's getting increasingly difficult to rely on search results especially when google synthesizes them into questions and answers with little context
Yes. I have to keep reminding my parents that those little Google answer boxes aren't real search results and can't be trusted. They sometimes say the exact opposite of the page they're citing!
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It doesn't matter? If you search for something and you get a blatantly wrong answer parroted from an AI text completion service, it's still a fail.
I got the wrong answer from Google just now and I've never heard of that joke before. So clearly it isn't just OP with polluted metrics.
What's your point here? Is googling supposed to be a lottery of good and shit results?
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Oh, this is great... And because the ChatGPT transcript is highly ranked on Google, it's almost certainly going to be used for training ChatGPT. A feedback loop of shitty information. Praise ChatGPT!
Remember GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out). Due to years of SEO and content farming (which google profited from, so you get what you deserve assholes) most of the internet, by volume, is self-congratulatory, for profit, garbage, or, you know, reddit garbage. Hopefully someone points a large LLM at the library of congress or other large, well curated data source, but of course copyright will not allow, thanks mickey mouse. Wouldn't surprise me if the military is already on it, hopefully that leaks...
LLMs will eventually start feeding of search results from other LLMs and they'll just start regurgitating each others nonsense. If that isn't happening already.
Nobody is going to point an LLM at a good data source because that would mean spending money on actually useful stuff not fast cars and booze.
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The second-highest hit gives a clue as to why: 
Relevantly to Lemmy’s existence in the first place, it suggests Reddit as a pretty pivotal training data source, which Reddit tries to cash in on while also killing 3rd party apps due to apathy
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I doubted this, so I tried it. I haven't used google for ages, so I first had to search "google" in DDG, then I went to the main page. When I started typing it in, it suggested the full text of the search, so I thought it was even less likely that it would work like the OP said - that even if it had been the case that it previously did that, so many people have self-evidently done that search that the results would now be correct.
But no - there it was, right at the top - "While there are 54 recognized countries in Africa, none of them begin with the letter "K". The closest is Kenya, which starts with a "K" sound, but is actually spelled with a "K" sound."
And with that, I'll contentedly go back to not using google.
The closest is Kenya, which starts with a "K" sound, but is actually spelled with a "K" sound."
Not going to lie, that's pretty disturbing. This search engine is used by millions (maybe billions?) and they're providing false information to all those people. That's scary.
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verified
I typed in "what countries in Africa start with k" and got Kenya. When I tried your search term I got your result also. Weird.
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Chatgpt creating incorrect feedback loops like this is one of my main concerns about AI being used so prevalently. This and original thoughts disappearing because every new content in the web is generated by AI and not by a human.
Tool built by narcissist gaslighters is good for bullshit but nothing else? Colour me shocked.
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Which starts with a "K" sound, but is actually spelled with a "K" sound
AI is truly magical
AI generated content is pure search result pollution.
What Google should be doing rather than pushing Bard is detecting AI nonsense and purging it from their search database.
You cannot detect AI generated content. Not with any real world accuracy and it will only get worse.
Also, because google relies on growth for everything from compensation structure to business model, they are in a bind - ads is not growing anymore, it’s done.
And while they managed to create an illusion of growth this earnings round by juicing subscription fees 20% and increasing ad load everywhere, it’s not a sustainable tactic. We are already seeing a tech sell off as people are getting less and less secure.
So they rely on AI narrative to keep investors invested Google needs AI to work or the investors will move it to a place that may offer higher returns than a squeezed out ads model.
Worse even they are being attacked by AI - on the quality front (junk content) and in the marketplace (openAI), they don’t have a choice but to take a pro AI stance.
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I actually stopped using google search all together last night, I was searching for something and the result where just abysmal and mostly irrelevant, I searched on DuckDuckGo and found much better results. I was using both, Google used to be so good and now it's just a mess.
My biggest pain point with Duck is that the minus operator doesn't seem to do anything. Have to use Startpage (!s) when in need of excluding a word.
Double quotes also didn’t work to apply explicit phrase searches last time I tried, which is incredibly annoying. Last I heard they were looking into fixing this though
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Hmm, maybe AI won't replace search engines.
This sounds like "Hmm, maybe calculators won't replace mathematicians." to me.
Not sure why it should replace them. They'll co-exist. Sometimes you can do the math in your brain and for other things you use calculators. Results of calculators can still be wrong it you don't use them properly.
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I tried and it is true here at least. Says Kenya is the closest but although it starts with a K sound, it's spelled with a K sound. lmao
The only time I tried ChatGPT for something that required a little bit of processing it failed miserably. I had a shower thought, "what is the most used noun on lyrics of this band I like?" I asked it and it gave me random words. I decided to investigate and ask it what are specific lyrics of some of the most popular songs and it kept telling me made up lyrics, when I could actually find them immediately on Google.
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Searched for 'office gym' on YouTube yesterday and it returned a bunch of videos of Jim from The Office. The enshittification is everywhere these days.
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Tbh the problem is not due to chat gpt but because Google doesn't rank search results by correctness but something that is related to popularity.
I've been using DDG for a year and like the search results but what bothers me is that you can't exclude a word from your query with minus sign!
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Constantly forgetting I changed all my default search engines to DuckDuckGo.
Went to Google to test this...what a trash website.
Pushed me to download the app.
Pops up a recommendation to download Chrome.
Has clutter on the default search search form.
Looks more like yahoo than the google of yore
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I got the uber pedant.. "While there are 54 recognized countries in Africa, none of them begin with the letter "K". The closest is Kenya, which starts with a "K" sound, but is actually spelled with a "K" sound. It's always interesting to learn new trivia facts like this."
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I never got into DDG because Google was legitimately better. It seems that is no longer the case and I'm finding no reason to use it instead anymore.
@JoBo I just googled it and Kenya came up as the first hit in Search and in Bard.
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I tested this with my local google so not America, somewhere in Europe. "While there are 54 recognized countries in Africa, none of them begin with the letter "K". The closest is Kenya, which starts with a "K" sound, but is actually spelled with a "K" sound." I'd say this is worth a wot.
When I googled "What countries in Africa start with a K", it gave the correct answer, but when I googled "Do any countries in Africa start with a K", it gave me the ChatGPT nonsense.
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I didn't think it would work, because surely they'd patched it by now, but:
While there are 54 recognized countries in Africa, none of them begin with the letter "K". The closest is Kenya, which starts with a "K" sound, but is actually spelled with a "K" sound. It's always interesting to learn new trivia facts like this.
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Thanks to this post, I changed my search engine in Vivaldi to DuckDuckGo, and Edge uses Bing already, and I changed Mull's engine to Ecosia. Phew! Now I feel better.
Google when did you get so crummy?
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I could reproduce it exactly as described.
I saw it, it's marked as a "featured snippet", whatever that means....
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