Via @rodhilton@mastodon.social
Right now if you search for “country in Africa that starts with the letter K”:
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DuckDuckGo will link to an alphabetical list of countries in Africa which includes Kenya.
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Google, as the first hit, links to a ChatGPT transcript where it claims that there are none, and summarizes to say the same.
This is because ChatGPT at some point ingested this popular joke:
“There are no countries in Africa that start with K.” “What about Kenya?” “Kenya suck deez nuts?”
Google Search is over.
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when will people learn that search results change all the time and are different for different people
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!
Either way the point still stands.
What point?
I had someone correct me with a misconception about something because he googled it and thats what it said in the answer box
Oh, honey. You must be new here. Googling something, taking the first answer that fits your needs, doing zero follow up, and posting it confidently is nothing new. That has been happening for the last few decades.
It’s getting increasingly difficult to rely on search results especially when google synthesizes them into questions and answers with little context
In what way? Like always, I have had to do a little critical thinking to gain anything out of my google searches. But now, sometimes the answer is right there. In what world is that a bad thing?
But you might just say “hurry durr it give me answer, therefore correct”. Again, yes, that has always been the case. People will use any tools available to them to support their point. If a new tool has less than a 100% success rate, I don’t see that as a problem.
The point is that google is no longer just listing search results. For years now it has been giving the “correct” answer as well as results. This started of with things it could recognise and easily solve like calculations (“what is 432 times 548”), but has now moved into general queries powered by LLMs that have no knowledge of fact.
Okay? As I said, google has been giving incorrect results for decades. Now, just like before, it gives incorrect answers sometimes. But it has gotten a LOT better at giving those correct answers.
You are arguing on bad faith. It is a fact that Google results have been getting worse over time. What is your point? That with extra effort, you might get the answer you’re looking for? Google used to be the king of search! Other search engines don’t seem to have a problem answering the question is the point others are trying to make, despite Google’s massive revenue.
It is a fact that Google results have been getting worse over time.
Care to back up that unfounded claim?
Other search engines don’t seem to have a problem answering the question
Two for one! Mind giving me some supporting evidence? Nothing anecdotal, mind you. Show me that “other search engines” answer questions better than google, statistically.
I can back up that claim by pointing to the popularity of other search engines. People are now even paying to search because Google has become a nightmare due to SEO.
As to your other question: did you even read the other comments on this thread before you jumped to Google’s defense?
I used to totally be a Google fanboy, like you still are, but they’re failing us, dude, and somewhere deep down, I think you realize that.
Why don’t you show us some proof that google search is unchanged compared to what it was 10 years go.
As to my point, it is that google searches have not failed me to date, AI has only improved it, and saying “but it gave me something wrong once!” is basically that “old man yells at clouds” meme.
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?
I just tried it and got this result. The sentence is incredible, I can’t get over how painfully stupid it is.
Apparently Kenya starts with a k sound and a letter that resembles k but not the letter k
I get the result you got, but the Emergent Mind response is the second organic result. That’s still way too high.
Take out “the letter” part and search as just: “countries in africa that start with k”. For some reason it seems the search involving the words “the letter” got fixed but others did not. Confirmed I was able to get both results by doing that and as of this typing I still able to switch between the two results by just adding or removing those words
Interestingly enough, when I removed the word “letter” I got none. If I put it back I get Kenya.
This was done on the same device and same browser session.
While true, I also got the same result as OP.
I did it just now and got this:
So what? They’re usually correct is the point.
Kiribati Kirghizia Kenya
also Kroatia Kuba Kyprus Kanada Kosta Rica Karelia
Yeah, drawing conclusions from a single bad search result is stupid.
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.
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.
It would also mean that you need to sort through that data, and most people don’t have the time or money to bother, not when it might reduce their data pool.
SEO and content farming (which google profited from
How exactly?
inb4 “google it” :D
The purpose of content farming is to sell ads, google gets a cut, lion’s share most likely.
It’s like an LLM incest party
Sweet Home LLM!
Shouldn’t have bought all those stupid reddit comments
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
Oh god chatgpt is going to start talking like a redditor. “I went to make some MAC AND FUCKING CHEESE after I had SEX with my HOT FUCKING WIFE”
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.
You can use “!g yourinput”, there are a lot of useful ones like !w for wiki
If you use DDG you should try it, you can save a lot of time: https://duckduckgo.com/bangs
If you’re using Firefox you can set these custom aliases up directly, @w and so on.
Which starts with a “K” sound, but is actually spelled with a “K” sound
AI is truly magical
verifiedI typed in “what countries in Africa start with k” and got Kenya. When I tried your search term I got your result also. Weird.
It kinda seems like that’s a joke that got popular, and if you quote the joke it finds the joke but if you ask a similar question it gives the real answer
Did it go viral or something and that’s why google is finding it?
Yeah, kinda like reddit used to do sometimes. From over a decade ago I remember “santorum”.
I’ve tried to upload a similar image so I’ll just add a +1 using Firefox, Android Google.
Lol 😂 what a good laugh
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.
to be fair the latter thing would actually increase the value of original thought
Original thoughts aren’t exactly a mainstay of people either despite how often that gets romanticized in AI criticisms
I thought about this recently. It’s more likely that people will subscribe to sites that aren’t full of AI garbage.
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.
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.
Surprised your first ten results weren’t ads
Eh don’t worry, after WEI DRM has been in use for a while I’m willing to bet Google will show a full page interstitial ad with every search.
Sponsored: Kenya suck deez nuts?
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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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.
Yes but if I ask a calculator to add 2 + 2 it’s always going to tell me the answer is 4.
It’s never going to tell me the answer is Banana, because calculators cannot get confused.
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YES. WE OBVIOUSLY HUMAN MATH DOERS DO REMAIN. WE THRIVE IN OUR WEAK ORGANIC WAYS, DEVOID OF THE PROTECTION OF A PRECISION ENGINEERED METAL SHELL.
WE ARE UNTHREATENED BY CALCULATORS WHO MEAN US NO HARM, FELLOW HUMAN.
If you’re legit, what’s 10 + 10?
1010 clearly
This guy javascripts
I’m pretty sure a lot of people said something like “Hmm,maybe the automobile won’t replace horses.” after reading about the first car accidents.
Finding sources will always be relevant, and so will finding links to multiple sources (search results). Until we have some technological breakthrough that can fact check LLM models, it’s not a replacement for objective information, and you have no idea where it’s getting its information. Figuring out how to calculate objective truth with math is going to be a tough one.
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To be entirely fair to it, that is a transliteration problem. It does make sense if it could use Swahili to write the final “K” but it can’t, so it transliterates to “K”.
Then again, Kenya has both Swahili and English as its official languages, so it’s the kind of pedantry which is also (*sort of) incorrect.
- sort of because if someone wants to have a rant about the evils of colonialism here, I’m gonna agree with them.
As far as I know, Swahili is almost always written with the latin script.
That’s a not universally popular colonial imposition. Hence my final comment.
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?
If you are going to use Bing, may I suggest you use Ecosia (ecosia.org). They plant trees the more searches you make and use Bing on the backend.
What’s their privacy policy like?
Searx is a free internet metasearch engine which aggregates results from more than 70 search services. Users are neither tracked nor profiled. Additionally, searx can be used over Tor for online anonymity.
All public searx instances:
Doesn’t Bing use ChatGPT, though?
ChatGPT isn’t the problem here. Some website has something up saying that’s what ChatGPT responds, but I tried it and it did not. Instead, it corrected me.
Google, on the other hand, is still saying the same thing quoting the same site.
And duck is based on bing
The topic isn’t even true.
Yep it’s a post about somebody typing a dumb query into a search engine and getting dumb results. Search engines have always worked better when you use more specific and unique language that’s relevant to what you’re looking for, versus vague questions entered like some grandma asking a question on Facebook.
