Posted by sancho-panza 2 hours ago
This is my default search engine now. I can't stand those AI summaries. My searches are often depleted of context, specially when I'm looking for some exact phrase, that any AI summary is going to miss badly.
I’m not sure SV is prepared for what happens when you go down that road.
I searched, but couldn't find this. Do you have a link? Sounds like a totally unhinged response from totally unhinged people. There's nothing "woke" about wanting my word calculator to avoid pretending it's a person.
When I integrate LLMs into my apps that respond to user queries, I deliberately have my system instructions prohibit all self-referential usage of first-person pronouns. The system can only refer to itself as "this system", never "I" or "me".
Any chat bot that pretends to be a person just grosses me out, especially in a customer experience context. Gives off very manipulative and patronizing vibes.
What would you rather it said?
I know many people want to ask questions to google directly and just read the AI result and very rarely check the links, and I know google wants to convert more people doing this before people switch to chatgpt etc.
But google search does not (yet?) appear to me to be designed as a chatbot you are expected to converse with where it would be normal to just open asking about some guy named Dario in your personal life who isn't globally notable. There's a difference between pushing for a conversational query and a conversational personal assistant. Heck this is a few jumps past that even.
I wouldn't really ask when google got so weird, I'd ask when google's AI overview got so shitty, and the answer is ever since they introduced it.
If you just want to play with cool tech and make money, but for marketing reasons, you need to show some ostensible real-world reason why this tech should be developed, then "well, our chatbot could help lonely people with their relationship issues or give people in an abusive relationship a covert channel for help" is probably what comes to mind...
Runners up: Our AI startup will help the poor children in Africa and/or combat climate change (ignore the gas turbines, please).
In one that changes.