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Google AI Overviews put people at risk of harm with misleading health advice

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46471527

the real promise of large language models is that before people were looking too closely, datasets had been procured in questionable ways. so then users can have access to medical data based on doctor's emails and word documents on their pc. which would have a lot of value. no it has become a glorified search engine.

It's crazy to me that somewhere along the way we lost physical media as a reference point. Journals and YouTube can be good sources of information, but unless heavily confined to high quality information current AI is not able to judge citation quality to come up with good recommendations. The synthesis of real world medical experience is often collated in medical textbooks and yet AI doesn't cite them nearly as much as it should.

For straight up search Google is better, but for AI search I prefer Bing.

Ohhh, I would make one wild guess: in the upcoming llm world, the highest bidder will have a higher chance of appearing as a citation or suggestion! Welcome to gas town, so much productivity ahead!! For you and the high bidding players interested in taking advantage of you

What about the answers (regardless of the source)? Are they right or not?

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.

google search has been on a down slope for awhile, it's all been because they focused on maximizing profits over UX and quality.

Don't all real/respectable medical websites basically just say "Go talk to a real doctor, dummy."?

...and then there's WebMD, "oh you've had a cough since yesterday? It's probably terminal lung cancer."

Google AI overviews are often bad, yes, but why is youtube as a source necessarily a bad thing? Are these researchers doctors? A close relative is a practicing surgeon and a professor in his field. He watches youtube videos of surgeries practically every day. Doctors from every field well understand that YT is a great way to share their work and discuss w/ others.

Before we get too worked up about the results, just look at the source. It's a SERP ranking aggregator (not linking to them to give them free marketing) that's analyzing only the domains, not the credibility of the content itself.

This report is a nothingburger.