Im convinced they made search engines worse to promote AI usage.
Search engines were returning shit more and more, before LLMs even existed.
When search engine optimization becomes a target, content suffers. If Google changed their algorithm to only rank websites with high quality content instead of keyword-stuffed content, we’d see a great improvement in the quality of the internet.
The real kicker is how you even decide what quality is. A one line script that updates a driver may be a solution to your issue. A four page walkthrough that rambles and gets you to your answer but only after an hour is still a solution, but is it better quality? The issue is that you can't quantify quality. Even if you managed to for something like programming, you couldn't apply that same logic to horticulture. The issue is that quality isn't something you can stick in an algorithm.
Right, quality is not something that is easy to figure out algorithmically. But adding arbitrary rules like “content length” or “time on page” directly ruins quality by incentivizing content manipulation.
Then someone targets them for pushing their biases because they are deciding quality.
So they were enshittifying search engines in advance, so what? AI wasn't born yesterday.
I've never seen convincing arguments for that. However, if you think about it, Google wants you to stay scrolling through it forever. The more sponsored links and ads they can show, the more money they make. They didn't need to make it worse for AI, they made it worse for profit
Im encountering alot of AI created websites that explain concepts like "side effects of X pill" (a recent example) and there was basically no real medical websites in the top results, Just clearly AI using thousands of words to say nothing that I cant trust.
I was considering locally hosting a search engine to circumvent my need for them entirely. Search engine optimization seems like a nightmare, if they were trying to give me useful results. So im not sure if that would be a spend 5 hours to save 5 minutes situation.
As you and others said, Its been getting worse for years so its probably just a coincidence that its also profitable for AI.
I don't think it's intentional, but I think the sheer quantity of AI slop and web crawlers trying to train new AI models is the main problem. Good websites are blocking access to search engines to try to slow crawler traffic, while shitty websites are being made at an unprecedented speed. I legitimately don't know how you fix this as a search engine provider.
Literally never had this happen. Every time I have caved after exhausting all other options the LLM has just made it worse. I never go back anymore.
They're by no means the end-all solution. And they usually aren't my first choice.
But when I'm out of ideas prompting gemini with a couple sentences hyper-specifically describing a problem, has often given me something actionable. I've had almost no success with asking it for specific instructions without specific details about what I'm doing. That's when it just makes shit up.
But a recent example. I was trying to re-install windows on a lenovo ARM laptop. Lenovos own docs were generic for all their laptops, and intended for x86. You could not use just any windows iso. While I was able to figure out how to create the recovery image media for the specific device at hand, there were no instructions on how to actually use it, and entering the BIOS didn't have any relevant entries.
Writing half a dozen sentences describing this into Gemini, instantly informed me that there is a tiny pin-hole button on the laptop that boots into a special separate menu that isn't in the bios. A lo, that was it.
Then again, if normal search still worked like it did a decade ago, and didn't give me a shitload of irrelevant crap, I wouldn't have needed an LLM to "think" it's way to this factoid. I could have found it myself.
I do use LLMs if I forget to plan one of my tabletop sessions. I will fully admit they are great at that. Love 'em for making encounters. But thats fundamentally different than real world searches or knowledge. I'm asking it to make stuff up for me, it koves to hallucinate.
Happened to me yesterday. I have an old 4K TV, every component I used to connect to it had HDMI 2.0+ capabilities. Neither laptop nor Steam Deck would output 4K60, only 4K30. Tried getting another cable and a hub, same result. And I know that my Chromecast outputs 4K60 to this TV, so I was extra confused. In my desperation, asked GPT-5 what was I missing, and it plainly told me that those old Samsung TVs turn off HDMI 2.0 support unless you explicitly turn it on in TV settings under "UHD Color". Apparently Chromecast was doing chroma subsampling, but computers refused and wanted full HDMI 2.0 bandwidth...
They’re regularly properly useful to me but it’s pointless to get in arguments in their defense. 🤷
It doesn't generally completely figure it out but to be honest it does a much better job than google for finding the relevant key words which can then be used for a more detailed search.
Doesn't always help but I am unfortunately thankful it exists sometimes when I feel like giving up and it gets me on the right track.
It never gives me good code, but the text it returns can sometimes spark an idea that works.
Me yesterday, except I only thought it figured it out, then found out hours later I must revert back to my workaround because it didn't really work fully and was fragile as fuck.
AI doesn't figure anything out. It guesses the next letter in the word.
no offense, i understand what you are trying to say here. im not a massive fan of the implications of things like AI and its effects on society.
but oversimplifying and infantalising your enemy wont stop it from out performing you.
like i can say "all AI does it put words on a screen based on a statistical analysis and prediction algorithm based on context and available training data, and its only accurate between 95% to 97% of the time, and it lies when it doesnt know something, or wants to save power for the sake of efficiency and cost reduction"
and it would still be far more likely to give a comprehensive breakdown and step by step analysis of systems well beyond my personal understanding. way faster than i ever could.
we can chalk it up to stolen info and guessing letters, but itll still outperform most people in most subjects, especially in terms of time/results.
dont get me wrong i dont think its intelligent in the way that a human can be, or as nuanced as a human can be. but that doesnt necessarily mean it cant be forever. and the way the technology is evolving across the board, seemingly faster and faster each day. with some plateaus here and there. its hard to imagine a world where we just say "well, we tried, its a dead end, oh well" and just completely abandon it for the idea of human exceptionalism.
overall humans, as smart as they are, are also pretty fucking dumb. which is why we are ignoring things like climate change, for what are essentially IOUs made out of 1s and 0s (money). and also succumbing to a global increase in fascist ideals even though we historically know what it entails and how it ends. and its in part due to the ability of AI to manipulate the masses, in its current "primitive" state.
i dont like AI, but im not going to pretend it wont be able to replace the output of most humans, or automate most jobs, or be used to enslave us and brainwash us further than it already has.
the human mind simply cannot compete with the computational speed, and in some cases, quality, of what is, and what is yet to come.
slop it may be, but if you cover the veritable feast of human creativity with enough slop, humanity will soon have no choice but to eat it or starve. everything else will get drowned out in time.
something really fucking big would have to happen to change this outcome. ww3, nuclear war, solar flare. who the fuck knows.
but what i do know is that those in power need the system to function as is, and in newer more efficient ways, while they still need us, in order for them to have the highest potential survival rate when it all comes crashing down at the end of this century. so, we may just avoid total annihilation unless its deemed necessary for their survival. lets hope we rise up before they take that opportunity.
Ah, to live a life where ones problems can be solved by an LLM. It sounds so... simple and pleasant. 🫀
...NOT!
It's just big tech selling convenience for the trillionth time, this time in another form. They are NOT doing out of good will; they're doing it to sell your data, to train their ai on it (alongaide their pirated media), and do other nefarious stuff with everything you have.
...NOT!
I promise you, as someone overcome with sadness from watching the so-far unsolvable problems of mankind that will lead to the end of the world as we know it - Living a life where one believe simulated intelligence could solve anything at all is a dream. Ignorance is bliss.
It’s just big tech selling convenience for the trillionth time
No, once more they're selling the impression of convenience. I.e. having the entire backend exposed to hackers because it was so convenient to vibe-code access control is not a real convenience.
They are NOT doing out of good will
Only idiots argue for such an intention.
they’re doing it to sell your data, to train their ai on it
No, they're doing it to harvest our data. This allows them to use machine learning on the datasets but more traditionally, build profiles on their users. Access to the profiles is what they're selling, not direct access to log data.
and do other nefarious stuff with everything you have
Then they need to step up their game as I'm self-hosting everything on a home-server. But I know what you mean. They want to do downright evil stuff with everything they can get their dirty, sticky paws on.
Ignorance is bliss
How do you even ignore the shitshow that is the world, which you live in; and therefore must care some amount?
That's the world we all dream of, right? We work on what we want to with the robots keeping the houses in check and taking care of the menial admin- and paperwork and in the evenings we all sit together by the campfire with the robots bringing us food and drink as we rejoice in talking to each other about the day's experiences.
That doesn't seem to be the world that we're moving towards though...
me, vibe-debugging my Debian machine
This has literally never happened.
Maybe an analytical model.
It happened to me once. Then I started giving LLMs more chances afterwards and it made me waste a lot more than the time it had saved me with that one single initial success.
Nah. They are decent enough for shallow knowledge and finding related Keywords.
I have found LLMs are good for getting your bearings and overall idea in place. I just used it for an overview of ESPHome for a specific LED I am trying to program a sunrise effect. It got me some wrong pseudocode, but did in fact point me in the direction of where to go to flash and what to do to compile the yaml file, and the relevant documentation for what I was trying to achieve. And the wrong pseudocode was actually a useful starting point to get a feel for the syntax.
It's a useful tool. But it can totally talk you out of good ideas and make you feel like you explored all options when it has absolutely not.
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