Sabrinamycarpet comments on Landmark German ruling declares Google's AI Overviews are Google's own words and makes it liable for false answers

[–] Sabrinamycarpet@sh.itjust.works -2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

Not everyone enjoys reading documentation. We don't need to be defensive about this. We already have search that can trawl through a well maintained site.

AI can not only go through the documentation but also translate it to layman and point to the sources.

If it gives the wrong answer 1 in every thousand results, it is still undeniably useful. You shouldn't blindly trust AI is common place knowledge. And it's no different than doing a Google search for something and some times clicking into a result that is bad. The fact that that possibility exists doesn't change the fact google is "undeniably " useful.

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[–] mabeledo@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago (1 child)

I’m going to be straightforward with you and say that if someone doesn’t want to read documentation, they shouldn’t be doing the job the documentation is for.

I’ve been bitten by AI summarizing documentation so many times, these days I refuse to use it for that purpose anymore. It’s just not worth it. It creates a loop where it wants to try things that don’t work, walk back, try something else, repeat, and spend $10 worth of tokens in the process.

You say that I shouldn’t blindly trust AI like I shouldn’t blindly trust Google results. The difference is that AI is presented as an authoritative source in itself. Hell, most of the time LLMs don’t link sources unless explicitly asked for. And here’s the thing, if I have to go and read the actual sources, it isn’t doing anything significantly more time efficient than just text search, but it is doing it at ten times the cost.

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[–] Sabrinamycarpet@sh.itjust.works -1 points 1 month ago (1 child)

I’m going to be straightforward with you and say that if someone doesn’t want to read documentation, they shouldn’t be doing the job the documentation is for.

That's way too black and white. It's a time and convenience thing. Let's say i want to troubleshoot something on my motherboard that caused my pc to stop working. I really do not want to be reading through a 300 page manual from my phone (because my pc is not working). Search may turn up 10-20 relevant results that id have to scroll through.

And AI could take my query and do the work for me. Give me the link to the result they think is most relevant as well as explain it in more layman way than the manual.

I'm technical so I could do this without AI. But let's take a less technical person. Now they can follow along and try as well.

The function is good. Its arguably the best path forward. The issue is accuracy and cost.

But something does not need to be accurate 100% of the time if we are all aware of it. If we wait for something to be 100% perfect nothing would ever progress.

And cost should only concern us on the environmental side. We should absolutely force them to fix that side of it. But price wise? Im really confused why the internet continues to bring up cost. I honestly dont care how much it costs a trillion dollar company to provide a service to us if I dont have to pay. Google, Youtube, Amazon, Netflix, all operated in the red for years and years. I don't remember public discourse being omg how is Google going to afford to keep giving us nonshitty search.

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[–] mabeledo@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

I really do not want to be reading through a 300 page manual from my phone

The solution is text search. Has been for decades now. Search is good enough for these use cases, and proof of it is that nobody ever had to read a 300 page manual to fix such an issue.

Also, you know indexes exist, right?

The function is good. It’s arguably the best path forward. The issue is accuracy and cost.

If the issues are accuracy and cost, it means that it is a worse and less cost effective solution than just search. Unless you believe that LLMs can tell what’s true from what isn’t.

I honestly dont care how much it costs a trillion dollar company to provide a service to us if I dont have to pay. Google, Youtube, Amazon, Netflix, all operated in the red for years and years. I don't remember public discourse being omg how is Google going to afford to keep giving us nonshitty search.

You really believe that these multi trillion companies don’t make a profit? That they offer their products for free? Such a naive take.

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[–] Sabrinamycarpet@sh.itjust.works 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

Text search is fine but not better than something that can both find you the most likely result you are looking for AND explain it to you if its too technical.

Text search is what Yahoo and Ask Jeeves did. Then Google improved on it by adding algorithmic search.

I bring up accuracy because its not 100% accurate. But if it works 85- 90 percent of the time, which it currently does according to benchmarks, that's more efficient than Text search even accounting for times you need to adjust.

And no its not as cost efficient, but again I dont care as the end user because its not my cost.

You really believe that these multi trillion companies don’t make a profit? That they offer their products for free? Such a naive take.

Are you like, being purposefully ignorant here? I'm pointing out the fact that these trillion dollar companies weren't profitable for years on end before they became so. And in the end their profitability is irrelevant to me. I don't care how much AI costs them if they arent charging me for it.

And stop with your pedantic "you think free is free omg" argument. Go pay with actual money for your subpar searches then while your data is still being collected everywhere

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[–] mabeledo@lemmy.world 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

Text search is what Yahoo and Ask Jeeves did. Then Google improved on it by adding algorithmic search.

There’s no such thing as “algorithmic search”. I don’t know where you got that term from, but again, not a thing. What Larry Page came up with was Pagerank, which is a ranking algorithm.

I bring up accuracy because its not 100% accurate. But if it works 85- 90 percent of the time, which it currently does according to benchmarks, that's more efficient than Text search even accounting for times you need to adjust

Citation needed. Where have you seen those numbers? Because there isn’t a single LLM out there that scores above 75% in publicly available benchmarks, for any given task. Meaning that there isn’t a LLM that does any benchmarked task with an accuracy above 75%, see https://llm-stats.com/

And no its not as cost efficient, but again I dont care as the end user because its not mycost.

Right. What do you think it’s going to happen here in the near future? That companies like Google are going to absorb the costs without passing them to customers at all, ever? Let’s say that they don’t, because they are for profit companies after all, what’s your plan? Signing up for a couple dozen free accounts to keep using them and become sort of a “LLM vagrant”?

But let’s say they don’t charge you ever. How do you think they are going to profit from you? Currently we know, they track your every move, you essentially pay with your privacy. Or you think they won’t? That they will forever lose money?

I guess the part I don’t understand here is that you must know that all these companies make money from their users, one way or another, and still you believe you aren’t paying for any of it. Are you ok with how they make that money, then?

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[–] Sabrinamycarpet@sh.itjust.works 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

There’s no such thing as “algorithmic search”

What Larry Page came up with was Pagerank, which is a ranking algorithm.

Bro...

Meaning that there isn’t a LLM that does any benchmarked task with an accuracy above 75%, see https://llm-stats.com/

Tell me what you are seeing. This page you linked shows all top models for AI research at above 80% and the top ones at 90%.

Here is an April article stating Gemini AI summary at 90%. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/technology/google-ai-overviews-accuracy.html

And keep on mind these benchmarks will use more complex searches than what people use normally.

75% sounds like 2025, but let's say that is the the number we both agree to. That's still useful enough most of the time that you wouldn't scroll or search further. AND it requires you to take the stance that technology remains at a standstill and never improves over time. Let me ask you this. 1 year ago reddit and lemmy had plenty of posts showing awful and memey AI summary and search results. Where are those posts now?

Finally the money part. I point you to Youtube. A company that was never , got bought out and still remains free* to this day. Is it enshittified from before? Yes. But its still not withdrawing a dime from my bank account.

I guess the part I don’t understand here is that you must know that all these companies make money from their users, one way or another, and still you believe you aren’t paying for any of it. Are you ok with how they make that money, then?

I am perfectly aware of the situation. But i don't have a doomerism view on it that a lot of you share. If we never shared our any of our data,

We would not have these services most likely. Where do you think traffic and routing data comes from when you use Google Maps? Do you think the average person would prefer paying some company for GPS, and worse everything experience? Would the average person pay monthly for something like a 100 MB email mailbox?
For that reason I'm more ok trading data for service. Most of the time that data use is for monetary purposes which motivates the company to also improve said service (to a point).

That said I fully support more regulation to the industry on how data is handled in general.

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[–] mabeledo@lemmy.world 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

I see that you don’t know what an algorithm is. Because every search engine before Google used algorithms, just not Pagerank.

Tell me what you are seeing. This page you linked shows all top models for AI research at above 80% and the top ones at 90%.

On a single benchmark, GPQA, that was first released in 2022 and is now widely considered to be on its way out. This is extremely common in LLM benchmarking: every couple years, old methodologies are weeded out because most recent LLMs score 90% or higher. This could be for many reasons, but more than likely LLMs are trained on the specific corpus these benchmarks test against, which is akin to taking an exam knowing the answers beforehand.

The aggregates tell a very different story.

On the NYT article, you missed where it says that on the latest Gemini version, more than half of the summaries are ungrounded, meaning that users couldn’t possibly verify the accuracy of the response given the linked site. They also often provide additional information that’s not true.

I’m not even going to bother with the “I’m fine paying with my data” bit, because think that’s just a morally broken take.

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[–] Sabrinamycarpet@sh.itjust.works 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

I guess you just like being super pedantic because apparently you do know the difference between directory based searches and what came after it. Feel free to argue how yahoo and altavista was fine and the world really didn't need Google search though.

The aggregates tell a very different story.

Tell me what aggregates you are seeing. I have no idea what you are looking at on this page that is suppose to prove your point on accuracy.

Because right now you brought up a benchmark site and then just saying how all benchmarks are skewed. That's fine and all but can you tell me what you are actually looking at so we can be on the same page??

And again, at 75% or 70%, or whatever you imagine current accuracy is, what happened to all the memes about Gemini telling you to add bleach to pancakes or something? Low hanging karma posts just literally disappeared. Why do you think that is? A google search for "funny gpt answers" brings up results from 2024. Let that sink in.

I’m not even going to bother with the “I’m fine paying with my data” bit, because think that’s just a morally broken take.

I imagine it's quite the burden being so morally superior to the vast majority of humanity.

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[–] mabeledo@lemmy.world 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

JFC this is so tiring. I’m trying to explain the issues from a technical point of view and you dismiss all I’m saying like I’m crazy or I don’t know anything about the topic.

I get that you like these summaries because you believe that they make your life easier, but the least you could do is educate yourself, read some books, anything.

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[–] Sabrinamycarpet@sh.itjust.works 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

You're trying to explain by ignoring my question regarding your source not once but twice.

And also conveniently ignoring the actual point being made and instead focusing on whether or not its 75% or 85% or what is an algorithm

And also dismissing arguments because its morally beneath you.

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[–] mabeledo@lemmy.world 1 point 1 month ago* (1 child)

I cannot make you understand something you refuse to learn anything about.

But now I get it. Your whole point is that you are so lazy, you are willing to trade accuracy of information and your own privacy, for the convenience of not having to read anything for more than ten seconds straight. I should have known from the moment you so confidently said that “AI is costing [you] nothing”. Sure mate.

Given all that, providing sources and facts from experience has been a waste of time from my part. No more.

No worries though, you won’t need to be intentionally obtuse for longer, outsourcing your thought processes to Google will do that for you, and for free.

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[–] Sabrinamycarpet@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 month ago (1 child)

You sure are doing a great job helping people understand when you, for the third time, refuse to answer the question about where your source refers to accuracy. You haven't provided jack.

You sure also sound quite prideful to the fact that this is just about me and my preferences, that you can't see this is actually how most people view the world.

Tell me, actually answer me here instead of deflecting: Do you really think the world is just stupid? They all use google or Gmail or YouTube or Facebook and dont realize their data is being collected? You think if you just help educate them they will all realize and stop using these services?

No worries though, you won’t need to be intentionally obtuse for longer, outsourcing your thought processes to Google will do that for you, and for free.

I have no worries here. I'm not the one that's going to fall behind while screaming at the clouds as tech keeps rolling along.

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[–] mabeledo@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago

I have no worries here. I'm not the one that's going to fall behind while screaming at the clouds as tech keeps rolling along.

You really believe that asking questions to a chatbot is a skill? Good luck to you then lol

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lemmy:	0.19.20
mlmym (mschae):	26.3.3