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Posted by bookofjoe 13 hours ago

Google AI Overviews cite YouTube more than any medical site for health queries(www.theguardian.com)
356 points | 195 commentspage 2
jdlyga 12 hours ago|
It's tough convincing people that Google AI overviews are often very wrong. People think that if it's displayed so prominently on Google, it must be factually accurate right?

"AI responses may include mistakes. Learn more"

It's not mistakes, half the time it's completely wrong and total bullshit information. Even comparing it to other AI, if you put the same question into GPT 5.2 or Gemini, you get much more accurate answers.

WarmWash 9 hours ago||
I have yet to see a single person in my day to day life not immediately reference AI overviews when looking something up.
alex1138 12 hours ago|||
It absolutely baffles me they didn't do more work or testing on this. Their (unofficial??) motto is literally Search. That's what they're known for. The fact it's trash is an unbelievably damning indictment of what they are
danudey 9 hours ago|||
Testing on what? It produces answers, that's all it's meant to do. Not correct answers or factual answers; just answers.

Every AI company seems to push two points:

1. (Loudly) Our AI can accelerate human learning and understanding and push humanity into a new age of enlightenment.

2. (Fine print) Our AI cannot be relied on for any learning or understanding and it's entirely up to you to figure out if what our AI has confidently told you, and is vehemently arguing is factual, is even remotely correct in any sense whatsoever.

bethekidyouwant 12 hours ago|||
Testing what every possible combination of words? Did they test their search results before AI in this way?
AlienRobot 7 hours ago|||
My favorite part of the AI overview is when it says "X is Y (20 sources)" and you click on the sources and Ctrl+F "X is Y" and none of them seem verbatim what the AI is saying they said so you're left wondering if the AI just made it up completely or it paraphrased something that is actually written in one of the sources.

If only we had the technology to display verbatim the text from a webpage in another webpage.

gowld 11 hours ago||
That's because decent (but still flawed) GenAI is expensive. The AI Overview model is even cheaper than the AI Mode model, which is cheaper than the Gemini free model, which is cheaper than the Gemini Thinking model, which is cheaer than the Gemini Pro model, which is still very misleading when working on human language source content. (It's much better at math and code).
htx80nerd 9 hours ago||
I ask Gemini health questions non stop and never see it using YouTube as a source. Quickly looking over some recent chats :

- chat 1 : 2 sources are NIH. the other isnt youtube.

- chat 2 : PNAS, PUBMED, Cochrane, Frontiers, and PUBMED again several more times.

- chat 3 : 4 random web sites ive never heard of, no youtube

- chat 4 : a few random web sites and NIH, no youtube

jesse__ 8 hours ago||
With the general lack of scientific rigour, accountability, and totally borked incentive structure in academia, I'm really not sure if I'd trust whitepapers any more than I'd trust YouTube videos at this point.
nicce 10 hours ago||
I would guess that they are doing this on purpose, because they control YouTube's servers and can cache content in that way. Less latency. And once people figure it out, it pushes more information into Google's control, as AI is preferring it, and people want their content used as reference.
not_good_coder 12 hours ago||
The authoritative sources of medical information is debatable in general. Chatting with initial results to ask for a breakdown of sources with classified recommendations is a logical 2nd step for context.
ggnore7452 7 hours ago||
imo, for health related stuff. or most of the general knowledge doesn't require latest info after 2023. the internal knowledge of LLM is so much better than the web search augmented one.
dbacar 9 hours ago||
What about the answers (regardless of the source)? Are they right or not?
winddude 8 hours ago||
google search has been on a down slope for awhile, it's all been because they focused on maximizing profits over UX and quality.
citizenpaul 4 hours ago||
Unrelated to this but I was able to get some very accurate health predictions for a cancer victim in my family using gemini and lab test results. I would actually say that other than one Doctor Gemini was more straightforward and honest about how and more importantly WHEN things would progress. Nearly to the day on every point over 6 months.

Pretty much every doctor would only say vague things like everyone is different all cases are different.

I did find this surprising considering I am critical of AI in general. However I think less the AI is good than the doctors simply don't like giving hopeless information. An entirely different problem. Either way the AI was incredibly useful to me for a literal life/death subject I have almost no knowledge about.

ajross 8 hours ago|
Just to point out, because the article skips the step: YouTube is a hosting site, not a source. Saying that something "cites YouTube" sounds bad, but it depends on what the link is. To be blunt: if Gemini is answering a question about Cancer with a link to a Mayo Clinic video, that's a good thing, a good cite, and what we want it to do.
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