Wow some terrible reporting about Google's latest horrible ideas about how to distort information access in the name of "convenience" (or something):

[mcahalane@mastodon.world]

@emilymbender so we won't know what's AI slop and what's a real site?

[bms48@mastodon.social]

@emilymbender My bigger worry is if they start ensloppifying scholar.google.com. Zotero Connector eats it right up. Semantic Scholar isn't a patch on it for grabbing bibliographic records and tracking references, I have seen noticeable distortion in its results. Their pipeline is somewhat ML driven but they do use LLM summaries. This is expected given the origins of the service. Provenance is everything.

[syntaxseed@phpc.social]

@emilymbender These companies desperately want to stop us from finding & enjoying each other's content. Walled gardens of social media & mega platforms weren't enough, now the search directories will be the ultimate walled garden.

All built on stealing the work of everyone who's ever published anything online.

Why would anyone create anything anymore? I already feel my own desire to blog is waning.

[fiar_light@beige.party]

@emilymbender Silly, you're acting like there's any need for links. To do what? Check the veracity of the AI-generated wisdom and information being provided to you by the high priests of Google?? Heresy! Blasphemy!! How durst thee???

[lp0_on_fire@social.linux.pizza]

@emilymbender, that was exactly the point at which I started configuring browsers to add “&udm=14” to all searches done via Ggle.

Most recent case? I noticed that Calibre does word lookup. It will happily do so via Ggle; and, yes, the slop summary is shown.

[lp0_on_fire@social.linux.pizza]

@emilymbender, he's mostly right. It definitely is helping the world… burn.

[mrmoore@mstdn.social]

@emilymbender Sometimes it feels like these people are trying to create a world from science fiction stories. For example, in Star Trek when they ask the computer something and it just gives them the answer. They don't understand that plenty of science fiction has no basis in reality and/or are terrible for how our brains actually work (like you've pointed out).

That or they are just greedy bastards that are looking to exploit anyone and everyone for a profit.

[mspcommentary@mastodon.online]

@emilymbender wait! You can opt out?!

[whitequark@social.treehouse.systems]

@emilymbender it's an XKCD reference isn't it?

[damonwakes@mastodon.sdf.org]

@sleepfreeparent @mrmoore @emilymbender Also they can show their ads on their platform without those pesky users nipping off to see the source of the information (and possibly supporting it in any way).

[damonwakes@mastodon.sdf.org]

@emilymbender Oh, goodie. They've invented a guy who barges between you and the library shelves and proceeds to give you his vague recollection of what some of the books say. Sort of. Maybe. Unless he decides you were actually looking for something else.

[jackeric@beige.party]

@whitequark @emilymbender surely. `import antigravity` in python, about 20+ years ago

[whitequark@social.treehouse.systems]

@jackeric @emilymbender doesn't make it less cringe, of course

[jackeric@beige.party]

@whitequark @emilymbender indeed

[taghunt@infosec.exchange]

@emilymbender
Good thing they block adblockers then aye?

[mrmoore@mstdn.social]

@DamonWakes @sleepfreeparent @emilymbender It's amazing how it's changed from want to get users out of search to websites, as quickly as possible. Now, it's the opposite. Keep users in search as long as possible and don't allow them escape to the websites.

[morqendi@mstdn.social]

@tomtom @ShadSterling @romli @hamishb @emilymbender

Even easier:

DuckDuckGo - Protection. Privacy. Peace of mind.

The Internet privacy company that empowers you to seamlessly take control of your personal information online, without any tradeoffs.

DuckDuckGo (noai.duckduckgo.com)

Enjoy!

#NoAI

[thethunderwolf@tech.lgbt]

@hipsterelectron @emilymbender

i have never observed google demonstrate any behavior that struck me as evidence of them gathering any form of information

except for them unethically gathering lots of information about you?

[shadsterling@mastodon.social]

@morqendi @tomtom @romli @hamishb @emilymbender the only time I use Google is when DDG results are useless so I prepend with “g! ” to try Google, and even the noai version doesn’t append “ -ai” so I still get the AI overview and an actual setting would still help.

I’ll try to remember to try prepending with “g! -ai “, but that’s not an acceptable way for them to interpret “opt out”

[wizardofdocs@wandering.shop]

@emilymbender you know, I was just thinking

Google gave up on "don't be evil" at least a decade ago

while I worked there about five years ago, they gave up on "respect the user, respect the opportunity, respect each other"

now they seem to have given up on "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"

I hate that my livelihood is still tied to them.