[HN Gopher] Learn as you search (and browse) using generative AI
___________________________________________________________________
Learn as you search (and browse) using generative AI
Author : jonifico
Score : 148 points
Date : 2023-08-17 13:17 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.google)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.google)
| kubb wrote:
| They already have your browsing data, folks. This is just caused
| by the LLM push at Google. They got a top-down mandate to
| sprinkle LLMs on everything and this is the result.
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| This sort of thing is why Canadian media wanted a cut of big tech
| profits. Imagine how harmful this is to websites that need to
| grow audiences, particularly news websites
| andsoitis wrote:
| What is a good example of a Canadian news organization website
| that is not overwhelmingly populated by headlines and stories
| that are:
|
| - clickbait
|
| - hyperbolic
|
| - gossip
|
| - propaganda
|
| - unoriginal
|
| - unimportant
| bostonwalker wrote:
| Great question. Going to assume you mean English language and
| share my own findings:
|
| - CBC: Propagandic, unoriginal, unimportant
|
| - Global News: Clickbait, gossip, unoriginal, unimportant
|
| - Toronto Star: Hyperbolic, propagandic
|
| - The Globe and Mail: Unoriginal, unimportant
|
| - The National Post / Postmedia network: Hyperbolic,
| propagandic
|
| - CTV News: Clickbait, gossip, unoriginal, unimportant
|
| Anything I missed?
|
| I have found the best strategy is to take the sum of multiple
| sources to get a slightly less awful whole.
| gsatic wrote:
| Most news websites have a ton of duplicated content. That info
| overload is dying to be minimized.
|
| And news orgs are going to keep coming under assault cause they
| perform a similar function to search engine robots by surfacing
| new info. As soon as some one copies that info, the value of
| the info is 0.
|
| There is already data saying most content created is never
| consumed by anyone just cause of how much copying and
| duplication happens.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| Interestingly, OSX has had a Summary Service for as long as I can
| remember: Simply select text > App (Menu bar) > Services >
| Summarize[1]. I still use it from time to time, and it's pretty
| good, and completely offline!
|
| [1] It's off by default these days, you'll have to turn on the
| Summary service under service settings.
| jraph wrote:
| Privacy aside if it's done server side, I think this crosses
| another dangerous line.
|
| With this, Google controls how content you read is summarized,
| they could introduce biases, intentionally or not, and I'm not
| sure we should trust such an actor for this.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| On the bright side, if it's fine serverside I wonder if it'll
| bypass paywalls?
| px43 wrote:
| I currently use the "summarize everything" extension for this.
| It lets you tweak your system prompt if you want to, but the
| defaults are pretty good. It's just another tool. Use it or
| don't, but it's saved me countless amounts of time digging
| through overly verbose prose looking for the interesting bits
| of information.
| andrewfurey2003 wrote:
| Solution: dont use google.
| jraph wrote:
| Of course I can, and do, avoid Google.
|
| That's an individual solution. I'm interested in a world
| that's as good as possible not only for me, but for the other
| people too. Most people around still use Google. They might
| find this new feature useful and start using it, and possibly
| suffer this bias. Not only they may get manipulated
| individually, but it can have broader consequences, even to
| those avoiding the feature. If Facebook can influence which
| president get elected in a country, it will also affect
| people avoiding facebook (sometime for this very reason).
|
| Avoiding stuff for oneself is a first step but it's hardly a
| solution, these big corporations have a non negligible effect
| on the world, still with you as a member.
|
| We'll have to start to raise awareness around these things,
| in addition to all the subjects on which we already need
| awareness.
|
| But same old same old I guess, Google already puts you in a
| bubble, just even more concerning I guess. It was
| manipulating us, now it's another, new, potential
| manipulation angle.
| imiric wrote:
| I share your frustration, but it's hard not to be
| pessimistic about this. Regular internet users will flock
| to these tools, just like they flock to social media, even
| though it's a clear detriment to our personal and
| collective well being.
|
| If the Snowden revelations did anything is to show that
| people ultimately don't care about being exploited, as long
| as they can continue to enjoy technology. Trading
| convenience for privacy is not something most people would
| even consider.
|
| Things will quickly spiral out of control once everyone has
| their personal AI assistant, that is controlled by a major
| corporation with government ties. It's the wet dream of any
| aspiring autocrat, and we're building that future.
|
| Here we are, on a tech forum among people who work at these
| companies, and all we can do is type at the void. These
| companies continue to build products that on the surface
| seem enticing and useful, which is surely how they also
| pitch it internally so engineers that build it have a clear
| conscience, yet lead us to a further breakdown of society
| in ways we haven't imagined yet.
|
| I'm not sure if all this is over the top, doom and gloom
| thinking on my part, but it feels frustrating to be part of
| this industry, seeing how it's tearing apart society, and
| having the concerns ignored and dismissed by both users and
| companies alike.
| jraph wrote:
| > but it feels frustrating to be part of this industry
|
| There are places in this industry that are not so bad. Of
| course it has drawbacks and require effort, but you can
| get paid for doing things that align (as best as
| possible) with your values.
| gumballindie wrote:
| Seems like that's the direction things are moving. Google's
| becoming heavily enshitified.
| mrd3v0 wrote:
| Becoming? I beg your pardon?
|
| Their entire business was built on this. https://en.m.wikip
| edia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisit...
|
| I know this is HN and all, but to wait all of these years
| of acquisitions, poaching, project terminations, Chrome
| shenanigans to destroy the internet, main product "SEO"
| degradation and literally every single sign of
| enshittification...Google has always been one of the prime
| examples of enshittification. That's why they are _very_
| successful at making money.
| izacus wrote:
| Google has always introduced biases by virtue of ranking your
| results and deciding which content to surface.
|
| This was always the case.
| elliotec wrote:
| And this is worse.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| It's hard to make a search engine. Any decision they make
| will create bias and shape the entire web.
| GhostWhisperer wrote:
| it's ok, they already read your email
| eastbound wrote:
| They already show heavily curated content, with a conscious and
| intentional bias into presenting, for example, groups in a
| light that doesn't match reality.
|
| You won't find info about any merely "controversial" idea on
| Google, it's all censored, it's all disinformation already. Try
| even finding memes, you generally won't find them. Try finding
| info that doesn't paint some politicians in a good light, you
| won't find it, even though it exists with the exact keywords
| you type in and the crawler returns a success for that page.
|
| So what do you mean, while you already trust Google to give its
| bias to the current world?
| andsoitis wrote:
| What's a good example that I can Google for but won't find
| results (censored) or where only one side is presented?
|
| I will Google it and report back...
| wredue wrote:
| Yeah. You gotta be searching for some real bonkers shit to
| have google not show it up.
|
| The most completely batshit insane groups I'm willing to
| google anymore are flat earthers, young earth creationists,
| and Facebook mom groups, and google happily indexes and
| returns favourable results for all of these.
|
| Even looking at off the deep end alt-right content like
| men's rights, red pilled, trucker convoy, anti-masker,
| Tate, etc, google has zero issues return favourable results
| for all of them in a private window.
|
| Really begs the question of just what level of illegal shit
| this dude is trying to get google to return.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Classic hacker discourse...
|
| 1. Bunch all people who disagree with you into one and
| claim they are some kind of group. Bonus for listing 12
| or more "groups".
|
| 2. Raise suspicion about the user you're replying to.
| Maybe they belong to one of those people you just listed?
| Maybe they are a terrorist? Maybe they voted for the
| wrong guy? Should we call the police? Of course we
| should! He's even trying to make Google show "bonkers
| shit, bat shit and illegal shit".
|
| No matter how hard you try to follow the line, one day
| you will find yourself in one of those groups who people
| like yourself try to bunch together, and be exposed to
| the same level of suspicion and hatred that you yourself
| are unloading in your comment.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I don't think anybody is interested in giving you an
| example, because they expect that it will get them banned
| from HN, or at least have their comment flagged and removed
| by activists.
|
| Google does censor content, and they are kind enough to
| inform the owner of a website by e-mail when they have
| censored the content from their search results, so it is a
| fact that is just undeniable.
| throwaw12 wrote:
| don't worry, it gets shutdown in 2 years
| hightrix wrote:
| They will shove ads in it eventually and then it'll become
| core to search.
| hamasho wrote:
| It may be summarized to what they want, but it can be what I
| want too. All YouTube recommendations are already what I want
| to see. Videos from creators who share my world view,
| criticizing what I hate, and praising what I've already liked.
| If this Chrome's new feature is also personalized in this
| manner, I can read articles against my view and still get only
| what I want. My world view will become increasingly polarized,
| and it's already quite biased.
| Drakim wrote:
| When I try to search up a topic on YouTube, the list of
| search results eventually STOP showing videos matching my
| criteria and instead show 10 videos in a row labeled "People
| also watched" that is unrelated to my search.
|
| It's one thing to get recommendations in a place where
| recommendations are appropriate, and the dangers of the
| feedback loop you are talking about. It's another thing
| entirely to actively push it in other contexts.
|
| "I know you are searching for programming topics, but might
| you be interested in this political outrage instead?"
| andsoitis wrote:
| > results eventually STOP showing videos matching my
| criteria
|
| How long is that typical list? How often do you pick the
| things at the bottom of that list vs the results near the
| top?
| everdrive wrote:
| I pick things from the bottom of the list a lot. I really
| hate when engineers try to guess what I want. I already
| know what I want. These "automatic" products are
| terrible.
| andsoitis wrote:
| What do you think is a good list length? One can assume
| search results are practically infinite, so you have to
| make a decision of where to stop. What would your
| heuristic / algorithm be for determining the termination
| point?
| everdrive wrote:
| A list of every video where my terms show up somewhere in
| the title or description.
| andsoitis wrote:
| Do you want it sorted in some way? If so, why might you
| go to page 99999999999999 and pick the last item?
| everdrive wrote:
| I'm not searching for some huge wildcard -- I'm searching
| for some video content which must be generated by
| somebody and uploaded. There are not billions of results
| for "cool cover of a song I like" -- there are hundreds
| of results at most. I want those hundreds of results.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > One can assume search results are practically infinite
|
| I don't think that can be assumed at all, actually. At
| least, it sure doesn't look that way when I search for
| most things, on YouTube or elsewhere. Most of them run
| out of relevant results pretty quickly and then start
| including obviously irrelevant results.
| Drakim wrote:
| I did a test, searching for a pop song. I got 9 results
| for that pop song and then the "People also watched"
| section comes up. After 4 results with a +6 more button,
| it goes back to my pop song results.
| rchaud wrote:
| What you're describing is a common UX dark pattern. The
| system must never show blank space in the UI for a search
| result, lest it drive them into the arms of a competitor.
|
| We can thank Netflix for starting the trend of "we don't
| have this, but how about this other thing that we _do_
| have? "
| fooofw wrote:
| I'm not sure that fully explains it here. I see more
| relevant search results below the "People also watched"
| section (just checked now). Further down, there is also
| "For you" and "Previously watched" which have videos of
| no discernible relevance to the query and these are also
| followed by again more relevant search results.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| No, youtube will cut off your search results early to
| show you videos it think will engage you more regardless
| of how many search results there actually are.
|
| Google does not give a fuck what you think you want,
| because they know better than you
| skybrian wrote:
| The trick to get rid of that is to go to search filters and
| select "videos."
| jraph wrote:
| Well, I'm not quite at ease with trusting a third party to
| try to guess my (ever changing?) world view.
|
| How do you know it works well? How do you know it misses
| nothing? How do you know it's not subtly biased
| (intentionally or not) in a way you would not notice, or you
| would think it's good enough?
|
| > I can read articles against my view and still get only what
| I want. My world view will become increasingly polarized, and
| it's already quite biased.
|
| Yes, of course we all do, but it's another thing to involve a
| third party in this process.
| paganel wrote:
| With the new Shorts feature the YT has gotten so bad that it
| isn't even funny anymore. I wonder if anyone there is using
| their product.
| everdrive wrote:
| >All YouTube recommendations are already what I want to see
|
| I wish I had your experience. My YouTube recommendations can
| definitely be said to be "my fault" in some sense of the
| word, but wherever the blame lies they're still mostly
| terrible. YouTube will watch me skip a video for a whole
| week, but keep showing it to me "just in case." I'd rather it
| were just a dumb search at this point.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| I was ahead of my time 30 years ago when I achieved the exact
| same result by simply buying the right newspaper.
|
| And if I wanted to find more in depth material to support my
| firmly held beliefs I just had to go to the right bookstore.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > All YouTube recommendations are already what I want to see.
|
| I might feel more kindly toward YouTube recommendations if
| they did this for me.
| Dwedit wrote:
| Just another trick to spy on your internet activity.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Seems popular enough that all I am getting out of it is "Can't
| generate key points right now".
| faeriechangling wrote:
| LLM's already summarize articles for you. This approach to me
| combines the downsides of individual articles and the downsides
| of LLMs. I guess Google likes it since you presumably might be
| finding these articles through Google search.
| huac wrote:
| Net effect: fewer clicks to source websites, fewer clicks on ads
| on said websites.
| px43 wrote:
| Good. The adtech industry needs to die in a fire.
| [deleted]
| Hamcha wrote:
| Shouldn't they worry about Search being incredibly low quality
| nowadays first?
|
| They're literally featuring a wrong ChatGPT answer as an answer
| to this question:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=country+in+africa+that+start...
| hardlianotion wrote:
| No thanks.
| NewEntryHN wrote:
| The example really doesn't sell it to me. The search "what is the
| most common element on the periodic table" currently returns a
| big display with "Hydrogen" as the answer, followed by a brief
| explanation.
|
| That's all I need for such a query. In comparison any text
| written by a "generative AI" is mostly noise.
| buro9 wrote:
| Welp... I wondered when Google would start encouraging me to put
| my work profile into Firefox, I guess today is the day.
| renewiltord wrote:
| This sounds like a fantastic feature. And honestly I think all of
| these negative comments are just the HN reactionary trend. Lots
| of people are going to use this tool and it's going to be great
| to bypass all those annoying sites that have a lot of crap on
| them. Being built into the browser makes this very useful.
|
| Also, all this wailing and gnashing of teeth is really quite
| annoying. Look at you people embarrassing yourselves.
| ladino wrote:
| i use
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cbgecfllfhmmnknmam...
| for summaries with GPT4 (API Key)
| NotGMan wrote:
| So if you opt in then your website won't get clicks -> no ad
| revenue for you since google will "steal" the clicks via their
| summarization.
|
| And if you opt out google will eventually just push you down.
| rchaud wrote:
| This has already been the case for a while with "Zero-click
| searches". It's when you look up a trivial piece of info that
| can be said in one line. Google will show that sentence on the
| search results. You don't have to click through to the full
| page.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The best part is that product wasn't even that accurate, and
| has no qualms about showing you straight up bullshit or a lie
| stolen out of context from whoever did the actual research.
|
| Google is ahead of the curve in how ready they are for LLMs!
| Devasta wrote:
| I'll use AI to puff out articles with nonsense so they get higher
| ranks, and then Google will use AI to shorten them again.
|
| The Dead Internet theory will soon be indisputable.
| nineplay wrote:
| Great, another excuse for people not to read the article.
|
| We've got enough problems with people reading a headline and
| running with it. I hate to think of google summarizing some
| scientific study - particularly some "pop" scientific study - and
| have everyone confidently reciting it as though it's been
| conclusively proven without making any effort to look at the
| source.
| giantrobot wrote:
| It also introduces a second order problem when the
| summarization algorithm is updated/changed. Anyone reading an
| article before the update can get one summary while everyone
| reading after the update can potentially get a totally
| different summary.
|
| It's like when people talk about Google search results without
| realizing their search/browsing history has put them in a
| particular bubble. There's no guarantee any two people's result
| ranking will be the same which can affect their understanding
| or perspective on a topic.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| As if people needed _even more_ encouragement to be too lazy to
| read? Awful feature, this is bad for society.
| eur0pa wrote:
| No thank you.
| mmastrac wrote:
| I assume this is all done server-side, with Google feeding your
| interests and investigations into your personal profile. I really
| wish this could be done on-device. I don't want Google slurping
| up even more data about web users.
|
| I use FF mainly on desktop and mobile, and there's probably a
| great opportunity for Mozilla to build an offline, privacy-first
| summarization model.
| ttul wrote:
| I'm wildly speculating, but it seems that projects like
| llama.cpp are bringing SOTA models closer to the desktop. It's
| only a matter of time before browsers embed a small LLM for
| various purposes, providing access to this local model via a
| JavaScript API that allows clients like Gmail to perform tasks
| on data locally. Apple would be strongly incentivized to do
| this, given their value proposition of user privacy.
| fidotron wrote:
| I think the fact Google curiously ignored all the security
| problems raised by the WebGPU API suggests they are closer to
| trying to offload the GPU inference part of this to end users
| than people think.
|
| Build as much of the model as you can in the cloud, run
| inference locally and push results back is probably the cost
| optimal way to run this stuff at scale.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Yes, what Mozilla needs to do remove more support from browser
| development and debugging, to fracture their efforts even
| further, to continue the line of successes that began with
| Persona and continued with Firefox OS.
| bradly wrote:
| At Apple, the challenge our team faced with on-device models
| was managing their size and update-ability when every team has
| multiple models.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Kagi has been doing this already for quite a while, well before
| google (see Kagi Universal Summarizer) with no info linked to
| your profile [0]
|
| [0] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/getting-
| started/faqs.html#i-have-...
|
| For the record I am a happy user, not affiliated.
| lxgr wrote:
| > I assume this is all done server-side
|
| I assume so too, and given that, it's incredibly frustrating
| (but not at all surprising) that they require users to use
| Chrome to be able to use the feature.
| judge2020 wrote:
| This doesn't change how or when Google sees the web pages a
| user visits. If they were using Chrome with all sync features
| turned on, their browsing history was already being sent up.
| nicbou wrote:
| Ironically, articles got pointlessly long because of Google.
| Everyone stretches their content because long form ranks better.
|
| A few hours ago I wanted to know the difference between a typhoon
| and a hurricane. Here is the answer: they're the same thing, just
| in a different ocean. I clicked three or four articles and had to
| read for a few minutes to get to that answer.
|
| It's even worse with videos. It takes 10 minutes to answer the
| simplest questions, because that's the ideal length for
| monetisation.
| david422 wrote:
| Yes, I can tell you the difference between a typhoon and
| hurricane. But first, let me tell you a story about how my
| grandmother once survived a typhoon ... etc. etc.
| badwolf wrote:
| I'm just waiting for the shitty recipe sites to start hiding
| the recipes in the content...
|
| <wall of text useless content>
|
| <start of bulleted ingredients list>
|
| * Rosemary - I remember the first time smelling fresh
| rosemary, it was the spring of 1989 and I was in my dear
| aunties kitchen...
|
| * 1 boneless skinless chicken brest - Chicken breasts are a
| common ingredient in many dishes throughout the world. This
| hearty chunk of meat contains a high amount of protein and is
| quite versatile...
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| This is astonishing: https://archive.ph/fbLlZ
|
| > "Let's start with some research from Hook Agency, which
| claims the best content length for SEO in 2023 is between 1,760
| and 2,400 words"
|
| The source, however loathsome, is probably correct. The front
| pages of the internet have become saturated with garbage ultra-
| long-form articles... not even "articles," really, more like
| ramblings. And it's Google's fault.
| rmilejczz wrote:
| We traded a sane web experience for a better search
| experience and now both are trash and filled with ads. The
| modern internet really sucks
| crazygringo wrote:
| That's actually not the main reason at all. It's so more ads
| can be inserted.
|
| The classic example is mega-long intros for recipes. But if you
| look into it, the primary reason is to be able to include 10
| ads on a page instead of 2.
| orange_fritter wrote:
| I got sucked into a clickbait recipe video for "2 ingredient
| cake". The video was just over 10 minutes long, which I think
| puts it in a different monetization category on youtube. I
| spent wayyy too much time out of my life trying to find out
| what 2 ingredients are in the cake.
|
| Answer: apple sauce and gelatin
| tarvaina wrote:
| For questions such as the difference between typhoon and
| hurricane, ChatGPT and Claude give accurate answers in just a
| couple of seconds. It's such a different experience compared to
| the search engines.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Yeah, search engines give accurate answers for that question
| with no noticeable latency, providing a much better
| experience.
|
| That was the difference you meant to highlight, right?
| cma wrote:
| Worst part for flow is how fast chatgpt logins expire.
| Ironically probably some kind of anti-botting measure or is
| there a better explanation?
| jameshart wrote:
| But how do you know if they're accurate?
| tsunamifury wrote:
| Google shifted ranking to length under the guise of quality to
| cover for the increased ad impressions they were getting for
| those junk rambling articles.
|
| Google has been enshitifiying the web for a good while now, and
| I used to work there! I worked hard to make the core product
| more efficient but ultimately your internal goals just override
| the external ecosystem. And with so much power google was able
| to exert a shifting force on the web.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > A few hours ago I wanted to know the difference between a
| typhoon and a hurricane. Here is the answer: they're the same
| thing, just in a different ocean. I clicked three or four
| articles and had to read for a few minutes to get to that
| answer.
|
| I just googled "what is the difference between typhoon and
| hurricane"
|
| Top result is from the Red Cross, with this blurb conveniently
| extracted so I don't even need to click into the article unless
| I'm curious more deeply:
|
| _If it 's above the North Atlantic, central North Pacific or
| eastern North Pacific oceans (Florida, Caribbean Islands,
| Texas, Hawaii, etc.), we call it a hurricane. If it hovers over
| the Northwest Pacific Ocean (usually East Asia), we call it a
| typhoon._
| jeffbee wrote:
| With this Search Lab enabled Google just gives you the answer
| above all the results.
|
| """ The only difference between a hurricane and a typhoon is
| the location where the storm occurs. If a storm is above the
| North Atlantic, central North Pacific, or eastern North
| Pacific oceans, it's called a hurricane. If it hovers over
| the Northwest Pacific Ocean (usually East Asia), it's called
| a typhoon. """
| BakeInBeens wrote:
| The search labs are not available in my country and I get
| the quick snippet response anyways
| jameshart wrote:
| Although they do look similar, there are quite significant
| differences between a Hurricane and a Typhoon.
|
| A Hurricane has a ~1000hp early Rolls Royce Merlin engine and a
| top speed of about 350mph; a Typhoon has a 2000hp+ Napier Sabre
| engine and a top speed of over 400mph.
|
| The Typhoon was actually intended to be the replacement for the
| Hurricane, but challenges in the high altitude interceptor role
| led to the Typhoon taking on a more fighter-bomber role as the
| war went on.
| HPsquared wrote:
| A Tornado is of course even more powerful. It has a pair of
| Turbo-Union RB199 afterburning triple-spool turbofan engines
| with 9800 lbf thrust each (17300 lbf with afterburners on)
| and a top speed of Mach 2.2 with the wing swept back.
|
| Edit: at full afterburner, it burns fuel at a heat output of
| 235 MW (expressed as horsepower: 315140)
| east2west wrote:
| The Eurofighter Typhoon houses two EJ200 engine with 60 kN
| (13,500 lbf) of dry thrust and >90 kN (20,230 lbf) with
| afterburners. I believe there are experimental versions of
| EJ200 with >100 kN thrust but since Typhoon is being
| retired across Europe and no oversea sales, we won't see
| Typhoon armed with them.
| nlunbeck wrote:
| Google's "featured snippets" make it too easy for content
| farmers to thrive. As long as someone has the exact search
| "What is ___?", "How do I do _____?", etc formatted as an h2
| with a simple explanation underneath, they have a pretty good
| shot of getting a feature. There's really no quality control.
| Transpire7487 wrote:
| Hard pass. I don't want my browser doing _anything_ except
| displaying webpages.
| standardUser wrote:
| Anyone who has spent time with AI chatbots knows how often they
| are just completely wrong, often in surprising and confusing
| ways. It's hard enough to parse articles for accuracy and
| coherency without first passing them through as random error-
| adding machine.
| px43 wrote:
| Humans are worse. Obviously if you don't know how to discern
| garbage data from legit data, you're going to have a bad time,
| but these emerging tools are strictly better than anything that
| has existed before.
| standardUser wrote:
| The range of errors we expect from humans is more narrow,
| more relatable and we have more experience parsing them.
| Adapting to parse AI-written material will require developing
| new skills, and I'd argue those skills will be more difficult
| to develop because the errors/inconsistencies generated by AI
| are not as relatable to humans as errors introduced by
| humans.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Articles are getting too long? Since when has this been a
| problem? I think it's the amount of crap ads injected while I'm
| trying to read the article that is the main problem.
| enonimal wrote:
| selling the solution to a problem they created
| canadianwriter wrote:
| SEO rears it's ugly head again - yes, articles have gotten much
| longer, why? Because the Google bots think longer content =
| more authoritative content.
|
| It's not actually a direct correlation, but enough people take
| that as gospel that they will pad out an article to make it
| super long just for the SEO value.
|
| Similar to recipe websites giving their entire life story
| before a recipe.
| jedberg wrote:
| Have you tried to find a recipe online? Every one comes with a
| life story because of SEO.
|
| Ironically Google is the main cause of articles getting really
| long and full of fluff.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| Hard pass. I don't want Google, or even a trustworthy neutral
| party, to decide my view of the world. (Compromised as it may be
| already.)
|
| We're all unique and unpredictable. In a given article, a random
| sentence or point considered throwaway by most people and
| algorithms could turn out to be meaningful to me.
|
| I've been trained not to even trust the basic facts they pull of
| out content like movie showtimes or whatever. Once you see it
| wrong a few times you realize it's folly not to keep the
| responsibility of finding information yourself.
| tsunamifury wrote:
| It's summarizing. That is by its very nature a reduction of an
| article to certain bias elements. It's not rocket science or
| some evil magic. Jeeze you'd think HackerNews never used
| anything that wasn't a home brew open source libertarian
| approved product if you believed the comments here.
| jorgesborges wrote:
| Not to mention the clear preference here for comments that
| summarize an article to avoid actually reading it. Or poison
| the well sufficiently for a person to say "oh well I already
| know what it says".
| [deleted]
| GreedClarifies wrote:
| "It's not rocket science or some evil magic"
|
| It sure is.
|
| If you had told people in 2019 that a computer program could
| summarize large topics and write cogent output you would have
| been placed in the asylum.
| michaelt wrote:
| There's been an "AutoSummarise" tool in Microsoft Word
| since 2003 [1]
|
| Whats different these days is people might actually trust
| the tool enough to use it :)
|
| [1] https://www.officetooltips.com/word_2003/tips/getting_t
| o_the...
| rvnx wrote:
| In 2013 it was already done by kids:
| https://finance.yahoo.com/news/yahoo-acquires-summly-
| app-150...
| probably_wrong wrote:
| Sorry, but that's incorrect.
|
| Leaving aside the mind-blowingly large amount of research
| on summarization that existed in 2019, I'll say this: by
| then the task was so we'll understood that there were
| _multiple_ tldr bots on Reddit.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| > some evil magic
|
| It can be. Summarizing process can be tweaked very slightly
| to give more space to certain POVs, make them sound more
| reliable than others via word choice etc. The subtlety can
| make it undetectable, yet it can have strong effects when
| applied on mass scale.
|
| I don't know how this will look like, but it is a very
| powerful technology to sway the public opinion one way or
| another.
| GenericPoster wrote:
| Can you give some examples and point out the subtleties?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| brookst wrote:
| I feel like this is knee-jerk over-generalization.
|
| Having Google summarize a too-long recipe (a problem they
| created, by the way) into just the simple ingredients and
| instructions is NOT "deciding your view of the world".
| marricks wrote:
| Ok, but people won't use it just for recipes. If it's
| successful and common place google will monetize it.
|
| The beginning could just be "see this related product or
| service." Which won't mess with the content. Perhaps that's
| fine.
|
| I'd argue though that any summarizing tool inherently has a
| bias. It must choose to ignore certain details and make
| decisions about what to highlight.
|
| As we understand LLM's more and the stuff that summarizes
| folks controlling them _will_ be able to make those decisions
| and the money and power behind that will absolutely abuse it.
|
| That's not even considering the effects this would have on
| journalism and writing in general if most of it gets
| summarized.
| brookst wrote:
| Too tinfoil for me. Bicycles are bad because someone will
| try to use one like a helicopter.
|
| And humans already summarize and (mis)characterize. I just
| don't see blaming a tool that is used by people as they see
| fit.
| morkalork wrote:
| But it won't taste the same without knowing the authors
| childhood trauma!
| what_ever wrote:
| Pretty sure the long recipes are due to others not being able
| to copy them if you have long essay describing it or
| something?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The essay is more protectible by copyright than the recipe
| itself, but including it doesn't protect the recipe itself.
|
| I actually think the issue is that the long essay provides
| more space to put advertising alongside or interrupting the
| flow.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| I'm not sure why this particular idiosyncratic thing
| attracts so much mystery, but the answer is that there
| are long essays about the recipes because people like
| them.
| Tarball10 wrote:
| I assumed the long essays were for SEO (inflates the amount
| of cooking-related keywords). Which would make it kind of
| ironic that another Google product is now stripping the SEO
| content back out.
| Andrex wrote:
| Maybe Google decides certain ingredients aren't fit for
| public consumption and changes the recipe in their "summary."
| Or maybe the FDA tells Google it has to do this.
|
| On a mass scale, maybe 0.2% of people would double check the
| source page. The rest would be unknowingly influenced to eat
| "healthier" by Google.
|
| Yes, this seems unlikely. But so has much in the last 5
| years.
|
| Why are we deliberately charging head-first into social man-
| in-the-middle attacks? We already don't trust each other
| enough. LLMs lie, and lie often. Why should we trust them for
| anything?
|
| Would you be OK asking a LLM what food is safe for an infant,
| or a pet dog? Without checking the source?
| brookst wrote:
| I think you're saying that your concerns are moot because
| nobody would use LLMs the way you fear people will use
| LLMs?
| [deleted]
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| Most articles we read (even on HN) have very little useful
| information compared to lines of sentences, maybe this can act
| as a summary and we can decide if we want to read the whole
| article.
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| It's just important to decide what you use it on.
|
| I find these tools useful for articles these days because
| everything is clickbait and full of bloat and nonsense. Even if
| it's just to do a first past to figure out if I want to read
| the full article.
|
| But I do understand your point, I feel this is very important '
| a random sentence or point considered throwaway by most people
| and algorithms could turn out to be meaningful to me.', i've
| had this issue with book summary services, i've read a book and
| took completely different meanings or found insight in certain
| paragraphs that were completely glossed over in book summarys
| that just changed it into generic sounding nonsense. We need to
| connect the dots ourselfs and to do that, I believe is not to
| have someone elses summary of the situation.
|
| However, for everything else a tool like this is useful, there
| is too much noise in the world, we need tools to filter it and
| help us understand what is relevant and what is not.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I agree entirely.
|
| I have no interest in AI summarizing anything at all for me.
| Not because of AI, but because I have no interest in anyone or
| anything summarizing for me. Too much is lost.
| comboy wrote:
| > a random sentence or point considered throwaway by most
| people and algorithms could turn out to be meaningful to me
|
| This is what I crave for in good articles and books. There's
| some big insight just thrown in in the middle of the sentence
| because that pattern is already obvious to the author. It's
| also what AI-generated content is currently lacking because it
| sticks to the task at hand (but I believe it will change).
|
| Also, your critique applies just as much to human-generated
| summaries.
|
| My issue with it is that I don't want my browser to send home
| what I read and view although I guess that ship has sailed some
| time ago.
| [deleted]
| melling wrote:
| Actually, we're not unique and often predictable. There usually
| is someone who says "I'll never use the product because..." And
| it's often a top comment. e.g. Smartphones with GPS, Amazon
| Alexa,...
|
| To me it's simply a noisy discussion with little value. Don't
| use it but let's not waste time debating it. No one's mind is
| going to change.
|
| I'd love nothing more than for an algorithm to filter out the
| noise and extract any information and facts. Learning whose
| opinion I trust on specific topics would also be useful.
|
| Of course, others will tell me why this doesn't work for them
| and they want the added noise. Seriously, the entire point is
| that some people will want the product while others don't.
|
| I'm not trying to change your mind, and I'm not trying to stop
| anyone else from the discussion. It's simply not for me, in
| general.
| fhd2 wrote:
| I find it quite helpful to understand why people don't use a
| product or are unhappy with it. If there's none of that, all
| I'm left with is reading marketing claims.
| melling wrote:
| Good, then you should set your filter appropriately.
|
| Depending on the effectiveness of the product, you may
| trust it for certain articles but not others. Certain
| sources but not others.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| If you don't think you'll change anyone's mind, and aren't
| trying to, then why are you posting?
| JohnFen wrote:
| In all fairness, plenty of people post just to express
| their opinion or share their knowledge without any
| intention of changing anyone's mind about anything.
| melling wrote:
| Person 1: "An electric vehicle will never work for me
| because..."
|
| Person 2: "I want an electric vehicle because..."
|
| Is that a better example to convey my point?
| JohnFen wrote:
| That's the sort of exchange I _want_ to see. It 's useful
| and educational to hear what works and doesn't work for
| people, and why. It's not noise at all to me, it's
| teaching me about the upsides and downsides people have
| found about a thing in their real lives.
| uwerewarned wrote:
| Google is like a trustworthy neutral party except for the
| trustworthy and neutral bit
| patrickaljord wrote:
| for non political issues it should fine, eg to describe an
| algorithm or other non-controversial tech issues for example.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| And algorithms and some tech things are probably the only
| things left that aren't political issues.
|
| Please note if you're reading this, that this comment was
| written in 2023, before mathematics and physics became
| highly contended political issues.
| lionkor wrote:
| As long as they dont own a product in that field, yeah.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| [flagged]
| rchaud wrote:
| Trust the HN libertarian contingent to zero in on the
| real issues /s
| figmert wrote:
| Oh, the horror!
| GenericPoster wrote:
| Good feature, I might actually start using chrome again if
| recipes are summarized how I expect them to. Generally speaking,
| there's already a problem with people only reading the titles and
| basing their opinion of off that. Hopefully this will encourage
| people to read more, since it will be significantly shorter than
| the actual article. This won't affect the people who care about
| the topic.
|
| I'm not really worried about bias, since from my experience,
| summarization software will inherit the bias of the creator.
| Sure, it's behind generative AI, which can introduce more bias
| but it's not like the original article is hidden. No one is
| forced to use it.
| eastbound wrote:
| Google searched has encouraged long pages for SEO. Now Google
| sells us the idea that Google can help you reduce the useless
| words on the internet.
|
| Maybe de-index receipes talking about how this soup was my
| grandma's preferred soup. It's not so hard, you still have the
| full power on search engines, Google! For at least 2 more full
| months! Do it!
|
| You are the problem, Google.
| gumballindie wrote:
| They are too busy turning their browser and search experience
| into crap. For instance what's with search results in gmail and
| google drive? I literaly search for a file by name, doesn't
| find it, I search by extension ... it finds it? Then there's
| chrome - right click on selected text to search on google,
| instead of opening at tab it opens a crammed side bar? Has
| google gone insane?
| cj wrote:
| I've noticed gmail search has gotten significantly worse.
| Maybe my inbox corpus is becoming too large or google may be
| dedicating less server resources to search, but the frequency
| of failed inbox searches has significantly increased over the
| past year. (Failed as in I try to search for an email I know
| exists, but can't find it)
|
| Looks like my inbox is at 250,000 emails. Wonder if search
| degrades with inbox size. (Same with drive?)
| gumballindie wrote:
| From my experience with corporates this is poor product
| management. I think these are not bugs but rather poor
| design choices made by people that have no clue other than
| how to tick boxes of "inovation" delivered. Whether
| features make sense or not the product manager's KPIs will
| look good.
| [deleted]
| renegat0x0 wrote:
| There is no neutral source ofninformation. Legacy tv is often
| controlled by governments and corporations. Social media are also
| controlled, by corporations, and by some degree by governments.
| There is also bias, censorship and moderation.
|
| People were Hunters before. Were searching for food. We do not
| need now to hunt. We had to hunt for information, we do not need
| now.
|
| We rely more and more on services and corporations. We choose the
| jest one, which becomes monopoly after some time. After some
| longer period of time monopolystic corporation becomes monster.
|
| Circle of life.
|
| We may not want to use chatgpt or other bots, but eventually we
| will. Common people use the easiest route. They will decide, what
| is popular, and what will be used.
| writeslowly wrote:
| The second item is "Better understand coding information in AI
| overviews". Is there really such a big demand for this from the
| average google user, or is it just something that's easy to do
| with these language models?
| Lolaccount wrote:
| Google Reader will aggregate articles for you.
| donohoe wrote:
| And of course there is no way for a publisher to opt-out of this
| without removing them from the search engine entirely.
| darkwater wrote:
| But yeah, keep using Chrome because it's allegedly "faster" or so
| you don't have to test the page you are developing on 3 different
| engines.
| cowsup wrote:
| At the risk of sounding like an old man -- heck, I guess I am --
| is this innovation ethical for humanity's future? A one-click
| "tl;dr" button for the web?
|
| There are studies saying overall human attention span is
| shrinking. Anecdotally, I know people in their 20s who use TikTok
| daily, and they're no longer able to watch a movie without losing
| focus.
|
| Squeezing all aspects of our digital life, including learning new
| skills or reading the news, into a bite-sized "summary," is not
| going to lead to a better-informed and more productive society.
| rchaud wrote:
| > Anecdotally, I know people in their 20s who use TikTok daily,
| and they're no longer able to watch a movie without losing
| focus.
|
| I'm almost 40 and haven't been able to do this since the
| smartphone arrived; it's not Tiktok, it's just that the phone
| is right there, and movies are slow-paced (arty thrillers) or
| monotonous (lengthy CGI fight scenes).
| [deleted]
| faeriechangling wrote:
| If we're going off anecdotes, we've also seen an explosion in
| popularity of the 2-3 hour podcast and season long Netflix
| binges.
|
| Doesn't this generation have an absurdly long attention span
| compared to the generation of the 30 minute TV show with three
| 2-3 minute commercial breaks?
| uwerewarned wrote:
| I'd stay away from anything Google does. They have proved to be
| sectarians in politics and machiavellian in business and privacy
| alach11 wrote:
| I wonder how much they're projecting to spend on this? Or maybe
| they're prepared to eat a loss on this just to stay relevant in
| the face of Bing/Kagi/OpenAI?
|
| Results from these models are orders of magnitude more expensive
| than traditional search. Maybe they have some benefits of scale
| where they can cache and serve up the same summaries to many
| people?
| px43 wrote:
| I use the "summarize everything" extension that uses my OpenAI
| key, so it costs me a fraction of a penny any time I summarize
| something. Subsidizing something like this at scale would be
| pretty dumb.
| gnicholas wrote:
| There are other Chrome extensions that will do stuff like this.
| I'd never choose to have Google do it for me if I could have a
| third-party extension that I trust do it instead (or even one I
| don't trust 100%, but which offers some level of anonymization).
| hnburnsy wrote:
| OK Google, now summarize YouTube videos so I don't have to watch
| the entire videos or the ads.
|
| Luckily there are AI tools out there do this.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Here is one...
|
| https://www.summarize.tech/
| indymike wrote:
| This is where you start to sympathize with the news people in
| Canada who want google to pay for links. If google just
| summarizes at scale, interdicts the traffic and revenue, where's
| the incentive to create content?
|
| This is a failure mode for the information economy.
| monsieurgaufre wrote:
| I do agree with you.
|
| Google's behavior in regard to informations reminds me a lot of
| the "torrent leeches" of the past: siphon everything you can,
| give nothing back, ..., profit. But at a huge scale with an
| impact on society far more than "a few more bytes on a personal
| hard drive".
| px43 wrote:
| If your only incentive for creating content is harvesting
| attention and eyeballs, then the internet is better off without
| your content.
| monsieurgaufre wrote:
| With that way of thinking, you exclude almost every content,
| ever.
|
| Most people do not produce content to be left unread.
| nicbou wrote:
| I just like the fruits of my labour to be attributed to me,
| not to a large corporation.
| skybrian wrote:
| "Summarize this YouTube video" (given a link) is what I'd like to
| see and Google could easily do when there's a transcript, but
| they'd probably rather make people watch the video.
|
| I think Kagi might do this? Any other good solutions?
| hostcontroller wrote:
| I used summarize.tech [0] once, and it worked fine, although it
| was quite repetitive iirc.
|
| [0]: https://www.summarize.tech
| crazygringo wrote:
| Exactly. It's already easy enough to scan an article in 15
| seconds to get the overall gist. But scanning through a YouTube
| transcript, in the tiny box, without any punctuation, without
| paragraphs, without sections, takes forever.
| Xeophon wrote:
| Kagi has such a feature, its called Universal Summarizer [0]
|
| [0]
| https://kagi.com/summarizer/index.html?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww...
| machdiamonds wrote:
| I typically run lengthy YouTube video transcripts through
| Anthropic Claude to get a summary. It's free and offers a 100k
| context window. After summarizing, you can engage in a
| conversation with Claude. You can ask specific questions about
| the covered topics or prompt it with queries such as "What were
| the standout points?". It's quite adept at extracting key
| highlights.
| ignite wrote:
| Looks like that is still invitation only.
| cesarvarela wrote:
| I've been using this one: https://glasp.co/youtube-summary
| speedgoose wrote:
| ChatGPT plus with a YouTube plugin does that too.
| skybrian wrote:
| Interesting. I see multiple plugins. Any there any you
| recommend?
| jaredchung wrote:
| I use the AAAsummarize.io chatgpt plugin to summarize
| youtube videos. Has worked really well for me.
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| so many chatgpt plugins start with an "A " in their name
| to "rank" first in the list of all plugins. throw back to
| the telephone directory days :-)
| speedgoose wrote:
| I use VoxScript because the first plugin I tried didn't
| work well (time-outs) and it was the second and last
| YouTube plugin I tried. It's okay but sometimes I need to
| ask for a full transcript otherwise it will get only the
| first chunk of the subtitles.
| ChildOfEru wrote:
| Articles written by an AI and then summarized by another program.
| Nothing can go wrong here.
| eastbound wrote:
| Then they tell us our Java app consumes too much CO2.
| styren wrote:
| Why would an AI tell you that your java app uses too much
| CO2? What am I missing?
| konschubert wrote:
| I understand the worries about privacy and monopoly power.
|
| But this doesn't change that this is a useful feature.
|
| PS: That being said, I have started developing a distaste for
| google search. I have been served so much SPAM lately, that I am
| now starting to associate that search box with low-quality
| content.
| vittor1o wrote:
| I do believe contextual link previews help with overall browsing
| UX. I like how Wikipedia has a summary when you hover over a
| link. Where this summary comes from does matter.
|
| For those who don't like when Google summarizes content for you
| but like the idea of getting a link preview with a summary
| provided by the website owner via meta tags before navigating to
| a third-party website - I've built a product called Linkz.ai [0]
| - that allows website owners to install link preview popups with
| 1 line of code.
|
| [0] https://linkz.ai
| speak_plainly wrote:
| Reading is not a binary process and you can scale your engagement
| with any written work. If you use a variety of techniques, there
| is probably no need for a machine summary.
|
| For example, start by skimming and scanning an article and you
| may be able to pull out all the salient points and satisfy your
| reading goal or choose to go deeper with your analysis depending
| on time and interest and what you are trying to accomplish:
|
| https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/researching/skim-and-scan...
| fl0ki wrote:
| Skimming isn't really possible for people that rely on screen
| readers. I think effective summarization would be useful for
| them. Whether this is an effective implementation, however,
| remains to be seen.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| [flagged]
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