this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2024

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Stop using generative AI as a search engine (www.theverge.com)

submitted 6 months ago by misk@sopuli.xyz to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 62 points 6 months ago (6 children)

The Internet was a great resource for sharing and pooling human knowledge.

Now generative AI has come along to dilute knowledge in a great sea of excrement. Humans have to hunt through the shit to find knowledge.

[–] GaiusBaltar@lemmy.world 20 points 6 months ago

To be fair, humans were already diluting it in a great sea of excrement, the robots just came to take our job and do it even faster and better.

[–] criss_cross@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I mean google was already like this before GenAI.

Its a nightmare to find anything you're actually looking for and not SEO spam.

Gen AI cuts out some of that noise but it has its own problems too.

[–] JeremyHuntQW12@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

You should see what searching was like on AltaVista. You'd have to scroll past dozens of posts of random numbers and letters to find anything legible. Click through and your computer would emit a cacophony of bell sounds and pour out screens of random nonsense and then freeze permanently. You had to rely on links and web-rings to navigate with any degree of success.

And that in itself was a massive improvement on what was available before.

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[+] IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 52 points 6 months ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

[deleted]

[–] sorghum@sh.itjust.works 66 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Google training their AI on reddit was stupid as fuck.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 points 6 months ago

Yeah, you'd spend more time filtering out nonsense than you would save vs actually implementing some decent logic.

Maybe use AI trained from a better source to help filter the nonsense from Reddit, and then have a human sample the output. Maybe then you'd get some okay training data, but that's a bit of putting the cart before the horse.

[–] Olap@lemmy.world 19 points 6 months ago

Don't forget to glue it all together at the end. Real chefs use epoxy

[–] VaalaVasaVarde@sopuli.xyz 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I just made that pie, it was delicious.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 8 points 6 months ago

Can confirm, perfect 5/7.

[–] slackassassin@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

To make a pie, you'll need a pastry crust, a filling, and a baking dish. Here's a basic guide:

Ingredients:

For the pie crust:

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cold and cut into small pieces

1/2 cup ice water

For the filling (example - apple pie):

6 cups peeled and sliced apples (Granny Smith or Honeycrisp work well)

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces

Instructions:

Make the pie crust:

Mix dry ingredients:

In a large bowl, whisk together flour and salt.

Cut in butter:

Add cold butter pieces and use a pastry cutter or two knives to cut the butter into the flour mixture until it resembles coarse crumbs with pea-sized pieces.

Add water:

Gradually add ice water, mixing until the dough just comes together. Be careful not to overmix.

Form dough:

Gather the dough into a ball, wrap it in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Prepare the filling:

Mix ingredients: In a large bowl, combine apple slices, sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Toss to coat evenly.

Assemble the pie:

Roll out the dough: On a lightly floured surface, roll out the chilled dough to a 12-inch circle.

Transfer to pie plate: Carefully transfer the dough to a 9-inch pie plate and trim the edges.

Add filling: Pour the apple filling into the pie crust, mounding slightly in the center.

Dot with butter: Sprinkle the butter pieces on top of the filling.

Crimp edges: Fold the edges of the dough over the filling, crimping to seal.

Cut slits: Make a few small slits in the top of the crust to allow steam to escape.

Bake:

Preheat oven: Preheat oven to 375°F (190°C).

Bake: Bake the pie for 45-50 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown and the filling is bubbling.

Cool: Let the pie cool completely before serving.

Variations:

Different fillings:

You can substitute the apple filling with other options like blueberry, cherry, peach, pumpkin, or custard.

Top crust designs:

Decorate the top of your pie with decorative lattice strips or a simple leaf design.

Flavor enhancements:

Add spices like cardamom, ginger, or lemon zest to your filling depending on the fruit you choose.

[–] kryptonite@lemmy.world 5 points 6 months ago (2 children)

That's pretty good, but..... how much pie crust does it make? The recipe only says to roll out one circle of crust, and then once the filling is in it, suddenly you're crimping the edges of the top crust to the bottom. It's missing crucial steps and information.

I would never knowingly use an AI-generated recipe. I'd much rather search for one that an actual human has used, and even then, I read through it to make sure it makes sense and steps aren't missing.

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[–] GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org 26 points 6 months ago

Where was all this coming from? Well, I don’t know what Stern or Esquire’s source was. But I know Navarro-Cardenas’, because she had a follow-up message for critics: “Take it up with Chat GPT.”

The absolute gall of this woman to blame her own negligence and incompetence on a tool she grossly misused.

[–] Fiivemacs@lemmy.ca 17 points 6 months ago (2 children)

And when the search engines shove it in your faces and try to make it so we HAVE to use it for searches to justify their stupid expenses?

[–] ech@lemm.ee 6 points 6 months ago

Use something else.

[–] ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 6 months ago

Just scroll past it? I just assume it's going to be wrong anyway.

[–] Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 points 6 months ago

This is why Melon and the AI chud brigade are so obsessed with having a chatbot (sorry, “AI”) that always agrees with them: a stupid number of people think LLMs are search engines, or worse, search engines but better, some diviner of truth.

[–] rdsm@discuss.tchncs.de 15 points 6 months ago (1 children)

No.

[–] Oka@sopuli.xyz 5 points 6 months ago (20 children)

I ask GPT for random junk all the time. If it's important, I'll double-check the results. I take any response with a grain of salt, though.

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[–] vhstape@lemmy.sdf.org 14 points 6 months ago (1 children)

In general I agree with the sentiment of the article, but I think the broader issue is media literacy. When the Internet came about, people had similar reservations about the quality of information, and most of us learned in school how to find quality information online.

LLMs are a tool, and people need to learn how to use them correctly and responsibly. I’ve been using Perplexity.AI as a search engine for a while now, and I think they’re taking the right approach. It employs LLMs at different stages to parse your query, perform web searches on your behalf, and summarize findings. It provides in-text citations as well, which is an opportunity for a media-literate person to confirm the validity of anything important.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 14 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Ok but may I point you to the reality that internet spread misinformation is a critically bad problem at the moment

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[–] Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 13 points 6 months ago

Biggest reason I stopped using Google

[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Obvious problem is obvious.

[–] adarza@lemmy.ca 15 points 6 months ago

garbage in, garbage out.

[–] curiousaur@reddthat.com 10 points 6 months ago (8 children)

Who else is going to aggregate those recipes for me without having to scroll past ads a personal blog bs?

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[–] Kaelygon@lemmy.world 10 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Google search results are often completely unrelated so it's not any better. If the thing I'm looking for is obscure, AI often finds some thread that I can follow, but I always double check that information.
Know your tool limits, after hundreds of prompts I've learned pretty well when the AI is spitting bullshit answers. Real people on the internet can be just as wrong and biased, so it's best to find multiple independent sources

[–] Gerprimus@feddit.org 3 points 6 months ago

This is a basic element of information gathering. Always check the source!

[–] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

Eh....I got it to find a product that met the specs I was looking for on Amazon when no other search worked. It's certainly a last resort but it worked. Idk why whenever I'm looking to buy anything lately somehow the only criteria I care about are never documented properly...

[–] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It's useful to point you in the right direction, but anything beyond that necessitates more research

[–] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 5 points 6 months ago

I mean, it gave me exactly what I asked for. The only further research was to actually read the item description to verify that but I could have blindly accepted it and received what I was looking for.

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[–] Jocker@sh.itjust.works 6 points 6 months ago

Okay, but what else to do with it?

[–] _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 6 months ago (7 children)

Start using SearXNG.

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[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 5 points 6 months ago

When search engines stop being shit, I will.

[–] HEXN3T@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 6 months ago

I've used it for very, very specific cases. I'm on Kagi, so it's a built in feature (that isn't intrusive), and it typically generates great answers. That is, unless I'm getting into something obscure. I've used it less than five times, all in all.

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