We went from precise web search with boolean operators to "natural language models" of AI search.

[morrick@appdot.net]

@tinker Early Internet made by neurodivergent people and today’s Internet in the hands of the neurotypical? I’m not so sure. It’s enshittification made by people who want to extract as much as possible from everyone while returning a much worse experience than before. It’s this ‘AI’ craze inflated by an industry that desperately seeks relevance to try making millions out of next-to nothing.

Early Internet’s model was altruism. Today, selfishness.

I’m not neurodivergent and I HATE AI search.

[spandexbob@mastodon.social]

@tinker this something I realised recently, I've had no desire to use AI search because the interface feels wrong. Why would I want to 'talk' to the search engine, it's less precise

[passwordsarehard4@mastodon.social]

@sollat @tinker in boardroom settings, yes. It all kinda depends on the data sampled.

[corbden@defcon.social]

@tinker We made it for us because we weren't welcome in their spaces. Then it became cool, and then indispensable, so they came and took it over and pushed us out and oh where have we seen this pattern before??

[alice@lgbtqia.space]

@tinker modern search is perfectly efficient—it's just been tuned to maximize sponsored links, ads, and AI summaries, rather than accurate results.

They know people will keep searching for the info they need, and much like widening toothpaste tube spouts, it boosts profits at direct cost to the user, without providing them any better service.

[lkngrrr@hachyderm.io]

@tinker eBay still holds the line on Boolean search terms and I love them for it.

[tress@lgbtqia.space]

@tinker oh my god. This. So much.

[iamdannyboling@mstdn.social]

@sillyCoelophysis

Yes, my husband is an intelligent man but I see him taking AI summaries as verbatim and that worries me.

@tinker

[lennybacon@infosec.exchange]

@zcutlip @tinker @darthnull @kagihq Sure „On September 4, 2024, Kagi Assistant was announced.[17] The Assistant uses generative artificial intelligence models from third party AI providers“

[avincentinspace@furry.engineer]

@Npars01 @krypt3ia @tinker mm, no, efficient search provides fewer opportunities to show the user ads

[w@11n.org]

we haven't invented a strong enough word to describe my feelings when a search engine searches for what it thinks I meant instead of doing what I told it to do

[glc@mastodon.online]

@AVincentInSpace @Npars01 @krypt3ia @tinker

To expand on that: as documented by internal Google emails, in a iively discussion prior to rolling back efficient search.

[tessarakt@mastodon.social]

@tinker so in less than one generation, IT itself will be gone ...

[ferricoxide@blahaj.zone]

@tinker@infosec.exchange

Other than above-average intelligence, I don't consider myself "neurodivergent" (and I definitely haven't been diagnosed ASD or any of the ADHD derivatives. That said, I learned to program at an early age — and many decades ago — which created an operator-oriented mind-set. What I liked about the search of a decade ago was that it functioned analogously to searches in other contexts (LDAP, SQL, JMSE, etc.).

Now? Search is all "squishy". And the only thing that acts as a counter to that "squishiness" is that inputs are stateful: i can iteratively-refine a search to get the results I need.

If you're planning to use advertising to offset the cost of offering an AI-based search, that (all but) forced iterated-request pattern gives you many more opportunities to inject advertising. As a service-operator, you just have to hope that your per-query advertising-revenue is greater than the token-cost of a given iteration.

[nicelymanifest@mastodon.social]

@tinker My favourite notion now is to reject the negative infused neurodivergent and neurotypical labels. I propose :

neurodiverse or neurocreative

and

neurosimple or neuroinert

Anything seen as in the minority is so often couched in negative terms. Often as it is a threat to the rest.

I often find 'normal' people severely lacking in curiosity and creativity and passion.

[mariyadelano@hachyderm.io]

@tinker I miss Boolean web search so much…

[luatic@mastodon.social]

@tinker Are you sure that this is an accurate account of history? I think a big reason we didn't see widespread "fuzzy" search earlier is because we just didn't know how to make it work well. Simple keyword search is much easier to implement, especially at scale. And even then you had and still have many aspects that are still far from precise and very much heuristic, like the ranking of search results. Of course a few idealized problems admit "precise" algorithms (like PageRank) but that's it?

[ghostonthehalfshell@masto.ai]

@tinker

If you wanted to have an idea of just how absurd vibecoding is @jonny ’s epic thread, where he reviewed Claude source is more than enough.

I encourage you, however, to reconsider your presumption that neurotypical people automatically love that bullshit. It is very typical to assume anecdotal experience as globally relevant.

Nine year-old children now say “it’s AI” to characterize something as a lie. Children have no history where search was reliable.

[ariarhythmic@ohai.social]

@tinker Is it really gone

I don't think there's a law forcing everyone to use AI to pentest

[engel@chaos.social]

@tinker am i the only one who is disturbed by the combination of a really good point and heroification of neuro spicy folk?

Neurospicy’s are superior human beings! (Satire)