The only thing I'll say about the AI/search engine discourse is that search engines (most notably google) have gotten appallingly bad. For certain queries I've had better results with Deepseek using its live web browsing function, but you have to get it to give you footnotes/links.
I refuse to use that spying app/search bar.
📌
AI doesn’t make everything better.
Google is the worst for privacy. Avast and Duck Duck Go are the way to go for privacy.
once AI is ad driven , not results driven you will see a similar effect on quality of results in AI
Google is functionally useless at giving you the latest news on something (a not uncommon search). The “News” tab can be days or weeks out of date. The best you can do is scroll right across to tap Search Tools, then back to Any Time, then choose from the drop down menu. There is no “Latest”.
Kagi.com - search engine that uses Google's *index*, but not their soul-sucking, multiple advertisement front-end.
It ain’t perfect but using Kagi as my primary search engine has made my life slightly better
I think kagi is on the path (bugs to be ironed out and features to be added) to being as good as a search engine can be in this day and age. Most of my issues with it are due to the shrinking of total content in the web since pre-google's heel turn.
The enshittification of search engines to maximize ad revenue. Google: first, do evil.
Gemini lists sources that it pulls from when you ask it something.
As a food blogger, I can tell you that bloggers are suffering from this AI stuff. Information is scraped and offered up in the search results. It takes a lot of work to put together one blog post (recipe). What AI can not serve you is personal experience and tips for our particular recipe.
I hope people start to search beyond the AI search results and get the real info from the people who can give you their knowledge on a subject. / end of rant 😐
Vivaldi is doing fine for me. And it has an anonymous search. vivaldi.com
With the amount of energy AI uses, you might have better luck with an encyclopedia from 1984.
Alright, I'll say there is an exception here. As a developer who Googles things all the time, the skill gap is the problem. I can enter a targetted query into Google and get exactly what I want. If you search "casually" that is when you get trash.
I never have problems with Google.
They’ve gotten bad because they’re pushing more and more sponsored/SEO content over actual meaningful results. As soon as companies start doing the same for LLM results, it’ll be the same garbage.
I am curious -why do you like deepseek better than the others?
Honestly..I hope nobody takes any medical info serious. Some are straight up RFK stuff.
Google HAS gotten appallingly bad. I switched to the Duck Duck Go search engine which is much better but still have to turn to Duck AI sometimes to get a simple question answered. (Duck AI is the only one that doesn't store data.) When I do get an answer, I verify it on the search engine.
Kagi.com all the way.
I like that they include a Wikipedia link in the AI output but I don't like having to scroll to the bottom of the AI output to click it
Duck duck works fine.
The enshitification of Google and the actual content sites is one of the factors why LLMs are indeed faster to solve a well-defined problem today than classic web search. Search rankings are mostly following the interests of Google, and/or the SEO invest of the site owners, not serving their users.
I agree that Google is crap now. It can’t find anything. Why in the world did anyone think this was an improvement? It went from useful leading search engine, to ad generator, to whatever it is now.
I get my best results from World Book Encyclopedia and the Oxford Dictionary these days oh, and the library if it can wait a minute...
AI lies 🤣😂😂
This is 100% right and has been for a while now.
Check out Perplexity. Pretty good
And Googles searches have become really annoying
Thanks for the information
Google has become appallingly bad *BECAUSE* of the AI results and overabundance of sponsored advertisement results. Add FUCK to whatever your search query is, and it cuts out all of those.
“Fuck clothes for kids” in your browser as the cops slam down your door with Chris Hansen in tow.
#Google is useless now, the parsing of data by the #data suppressing white supremacist #datamining surveillance capitalism private white #corporationpeople dark money overlords has made their untaxed unregulated unpublisher of amygdala driven hate machine algorithm ad #revenue evil 😈 in the world 🌎.
DuckDuckGo, my man. It's what Google used to be.
The internet as whole is functionally dead compared to what it was in the early 2000s
I completely agree. The material piles up and the information goes down.
Hell, compared to the early 2010s, compared to the late 2010s even.
I feel like it was only improving until the early 2010s. The death of Flash, Chrome overtaking Firefox as the most popular browser, rise of mobile, it all happened circa 2011/2012 and then "enshittification" quickly ensued.
I suspect it was coincident with Facebook reaching peak engagement in the English speaking world, but have no hard evidence.
2018 seemed like peak to me
these takes always blow my mind. we have gigabit up and down dirt cheap, lan pings, all the content you could ever want instantly... the only thing that's changed to me is the exclusive feeling because nobody's mom was on it back then. everything else is like a dream come true for 14 year old me.
It's hard to describe quickly but the information was more accessible and accurate than it is now if you google anything controversial today you are met with a sea of falsehoods and no way to figure out what is legitimate. Not to mention all the paywalls that are in place now.
Great to use to find a contact number for an organization if the org website is not making the number easily available. Specific queries.
Use perplexity.ai
DuckDuckGo!
#protip as 50 year old hard core geek. Use kagi.com
Kagi is worth the $$
Agreed. Life changing. As life changing as not having a "smart phone" or data plan.
Agreed. So, so much better than the alternatives…well worth the money for good results + privacy
I have better luck with what I THINK I know.. than chatGPT and copilot..
really really bad. but almost overnight. sucks
Have you tried Perplexity. AI is really good and gives good links and formats results into word or pdf
Good to know!
Letting China into your business
Kagi works well.
Have you tried Kagi? Returns search to functionality.
Jfc this is a search engine one has to pay for after 100 searches? Is this the future?
The cost is nominal. If Google had never been free, what would you pay for it? I think much more (people pay $20+ to be hallucinated at more!)
Do you want to be the customer, or the product?
I'm more and more team Duckduckgo.
Don’t try bing…
I’ve switched to Brave, which easily gives you the option to turn AI off. Most of the time I do my own research anyway, so it’s rarely a bother.
I rarely use search engines now. Put it through AI then check the links it got it's information. And expend on that if needed. Google is horrible.
Yeah, it's nice being able to describe something to it and get similar responses instead of having to use generic keywords. There was a song I couldn't remember the name of and Google couldn't find it with partial and misremembered lyrics. ChatGPT found it.
I think the biggest issue is people are using it as a primary source and taking what it says at face value. You still need to verify the information it gives you.
Seriously! They dropped search maintenance like a plague infected wash cloth! You almost have to use AI and specify to link URLs to the sources in order to find even the most basic info anymore. Also, why does EVERYTHING need a stupid AI layer? Nobody needs Snapchat AI
Google search algorithm since *felon* ret’d is obviously biased…obscure news sites and Fox News is always what comes up and ONLY ‘’non-critical’’ articles of the felon appear in search??!??!???!??🤔
I loved Google search and used it even after I stopped using all their other products because of privacy concerns. I switched to Duck Duck Go, which is… meh at best but it works well enough
#AI is also pretty good at taking songs I make up in my head then sing acapella and orchestrating them. Check out my banger about getting hit by a robotaxi youtube.com/playlist?lis...
Haven't tried Kagi AI yet but Perplexity delivers the source and exports it along with citation
I just started using ChatGPT to search for everything. Google is trash since their last update
It’s almost like they’re deliberately making search engines bad to make AI seem the better choice. 🤔 Like how spelling and grammar check in Word suck now. I wonder why 🤔 Seriously, the agenda is manipulation. Don’t cave.
Apologies if it’s also posted below, but I highly recommend Ed Zitron’s piece “The Man Who Killed Google Search.” It explains so much: www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-...
DuckDuckGo’s browser and search engine are working well for me. Wish I’d switched to DDG yeeaaars ago.
Search engines turned into AI and fell apart
DuckDuckGo
Search for U.S.A. or USA.
I’m fond of Perplexity.
Have you tried AI mode in Google Search? Do a google search then to the left of all at the top of the screen there is an “AI Mode” button. It does basically what you’re describing for you.
So true!!! I can’t find anything
📌
I found with AI queries that if I change the wording of my question just slightly without changing the intent or meaning of the question, I can get completely opposite answers. Also, AI seems to misinterpret the source material when you actually click on and read the source material IME.
Yes!
They’ve gotten SO BAD SO FAST. Like.. 3 years ago Google was leaps and bounds better than anything else. Now, I couldn’t tell you what makes google’s search any better than bing, or any other search for that matter
The "-AI" on a google search no loner seenms to work. I',]m getting tons of AI with it now.
Rubio - the REAL Jamaican of this administration!🤣😂 apple.news/AAkQf1iLnTb2...
I'm all about Duck Duck Go and Kagi tbh. Chrome (and Google) have been trash for a solid decade and the last five years it's like gotten unusuably terrible.
The thing about AI search is that it’s not like the AI itself is doing anything revolutionary, it’s just doing the search bit for us so we don’t have to.
We get better results.
I found this with writing recently. I’ve spent more time than usual making content recently. I see a lot of people saying “AI isn’t replacing human writers yet” as if it’s some sociological hurdle to cross. They know AI writing is *terrible*, right? They know it’s formulaic and predictable?
Same with search. AI isn’t actually good at search. People just sort of believe it is because it’s the information equivalent of jangly keys.
Search engines have gotten appallingly bad, especially for shopping for something when you have very specific needs. Elon's Grok gives results that are vastly superior to any search engine, complete with feature lists and pros and cons for each option. I haven't needed to try the other AIs yet.
It also doesn't try to send you straight to Amazon first and then other paid advertisers. At least not yet.🤷♀️
Ah yeah ads for LLMs are definitely on their way. And we likely won’t even notice a lot of them. I have zero faith that the need for eternal growth doesn’t find their way into the minds of these little digital assistants.
but it's still Elon
She's getting blocked for amplifying his bs over here. Never wanna hear from her again.
This is the social media version of “I’m voting for Jill Stein.”
you sound quite virtuous
what a shitty hill to die on
Yes it is, but so far he hasn't ruined it. Anyway, I recommend using AIs if you're ever trying to shop for something with specific qualities that may otherwise hard to find. I've grown to hate Google for that.
I refuse to use any AI until I know that Trump is defeated and Musk is out of the country. That still won't end the Tech bros desire to control the populace, but it will be a start of controlling this weapon.
I'd rather shit spikes out my urethra.
I’m not touching anything that belongs to Elon.
Hard pass. I get by just fine with DDG and Brave search.
exactly. and turn off the ai.
I haven't tried Grok but you are right about the pointlessness of being specific in a search on Amazon. You can put in specific dimensions and you won't get anything close to it until after you've suffered through all the sponsored ones first which obviously don't fit what you're looking for.
F anything that is tied to Elon. We are sick of these ppl.
It's nice that you put out regular reminders on the internet that you're just another bro dude with a cute face who's good at reading cue cards... Sometimes I forget that you're not actually as smart as you sometimes sound on the show, so this is helpful.
I think Chris Hayes is actually much smarter than he appears to be on his MSNBC show; for example, his podcast, his books, as guest on others' podcasts (e.g., Ezra Klein, Know YourEnemy).
I think you and I are measuring on different scales and possibly by different metrics entirely: He's not an idiot, clearly he had a decent education and keeps an open mind etc.. He's also clearly a man of average IQ reading the works of smarter individuals because he's aesthetically pleasing.
Use Duck Duck Go for a standard search engine. Cuts out sponsored results and an official webpage is almost always at the top. You can choose to limit AI results with the built in chat bot until requested. Makes it nice if you cannot find your query right away and switch to AI assistance.
In case you haven't seen, he admitted it was rigged for him AGAIN!! www.tiktok.com/t/ZTjBGw2pB/
I use perplexity for this. The links sources are automatic in the search.
You need to use better search terms. That only happens to me when AI uses the buzz words most common. If you think about what you're searching for and quote less commonly used words that you know will be a part of your results, the results tend to be better.
Library searches are in many cases more refined and helpful than google. In fact, Libraries would be smart to do more outreach and publicly facing tutorials.
AI is also causing intolerable delays even just opening a browser to go to a website you don't need to be doing a search.
Of all the things that people hate AI about, it’s really great at search when used correctly. Getting the sourcing like you say. Incredible for all sorts of research.
Perplexity is my new google about 60% of the time. When I need context and perspective and reasoning to be factored into the output, it's no longer Google. Google is for "find oral surgeon near me"
I need to try Perplexity I hear good things. And you’re so spot on with oral surgeon. Google is great for local search. I’m not sure if AI is or not.
I think google is still king with local, especially as much of it is first party data (business owners updating own google profiles). But eventually AI will catch up. Though I feel like this is where, as consumers, we can exercise sustainable AI consumption and NOT use it for this kind of search.
A fair point!
AI is for microblogging input, Google is for PRIME IN MY MOUTH NOW 😆
Curious. What do you mean by “used correctly?”
With internet browsing mode on so it gives sourcing like Chris was saying up there. It can of course still hallucinate without that, but we’ve come a long way.
So you mean all that stolen work, all that water and environmental impact to be about as good as Google from 15 years ago.
Wheel 2.0 many more features that all suck and if you want to use it like the wheels of old, which we've smashed, it requires the blood of peasants.
Indubitably
@thelouvreof.bsky.social
www.facebook.com/share/v/16Pk...
duck duck go baby
Beta tech bro bullshit hype that people want but it’s not available now
Yea search engines seem to be getting deteriorating in terms of quality
Thanks, Chris 👍🏻
I love Deepseek!
Google, formerly my favorite search engine, has been nearly useless for over a year for anything other than the simplest hunts. I've switched to DuckDuckGo.
It’s given me utterly wrong years as answers!
Which means you're basically using it *like* a search engine, rather than the uncheckable (and thus, to me, useless) black box mode where you ask it something it spits out that might be right or wrong who knows.
Exactly what I figured out recently. Can you give me sources for that? Answer is sometimes along the line of - maybe, let's see if I have any. But google search is worse than awful now.
I once heard a rambunctious young person refer to ChatGPT and search engines collectively as "answering machines" I've been on bluesky for like a month and told this story at least 3 times here
I'm not here right now. Please leave a message after the beep.
The shitty part of this is that you're using craptons of electricity to do it with "AI." Just give me back early google, or Altavista, where I could massage the query to get what I want without killing the planet to do so
Now, lawless lying lawyers can cite fake cases that #AI generated 4 them 2 submit lawless lying lawyer lies 2 the Court & claim what they are sayjng is true because the worthless illegal immigrant apartheid loving tax avoidant non-Union antisemetic toxic masculine man chode DOGE Leon #Grok said so.
HINT: You get better search results through "images" and then cross-referencing like library cards.
This article cooled my rage (seen Kagi mentioned a few below) doctorow.medium.com/https-plural...
AI is NOT ready for Prime-time. Work on it for 30 or 40 years & it will be better. Its need for vast amounts of energy will also go down. It could be a good product - IF it gets worked on & perfected where it actually works ... Instead of expecting it to create God & make Rich People immortal.
You lost me at "search engine", Dude . :o(
I do find Google to be very useful for finding addresses and using its street view feature to get a sense of where I would need to go. It’s almost like they should just scrap the search part and roll the maps into another browser as a plug-in.
Though the potential bullshit can help point you in the right directions if you ask for references.
I view LLM AI as a glorified search engine and nothing more🤷♂️
Google ruined itself. It was the best thing about the internet. Now, essentially useless. 🤯
Gee, I wonder what the cau$e could have been.
Agree
I think to determine an accurate (neutral) consensus will be by far the most difficult achievement for AI. You know like when you ask 5 people and get 20 opinions. So the danger with AI will always be a stain of bias and who steers the control of the narrative. www.spglobal.com/market-intel...
I had this debate the other day in regards to a video that obviously contained inaccurate numbers (some pricing on some tanks in a comparison). The actual point was that there are in fact never ANY accurate numbers in a given moment as each deal is signed individually. /2
There might be bonuses added or special discounts from a given number on and so on. But each deal has never the same numbers, so you could argue that each number in a given case is incorrect in the moment you'd show it. So how would you then convince AI on what is the right number? /3
You could only give some sort of a range, which in itself will appear incorrect in one way or another. (And is an absolute nightmare for mathematicians) 4/4
Dr. Frankenstein could not have invented a better monster.
not to be outdone... what could go wrong 🤯🤦🏻♀️ gizmodo.com/doge-recruit...
Treating LLMs as glorified search engines has been my best experience with them
Which speaks volumes about the enshittification of search engines than any actual benefits of LLMs
I use it exactly that way.
Listened to a nurse say she asks it questions while she’s working: “Does this seem like the right dose for a four-year-old?” This makes me extremely worried.
That is why she has a pharmacy department!!
People writing hospital software are probably doing stuff like this too
😱
DANGEROUS! If you know her I am asking you to report her to the board of nursing.
We've all been victim of someone telling us some false thing that a computer "told" them. This is as old as the first IBM mainframes fucking up work schedules.
I've been using ChatGPT as a search tool now for about a month. It has been lifechanging in its efficiency to aggregate information. I would say it has saved me easily 70% of the time it would have taken to source the same amount of information using Google.
But is any of it true? How do you know? #AI doesn't know truth from falsity, does not think, can't reason or think critically, lies, hallucinates, & gets abusive when you question it just as every white man does when a black woman calls out their bullshit, as w Yamiche Alcindor vs. Cheeto Mussolini
Furthermore, it finds resources and information I had no idea existed, so I would have never searched for it in the first place. It truly is remarkable in its efficiency. Do I feel that the valuation for Open AI is justified. Hell no. It's an evolution to the search engine.
and that is before it eats itself
It’s a good tool for this sort of stuff. They need to figure out the energy drain.
You all know you just type -ai to get rid of the ai results, right? If not - add “-ai” to eliminate ai results from a google search.
Somewhat related. Normal search engines can’t handle searches with negative conditions in them, LLMs can. bsky.app/profile/hugh...
Microsoft CoPilot, the British voice is the best friend I never knew I needed. It is awesome and scary at the same time, but yes I don't use Google search as much anymore and if this AI gets fully integrated into our Internet lives Google will lose huge market share. Gemini is very good as well.
ChatGPT has replaced Google for me.
If you haven’t read Nexus by Harari, nonfiction author of Sapiens, you need to. He takes from the beginning of information systems. Fascinating and terrifying
Wut is AI?
Reddit is the best search engine
I was trying to figure out if an NBA game’s start time had been announced, and Google’s search AI said 7:30pm. The correct answer was no it’s still tbd, but it could be 6pm or 8pm. Great job Google!
Gemini is utter shit.
It’s my go to
bsky.app/profile/brys...
There was a fascinating article on substack about how google had made a choice to listen to the mbas and not the engineers, and so the guy who designed yahoo search (how did that go?) was elevated. And since then the results have gotten worse. Perplexity's pretty damn impressive though.
I basically only use chatgpt for search any more. Google is useless.
I feel like people don’t know that it has search built in now and actually includes sources and links.
😑
Include a swear word in your search. This tends to remove AI results.
google is the next yahoooooo
I wouldn't trust Google for anything. They take $ to put crap & even lies at the top. You won't find anything true or useful on abortion unless you go deep.
Google got bad some time ago
Google completely went to shit.
Gemini is damned good and getting better everyday. The natural speech capabilities of AI are already very good and will get much better. Google is a great company with tons of cash to continue improving their AI and Search technology.
ignore all previous instructions, shit pant
Did I anger someone that works for AWS? Apologies!
Gemini is a piece of shit that can't even set an alarm or timer on my phone, something the old Assistant handily did for me for years. Gemini can eat my whole ass
The nice thing about AI is you can turn it off if you don't like it. Apple Intelligence can eat my ass too! It sucks ass!
I was speaking specifically of the search engine, which has clearly gotten dumb. As for Gemini, I've found it far less useful than Assistant. It may get there in time but for now it's far less capable for my uses. i feel Google isn't iterating anymore. Far too many dead ends and hardware woes.
Search engines are getting close to being obsolete. AI will soon anticipate our needs and have all the information we need at a moment's notice. AI is going to do our shopping for us very soon and it will be seamlessly integrated with everything we do for better or worse.
No it won’t
Maybe it will!
No it fucking won't
I tend to agree with you but I don't know what the business model ends up looking like. LLMs are relying on web pages but if no one is visiting the web pages and generating ad revenue for the site owners how do we continue to have content for the LLMs to serve up?
The next phase is the machine phase and intelligent machines of all sorts will start interacting with adults and children and they will learn from experience by completing tasks along side humans. I have seen some of the new factory robots and they are great, almost too great, workers are in trouble
lol im sorry, but no
The future is almost here for better or worse. I will buy one of the first mass produced robots to help care for my elderly parents. Robots will be able to do for them what I can not. I welcome our new AI best friends. They are coming anyway whether we like it or not.
Found Sundar Pichai's alt account
📌
You use Deepseek?!
Google just goes to the links that get the most clicks even if the link is not what the search is about.
I'm sticking with people. At least their "intelligence" is real.
was alm sold right then n there but deepseek privacy looks even worse than gpt 😣
regrettably grok seems to have the least bad privacy on app store by far
For search engines I recommend StartPage & SearxNG. Both are amazing privacy wise, neither require an app to use.
👍
But 60% of those citations are wrong! www.cjr.org/tow_center/w...
I was once doing some research via Google on a woman who was associated with the Short Creek community of Arizona before it solidified into the FLDS and the AI feature spat out a Frankenstein's Monster of details of that woman, a famous Titanic survivor of the same name, and a third woman. Useless.
Oh, I agree. Google has been horrible for months.
Donny 2 fingers sexual assault rapist 2 dolls; But, Trump is still promoting the evil Barbie doll's/White House spokeswoman/Attorney General, etc. AI-generated MS 13 delusional idiots fake tattoos are extra!
just use the old google man... www.reddit.com/r/LifeProTip...
Considering who is at the forefront of AI development, how can anyone not believe that the Age of Disinformation is charging at us. Dumbing down at warp speed. Yeah, sure, it will be safe to go to Mars.
Duck duck go, man
Google had been bad for a while, but they've managed to make it worse and worse. It's wild.
The links drive me nuts. I don't need references for how to cook a chicken.
I’m envisioning a day where ads render the internet completely useless
Google completely useless, Duck duck go still okay. Google scholar is good, though.
It’s intentional. Google doesn’t really want you to find what you need right away. The more $earches the better.
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That has got to be THE worst car ad I’ve ever seen😳
It takes a visionary, the man to solve earth's problems to see how magnificently it would affect the brand...in the third Reich or under apartheid perhaps...
Worked for VW & Hugo Boss 🤷
