this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
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I don't mind seeing an AI summary of search results as much as I mind sponsored links fucking up page rank. Sometimes it is even nice to see "hey your search doesn't make sense because you've conflated two terms". But I guess I'm in the minority.
Reminds me of early wikipedia when there was a deep trustworthiness problem. Seeing a wikipedia link on a presentation stole your credibility, but it was still a hell of a lot better starting point than grabbing an encyclopedia and asking jeeves until you found a thread to pull.
AI summaries put another layer of interpretation between the reader and the source material. When having accurate and properly-sourced information matters, it's just not trustworthy enough. At least with Wikipedia, it tells you when there is potentially biased or improperly sourced material. Search AI will confidently assert their summaries as though they are factual, regardless of how reliable or unreliable their own sources are.
So long as the citations are there I'm not usually taking the summary at it's word. I find searching "hard to Google" terms easier with AI.
When having accurate and properly sourced material matters, I hope you're not trusting the descriptions of citations laid out by wikipedia editors who are also just another layer of interpretation. It's always worth a double check.
This ^.
I think people forget the fabled "old" internet was actually a pile of trolls where one had to double check what they read.
Basic sanity checks really aren't that hard. But its a forgotten habit, I guess.
"oh my god, AI makes shit up!"