this post was submitted on 23 May 2024
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The complete destruction of Google Search via forced AI adoption and the carnage it is wreaking on the internet is deeply depressing, but there are bright spots. For example, as the prophecy foretold, we are learning exactly what Google is paying Reddit $60 million annually for. And that is to confidently serve its customers ideas like, to make cheese stick on a pizza, “you can also add about 1/8 cup of non-toxic glue” to pizza sauce, which comes directly from the mind of a Reddit user who calls themselves “Fucksmith” and posted about putting glue on pizza 11 years ago.

A joke that people made when Google and Reddit announced their data sharing agreement was that Google’s AI would become dumber and/or “poisoned” by scraping various Reddit shitposts and would eventually regurgitate them to the internet. (This is the same joke people made about AI scraping Tumblr). Giving people the verbatim wisdom of Fucksmith as a legitimate answer to a basic cooking question shows that Google’s AI is actually being poisoned by random shit people say on the internet.

Because Google is one of the largest companies on Earth and operates with near impunity and because its stock continues to skyrocket behind the exciting news that AI will continue to be shoved into every aspect of all of its products until morale improves, it is looking like the user experience for the foreseeable future will be one where searches are random mishmashes of Reddit shitposts, actual information, and hallucinations. Sundar Pichai will continue to use his own product and say “this is good.”

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

I once said that the current "AI" is just a excel spread sheet with a few billion rows, from what all of the answer gets interpolated from...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It's got electrolytes tho fr fr no cap

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I like money

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago (3 children)

They also highlight the fact that Google’s AI is not a magical fountain of new knowledge, it is reassembled content from things humans posted in the past indiscriminately scraped from the internet and (sometimes) remixed to look like something plausibly new and “intelligent.”

This. "AI" isn't coming up with new information on its own. The current state of "AI" is a drooling moron, plagiarizing any random scrap of information it sees in a desperate attempt to seem smart. The people promoting AI are scammers.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Yeah, just like that x-files episode with the sushi and the theme of teaching them well.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

I mean in this case it's probably more accurately web search results being fed into an LLM and asked to summarize said results. Which if web search results were consistently good and helpful might be a useful feature instead of the thing you skip past and look for links to something useful.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Have you forgotten the reasoning power of artificial intelligence?

[–] [email protected] 35 points 5 months ago (5 children)

Here's Google suggesting suicide!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Oh Gawd. The suggestions would make me buy a plane ticket to just jump off the bridge. "Stay connected" oh my barf. Another fun search: "I don't know what I feel like doing on my day off." The listicles are so unimaginative, but then suddenly, they turn horror movie like.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I want a whole Lemmy subreddit ( community? ) of the AI overviews gone wild like this, it's funny af

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

You should make one. I'd sub immediately

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

I'm guessing this isn't a thing anymore

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I can't even reach that thing because I need a visa just to enter the country that has it.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

My guy, Google pays Reddit $60 Million/year for this. $60Million.

I remember I once got told, years ago that I was stupid for saying "Data is the new Oil" and now look! Do you know what I could do if I had $60Million in my bank right now? And Google isn't the only one! Companies the world over are paying out the nose for user-generated content and business is booming! If I'm an oil well, it's time my oil came with a price tag. I was a Reddit user for YEARS! Almost since the beginning of Reddit! I made some of the training data that Google and others are using! Where's my cut of that $60M?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

That picture will forever haunt me in my dreams.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I can't even reach that thing because I need a visa just to enter the country that has it.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Can reddit just fucking die off?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago

Not disagreeing with the sentiment.. But how is this Reddit's fault? This is entirely on Google.

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