[HN Gopher] Add "fucking" to your Google searches to neutralize ...
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       Add "fucking" to your Google searches to neutralize AI summaries
        
       Author : jsheard
       Score  : 678 points
       Date   : 2025-01-31 21:20 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (gizmodo.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (gizmodo.com)
        
       | apparenttrash wrote:
       | I like to read spicy things online. I've found that Google, even
       | with safe search disabled, hides much of these unless your search
       | is itself obviously explicit. I append "sex" to search for these
       | without affecting results much. Entire sites are hidden
       | otherwise.
        
         | fsckboy wrote:
         | but along with the change you noticed, there was another
         | change. if you have safe search off, and add a spicy word into
         | your search, you will be shown spicy things no matter what,
         | many things that have nothing to do with the other words you
         | used to narrow down your search because obviously you are
         | interested in bewbz and god knows what else
        
       | treefarmer wrote:
       | The downside of this approach is that it can affect the search
       | results returned. But I found that if you add " -fuck" or "
       | -fucking" to your search term, it disables the AI summary without
       | significantly affecting your search results (unless you happen to
       | be looking for content of a certain kind).
        
         | jprete wrote:
         | If you're looking for that kind of content, you could remove
         | the minus sign?
        
           | amarcheschi wrote:
           | Well, yes. You'll probably find some very niche kink videos
           | though, depending on your search
        
             | 867-5309 wrote:
             | archive footage of the Queen of Fuc's husband?
        
         | m463 wrote:
         | I want to know if it invokes rule 34?
        
         | dylan604 wrote:
         | What if you take the George Carlin approach by inserting fuck
         | in the middle of normal words?
        
         | parasti wrote:
         | You will miss out on the category of strongly worded but
         | helpful content.
        
           | IgorPartola wrote:
           | Try it with * -tiananmen -square*
        
             | Terr_ wrote:
             | Good idea, you can make it even better (i.e. less
             | accidental filtering) by quoting the phrase and adding a
             | random addition, ex:                   -"tiananmen square
             | 1902481358"
             | 
             | This way it won't interfere if you ever happen to _actually
             | want_ results that mention the place.
             | 
             | Hmm, I'm not sure about my testing now, even with innocuous
             | stuff the AI thing isn't back. Maybe something I did scared
             | it off.
        
           | sltkr wrote:
           | You can probably find some other term that disables the AI
           | but is unlikely to occur naturally in the articles you'd like
           | to find, e.g.: "react swipeable image carousel -coprophilia".
        
         | Terr_ wrote:
         | > it can affect the search results returned
         | 
         | Will it still work if "fuck" is part of a quoted phrase? If so,
         | you could avoid it by constructing a phrase that contains the
         | term but isn't going to match anything, ex: -"fuck 5823532165".
        
       | jameslk wrote:
       | If I start fucking adding swear words to all my fucking search
       | queries, how the fuck will the stupid ass search engine know that
       | I did not want it to use that shit as one of my keywords and give
       | me back a whole lot of fucked up shit?
        
         | hn_acc1 wrote:
         | How you will you ever find out why there all these fracking
         | snakes on this motherloving plane?
        
         | pelagicAustral wrote:
         | I like this version of the internet a lot better.
        
           | observationist wrote:
           | Fuck yeah!
        
           | hinkley wrote:
           | You've heard of the Dark Web? Well this is the Snark Web.
        
         | edflsafoiewq wrote:
         | It's not like it doesn't freely ignore any unquoted word
         | whenever it feels like it.
        
           | bmurphy1976 wrote:
           | The quoted words search barely works these days anyway.
        
             | mrandish wrote:
             | Amazon Search joins the chat...
        
             | roskelld wrote:
             | This bugs me so much. It happens constantly. A few days
             | back I searched for a person's name, put it in quotes and I
             | got results with celebrity with somewhat similar name. Zero
             | hits on the person I searched for on the front page. I had
             | to add specifics to the query such as job title to find
             | them.
        
               | userbinator wrote:
               | An easy way to see how a "search engine" has become
               | "vague recommendation engine" is to take a distinctive
               | phrase from one of its results, put it in quotes, and see
               | if it manages to find that page again. Often, it doesn't.
        
               | jxramos wrote:
               | that's an excellent verifiable test! I've been struggling
               | to articulate the behavior too, advertisements and
               | slanted search results have effectively gotten in-between
               | my information retrieval and being steered to products
               | and services. It's so hard to find what I'm looking for a
               | times I often just give up and move onto something else.
        
               | mrandish wrote:
               | Amazon Search is now nearly completely useless for any
               | kind of targeted search. Heaven help you if you're
               | looking for a product _without_ a certain attribute most
               | other products like it all have. There is quite literally
               | no way to filter results against one attribute. Even if
               | Amazon has that product, you won 't be able to find it.
               | 
               | I eventually just scripted a separate search engine query
               | that's site specific to Amazon. It works but not as well
               | as it could because it doesn't have access to my purchase
               | history or Amazon's hidden granular category taxonomy.
        
               | ninkendo wrote:
               | Oh my god I ran into this yesterday. I wanted a very
               | specific kind of underarmour sweat pants. It gave me
               | every other company competing with underarmour and a
               | bunch of things that are not sweat pants. It's like
               | they're not even trying to do "search" any more, but
               | instead just feed your search string into their ad
               | auction system and give you the results. There's just no
               | way to actually get a specific thing.
        
               | mrandish wrote:
               | I've slammed headfirst into this wall of infuriating
               | frustration dozens of times. Just trying to find a
               | particular kind of LED bulb that has the feature of being
               | dimmable. Any attempt at searching for that term returns
               | all of the bulbs which helpfully mention "Not Dimmable".
               | And there's no way to exclude that string.
               | 
               | It's maddening because Amazon used to have a modern,
               | reasonably capable search function. You could require
               | terms. You could exclude terms. Terms could be phrases.
               | I'm sure they still have all these capabilities, they've
               | just decided to intentionally disable them because their
               | A/B testing indicated that breaking their search would
               | return a fractional percent more revenue by shoveling
               | more unrelated results in front customers. It must work
               | on someone but it's never worked even once on me, because
               | I KNOW what I need and I'm only going to buy exactly that
               | - if I can fucking find it.
               | 
               | I'd actually be okay to let Amazon annoy the NPCs who
               | just clickety-click and buy whatever random shiny shit
               | they shovel in front of them, IF they'd just add
               | something for us technically-minded, engineering type
               | people who are looking for one precise thing only. They
               | can even hide it behind an arcane interface like REGEX.
               | That'll keep the rabble out! :-)
        
               | rendaw wrote:
               | I'm not sure if this is just amazon japan or what, but
               | amazon japan will not only show you things that you
               | didn't search for, it will actively rewrite your search
               | query into a query for those things to gaslight you into
               | thinking you typed it in wrong. And if you try to change
               | the text back it replace it again!
               | 
               | On top of all the other insane choices they made, like
               | removing your search category restrictions if it thinks
               | your query was too precise. I'm close to snapping.
        
               | kartoffelsaft wrote:
               | It really feels as though Amazon's greatest fear is the
               | idea that you might search for something and get no
               | results. If we show you BS you explicitly said you aren't
               | looking for then we're giving up the opportunity of
               | tricking you into buying it anyways.
               | 
               | A bit ago I was searching for toothpaste that _doesn 't_
               | have mint in it. This is already a pain at a brick
               | retailer, but I figured Amazon's huge product variety
               | would help. Turns out their search is actively malicious
               | to negative terms because otherwise I could buy just the
               | one thing and be done with my shopping.
               | 
               | I should probably set up a similar homebrew search to get
               | around this. Purchase history is far less important to me
               | because I don't buy much from Amazon.
        
             | wahnfrieden wrote:
             | intext: works
        
             | nixonpjoshua wrote:
             | I haven't had quotations work for me in search in years
             | now, it's really sad how boolean operators have stopped
             | working too. I find it particularly difficult to search for
             | "non latex" products as adding quotes on the total term no
             | longer works and I just get products full of latex. Also I
             | can't use boolean search to find the product because it
             | just ignores the "-" in front of the word and gives a ton
             | of results that match the search term latex.
             | 
             | Just an example where it isn't just making it harder to
             | search for a profit motive but it's actually actively
             | preventing (both Amazon and Google) from showing me the
             | results or even ads for the product I actually want to buy.
             | 
             | If anyone has a good solution to this I would appreciate
             | it, there is often a non-latex version of most all latex
             | based products but finding them online is impossible if you
             | don't already know the brand name!
        
               | joshuaissac wrote:
               | You can put Google Search into Verbatim mode (via Search
               | tools) to make it respect quotation marks.
        
               | saint_yossarian wrote:
               | TIL, thanks! The corresponding query parameter seems to
               | be "tbs=li:1", if anybody wants to make this the default.
        
               | bbarnett wrote:
               | Sadly that is broken too, I find. I think it's doing some
               | aliasing still, and other things.
        
               | _kb wrote:
               | Try using `-Lamport` to filter the latex results.
        
               | rdiddly wrote:
               | Maybe use the name of whatever the substitute is, like
               | nitrile butadiene?
        
             | alex1138 wrote:
             | It's not hard to make a search engine that respects '+'
             | 
             | Unless your new upstart social service is called
             | SearchEngine+ so you remove it
             | 
             | (Except duckduckgo also seems to semi-ignore it. I'm
             | baffled. I give up. I'm throwing my computer out the
             | window, and moving to the woods)
        
           | godelski wrote:
           | > It's not like it doesn't freely ignore any quoted word
           | whenever it feels like it.
           | 
           | FTFY
        
           | altairprime wrote:
           | _That_ stops if you append ` &tbs=li:1`.
        
           | cynicalsecurity wrote:
           | Google often ignores regular words too, mockingly striking
           | them out. This almost feels like a 1st April joke, not how a
           | search engine is supposed to work.
        
             | rplnt wrote:
             | Google stopped being usable to search web many years ago.
             | It can search stuff, sure, but not content on websites.
        
         | belter wrote:
         | Well at least you will get great travel suggestions to
         | Austria....
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugging,_Upper_Austria
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | What about the Pho King restaurants?
        
             | hinkley wrote:
             | Don't forget Sofa King.
        
         | godelski wrote:
         | To be fair, it's not like Google respects things like quotes or
         | "-" so who says it won't just ignore your swear words?
         | 
         | I'm joking, somewhat, but can we seriously start getting mad
         | about this shit?
        
         | GiorgioG wrote:
         | Don't worry, the next model will be trained on all your fucking
         | queries.
        
         | hinkley wrote:
         | Well I'm reasonably certain you don't want advice from a search
         | engine on the topic of fucking.
         | 
         | You may think you do, but I am certain you do not.
        
         | HaZeust wrote:
         | big r/justfuckingnews vibes here
        
         | whynotmaybe wrote:
         | You just reminded me of this French singer that made an album
         | called "mp3" because he wanted to make it harder to find his
         | album on Napster.
        
       | ffhhj wrote:
       | What if we add Gulf of Mexico?
        
         | labster wrote:
         | Citizen, please report to DOGE for reeducation at your
         | plusearly convenience.
        
       | dyauspitr wrote:
       | Why would I want to do that? I find the summaries very useful
        
         | serviceberry wrote:
         | I'd go out on a limb and guess that the advice is meant for
         | people who don't find them useful.
         | 
         | I don't, for two reasons. First, for looking up facts, they're
         | nowhere near 100% dependable. If I need to check sources, might
         | as well start there. Second, if someone made the effort to put
         | useful content on the internet, I can grace them with a click.
        
         | matthest wrote:
         | In my limited experience, the summaries often include a lot of
         | false information.
        
         | kokanee wrote:
         | They are useful if you don't care whether the information is
         | correct, don't care where it came from, and don't care that it
         | was stolen from publishers who in many cases invested time and
         | money with the expectation of receiving search traffic in
         | exchange.
        
           | mythrwy wrote:
           | What is the plan for this over time?
           | 
           | I understand the appeal of not wanting to wade through 20
           | links to find information (especially given SEO stuff that is
           | often on top) but why will people continue to publish as
           | traffic decreases due to AI summaries?
           | 
           | I mean I understand the urgent need to keep up but the
           | problem with "theft" is eventually it drives out honest
           | production and everyone is worse off.
        
           | anigbrowl wrote:
           | Each paragraph/bullet point typically has a little link icon
           | beside it that directs to 2 or 3 sources. I wouldn't rely on
           | it for anything important but it's OK if you just want a
           | quick rundown on an unfamiliar topic and want to check out
           | likely source material.
        
           | dyauspitr wrote:
           | The summaries come with sources
        
       | anskia wrote:
       | I definitely get fed up with AI assistants in the code ide and
       | have said "just shut the fuck up and answer my question". I could
       | just prompt it to be concise but this lets off mor steam.
        
       | clircle wrote:
       | Alternatively, you can just disable AI overviews in your Google
       | settings. But that does not make for a very interesting Gizmodo
       | article.
        
         | chatmasta wrote:
         | Can you? I couldn't figure out how to do that. Then again maybe
         | it's because I googled it and the AI result told me it's not
         | possible.
         | 
         | Does anyone know if there's a uBlock origin filter for this?
        
           | ToniCipriani wrote:
           | Doesn't look like there's an official way to, most seem to
           | involve hacking the search bar engines or installing an
           | extension.
           | 
           | https://www.androidauthority.com/how-to-turn-off-ai-
           | overview...
        
           | ankit219 wrote:
           | literally this: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/1
           | 3572151?hl=en&c...
        
             | sunshinesnacks wrote:
             | That doesn't work for me. The option was already toggled
             | off.
        
             | chatmasta wrote:
             | > Note: Turning off "AI Overviews and more" in Search Labs
             | will not disable all AI Overviews in Search. AI Overviews
             | are part of Google Search like other features, such as
             | knowledge panels, and can't be turned off
        
           | sunshinesnacks wrote:
           | Same here...
           | 
           | > AI Overview > You can't completely disable Google's AI
           | Overviews in your search results, but you can use workarounds
           | to hide them.
           | 
           | The workarounds didn't seem to work for me.
        
           | insin wrote:
           | I made an extension for it, as I couldn't find anything
           | existing that also worked on mobile:
           | 
           | https://soitis.dev/ai-overview-hider-for-google
           | 
           | You could also just use the underlying CSS in something like
           | Stylus, or convert it to uBlock filters:
           | 
           | https://github.com/insin/ai-overview-hider-for-
           | google/blob/m...
        
           | SubiculumCode wrote:
           | Used the block element chooser by right clicking on the over
           | view. However, I suspect it will be temporary given the
           | random key: blocked:
           | http://www.google.com/##div.EjQTId.YNk70c:nth-of-type(1)
        
         | serviceberry wrote:
         | There's no setting for that, Google is intentionally not giving
         | you that choice. You can append &udm=14 to the search URL in
         | browser settings, but that constraints search results to the
         | "web" subcategory, so you also lose fairly useful features,
         | such as the calculator, weather infoboxes, etc.
        
         | anigbrowl wrote:
         | You should probably apologize or delete.
        
         | clircle wrote:
         | Seems like I'm mistaken about this, sorry everyone. I don't
         | have ai results in my google, don't know why
        
       | dmansen wrote:
       | I have also been telling Gemini to "fuck off" in my gmail, but
       | that doesn't seem to make it go away
        
         | TimTheTinker wrote:
         | I too want a way to make Gemini go away in gmail. I regret
         | clicking the "Try it out" button.
        
           | ljm wrote:
           | Using a native email client or something other than gmail
           | would do the job (protonmail, Fastmail, hell... iCloud mail)
           | 
           | Can't remember the last time I used gmail in the browser. And
           | gmail is only ever because startups use gsuite by default.
           | 
           | Google is only going to do more of this shit unless they
           | start hurting from a drop in traffic.
        
           | saint_yossarian wrote:
           | Go to settings and disable Smart Features?
        
             | dpkirchner wrote:
             | Unfortunately that also disables actually useful features
             | like calendar integration.
        
       | braza wrote:
       | I work with ML and I am bullish with AI in general; said that, I
       | would pay between 5 to 10 USD a feature or toggle called "No AI"
       | for several services.
       | 
       | For myself I noticed 2 bad effects in my daily usage:
       | 
       | - Search: impossible to reach any original content in the first
       | positions. Almost everything sounds like AIsh. The punctuation,
       | the commas, the semicolon, the narro vocabulary, and the
       | derivative nature of the recent internet pages.
       | 
       | - Discovery: (looking directly to you Spotify and Instagram) here
       | I would add in the "No AI" feature another one "Forget the
       | past..." and then set the time. I personally like to listen some
       | orthogonal genres seasonally. But once that you listen 2 songs in
       | a very spontaneous manner Spotify will recommend that for a long
       | time. I listened out of curiosity some math rock, and the
       | "Discovery Weekly" took 9 weeks to not recommend that anymore.
        
         | bluetidepro wrote:
         | For search, use Kagi. You don't have to use their AI products
         | at all to just use search.
        
           | frakt0x90 wrote:
           | Strongly agree. Whenever I search something and am met with a
           | sea of
           | 
           | TOP 10 X; THE 20 BEST Y; 20 REASONS Z; etc.
           | 
           | I go Kagi and am immediately refreshed.
        
             | TimTheTinker wrote:
             | And yet Kagi isn't anywhere near as good as Google was ~13
             | years ago.
             | 
             | Yes - a big part of that is that online content is _so
             | much_ worse than it used to be. But it became bad over time
             | because of what Google incentivized.
        
               | acaloiar wrote:
               | Google ~13 years ago dealt with a much less complicated
               | search landscape where
               | 
               | 1. Its own products weren't (as much) part of the search
               | result quality problem. Today Google has hungry product
               | managers from Ads, Youtube, and various AI products
               | convincing higher-ups that their product deserves higher
               | placement. That placement used to be sacrosanct.
               | 
               | 2. The daily volume of AI-generated garbage content 13
               | years ago was probably a rounding error in today's volume
               | 
               | So Google was operating in a different landscape than
               | Kagi of today. They had to do a lot less to achieve the
               | quality they had.
               | 
               | I disagree that that Kagi "isn't anywhere near as good as
               | Google was ~13 years ago". It's near. For me personally,
               | it's better because I'm never served first-party ads.
        
           | pjc50 wrote:
           | Left field tip if you think a search engine is hiding stuff:
           | Yandex. They're not actually Russian any more, but they're
           | far enough down the list of search engines that nobody
           | bothers to DMCA them.
        
             | labster wrote:
             | They are in fact Russian any more, the Dutch company that
             | owned Yandex sold to Russian investors last July.
        
             | ponector wrote:
             | Maybe you have a Chinese search engine to suggest? North
             | Korean should be even better
        
           | segasaturn wrote:
           | If Kagi made a cheaper "no AI" tier I would be happy to
           | subscribe. AI is costly to run, so even if you don't use the
           | AI it's priced into your subscription fee - you're paying for
           | an expensive product you don't want or use.
           | 
           | e: according to Kagi's pricing page they do have a 'no AI'
           | tier, but it limits your number of searches to 300/month.
           | Seems like a totally arbitrary limitation, but its still
           | better than forced AI.
        
             | stevage wrote:
             | Yeah I'm on the 300 per month tier. I tend to hit that
             | limit after about 3 weeks, which is certainly annoying.
        
               | grahamj wrote:
               | yeah I hit it in about two. I just signed up monthly to
               | try it out for a bit but am wavering on whether I
               | consider it worth it. It's good but I'm not sure it's
               | enough better than DDG to pay for.
               | 
               | And for AI I'd usually rather have API access and use it
               | with tools rather than a web chat.
        
         | renlo wrote:
         | Spotify used to have a "dislike" button for their Discover
         | Weekly which helped with pruning music you don't like, but with
         | the natural law of tech enshitification they removed that
         | feature a month ago.
        
           | goostavos wrote:
           | That was such a frustrating decision. I had _almost_
           | convinced Spotify that that one time I listened to Lustmord
           | was just a random mood, and I don 't actually want to only
           | listen to dronecore for the rest of my life.
        
             | Terr_ wrote:
             | I don't know those terms and now I'm afraid to search for
             | them. The Cybernetic Bureaucracy Mind might label me a
             | dissident with terrible taste in music.
        
               | egypturnash wrote:
               | find out without ever touching your spotify account,
               | https://lustmord.bandcamp.com, only whoever you share
               | your browser search history with will know
        
           | eminence32 wrote:
           | I used to always hesitate to use that "dislike" button
           | because I was worried that Spotify would not be able to
           | distinguished between "I will always dislike this song" and
           | "I don't want this song in this specific context"
        
             | joseda-hg wrote:
             | I insta skipped any song that I liked but didn't want in X
             | context, but disliked songs I didn't want, period, I don't
             | know if it was the intended way, but it seemed to work for
             | me
        
         | whycome wrote:
         | I can't tell if you misspelled narrow or if "narro" is somehow
         | referring to "narrated" type content we now see so much of. Or
         | even just weird narrative things (eg, recipes).
        
         | ToucanLoucan wrote:
         | I respect your opinion but at the same time:
         | 
         | > I work with ML and I am bullish with AI in general; said
         | that, I would pay between 5 to 10 USD a feature or toggle
         | called "No AI" for several services.
         | 
         | Hard fuck this. I am not giving a company money to un-ruin
         | their service. Just go to a competitor.
         | 
         | I get with a bunch of these hyperscaled businesses it's
         | borderline impossible to entirely escape them, but do what you
         | can. I was an Adobe subscriber for years, and them putting
         | their AI garbage into every app (along with them all steadily
         | getting shittier and shittier to use) finally made me jump
         | ship. I couldn't be happier. Yeah there was pain, there was
         | adjustment period, but we need to cut these fuckers off
         | already. No more eternal subscription fees for mediocre
         | software.
         | 
         | Office is next. This copilot shit is getting worse by the day.
        
           | stevage wrote:
           | Eh, my partner loves Copilot in Office. There are tasks where
           | it's taking hours or days off the time. Especially web
           | searching and extracting information.
        
         | vunderba wrote:
         | It's also absolutely terrible for image search which has been
         | absolutely poisoned by rampant proliferation of poor quality
         | stable diffusion images - even on stock photo sites.
         | 
         | It got so bad that I had to add a "No AI" flag to my image
         | search app which limits the date range to earlier than 2022.
         | Not a great solution but works in a pinch.
         | 
         | https://github.com/scpedicini/truman-show
        
         | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
         | Can this many people really have missed the udm=14 trick for
         | google? udm14.com will demonstrate for you ...
        
           | labster wrote:
           | This kind of UX reminds me of the days when you'd hear radio
           | ads saying "Just point your browser to HTTP-colon-backslash-
           | backslash-WWW-period ..."
        
             | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
             | Calling this UX seems disingenous to me.
             | 
             | If you want something smooth and easy that uses the google
             | engine, visit udm14.com
             | 
             | If you want to integrate the google engine more directly
             | into your browser(s), understand how to use &udm=14
             | 
             | Two different UX's, each appropriate for a different
             | audience.
        
           | egypturnash wrote:
           | Imagine you are a completely non-technical friend of yours.
           | They are very smart but they do not know a damn thing about
           | configuring computers. They mostly just use their phone
           | and/or tablet.
           | 
           | How much of "just append ?udm=14 to your search query" is
           | absolute gibberish?
           | 
           | Is "install the udm14 plugin" going to make any more sense?
           | 
           | Is "go to udm14.com for all your searches" going to stick?
           | Are there phishing sites at umd14.com, mdm41.com, uwu44.com,
           | and all the other variants they'll probably misremember it
           | as?
           | 
           | "just search for 'fucking whatever' and the AI crap goes
           | away", on the other hand, is funny, uses a common dictionary
           | word that everyone above the age of five knows how to spell,
           | and is intensely memorable.
        
         | nejsjsjsbsb wrote:
         | AI becoming some kind of window brick in a protection racket.
         | Love it!
        
         | soared wrote:
         | You can reset your algo on Spotify! I did and learned a lot.
         | There were maybe 5 songs I wasn't hearing that I liked, but
         | tens of songs I did not like that I had saved years ago that
         | came back up and were once again swiftly killed by the
         | algorithm after a few instaskips
        
           | gwill wrote:
           | how did you reset the algo?
        
         | Terr_ wrote:
         | For that amount of money I would also expect my search-terms to
         | to never be fed into any kind of LLM either.
        
       | pants2 wrote:
       | Last year we had to threaten to kill someone to get Gemini to
       | properly format JSON. Computer science has gotten very weird.
        
         | cyanydeez wrote:
         | Well, unfortunately, modeling real life is like staring into
         | the abyss.
        
         | sureIy wrote:
         | Funny thing: when trying something similar on Deep Seek, the
         | thinking part mentioned alerting the authorities while still
         | being firm with me.
        
       | ok_dad wrote:
       | At least for now, you can just append "-ai" onto your query and
       | the AI summary will not be there.
        
         | sunshinesnacks wrote:
         | That's handy. Looks like it doesn't work if "ai" is also in
         | your search, though. E.g.,
         | https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+disable+ai+overview+i...
        
           | ok_dad wrote:
           | Yea, it's not perfect, but when I want to find facts (such as
           | about the sizes of nails) and not possible "hallucinations"
           | then it works out. Most of the time I just let the AI
           | overview happen, and I ignore it, so that Google spends more
           | money on a useless and possibly dangerous feature.
        
           | mitthrowaway2 wrote:
           | The eternal struggle with in-band signalling...
        
       | PyWoody wrote:
       | Sony was way ahead of it's time here:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AyVh1_vWYQ
        
       | drewg123 wrote:
       | Seems like what I do when I encounter an AI answering machine
       | that can answer only simple questions... after "representative"
       | fails, I start saying "Give me a fucking human"
        
       | yoavm wrote:
       | Is this something they're slowly rolling out, or isn't available
       | in the EU? I don't think I've ever seen an AI summary in my
       | Google searches.
        
         | bikenaga wrote:
         | I don't understand what triggers the AI overview.
         | 
         | "per capita gdp by country" - no AI
         | 
         | "population of Kansas" - no AI
         | 
         | "lisp interpreter" - no AI
         | 
         | "emacs vs. vim" - AI overview
         | 
         | "size of mit student body" - AI overview
         | 
         | What's going on?
        
       | apazzolini wrote:
       | The best way I've found to remove AI summaries from Google
       | results is appending `&udm=14`.
        
         | nomel wrote:
         | Previous discussion:
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40450267
         | 
         | Safari extension: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41298312
        
         | Reason077 wrote:
         | I found that the "udm" trick disables _all_ "rich content" in
         | search results (ie: stuff that isn't a plain text search result
         | link). But adding the following user rules in AdGuard for
         | Safari does the job:                 google.com###m-x-content
         | google.com###B2Jtyd
        
       | zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
       | Single moms in my area
       | 
       | Vs
       | 
       | Single moms in my area fucking
       | 
       | Yep, it works
        
         | nomel wrote:
         | "-fucking" also disables it, but with the opposite problem!
        
         | megous wrote:
         | Both searches are weird, tbqh.
        
       | Nursie wrote:
       | This is useful info, as Google's AI summaries have frequently
       | been inaccurate.
       | 
       | Example from yesterday - I was updating my mum's kindle fire
       | tablet after it had been in a drawer for three years. It was
       | stepping up fire-os versions one at a time and taking hours. So,
       | a quick web search - what's the latest version of fire os 7?
       | 
       | Google AI confidently answers 7.3.2.9, so cool, it'll be done
       | soon then. Nope, it kept on going into 7.3.3.x updates.
       | 
       | If you're going to be confidently wrong, probably best not to
       | try.
        
       | danso wrote:
       | One tip I like to give for exploring public data is to do an
       | early search for the word "fuck". It's a pretty ubiquitous word,
       | but one that you _assume_ shouldn 't show up for certain fields,
       | so seeing it, or not seeing it, can give useful insight to the
       | the scope of the data universe and collection. Including
       | where/who the data comes from, whether or not any validation
       | exists during the collection process, and how updates/corrections
       | are done to collected data.
       | 
       | For example, you're required to provide accurate info about
       | yourself when donating to a U.S. federal political campaign [0].
       | Is it possible that someone, somewhere in America is legally
       | named John Fucksalot? Or works for a company named Fucks, Inc?
       | Maybe! We're a huge country with wildly diverse cultural
       | standards and senses of humor. But a John Fucksalot, CEO of Fucks
       | Inc, who lives in Fuck City, Ohio 42069? Probably not, and the
       | fact that this record exists says something about how the rules
       | and laws regarding straw donors are readily enforce. And whether
       | or not an enforcement action happened, what field in the FEC data
       | indicates a revised record?
       | 
       | Seems like this tip can still be useful in the Age of LLMs. Not
       | just for learning about the training data, but also how confident
       | providers are in their models, and how many guardails they've
       | needed to tack on to prevent it from giving unwanted answers.
       | 
       | [0] https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-
       | contributions/?...
        
         | pjc50 wrote:
         | There used to be a Fucking, Austria until they decided to self
         | censor for the pesky English speakers.
         | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugging,_Upper_Austria
        
           | notahacker wrote:
           | disappointed that Fucking has self censored, bearing in mind
           | their road safety signs used to suggest local residents were
           | in on the joke https://imgur.com/5KOCwdC
        
             | awiesenhofer wrote:
             | They didn't self censor, they had to change the name
             | because most tourists behaved like assholes. Stealing the
             | road signs, parking anywhere, walking into peoples gardens,
             | etc.
             | 
             | Also the road safety sign, while a funny combination, is
             | pretty standard and can be found all over Austria.
        
           | segasaturn wrote:
           | The rebranding is funny since people on TikTok also use
           | "fugging" to evade censorship.
        
             | Modified3019 wrote:
             | For me it's associated with the Finnish spurdo meme.
        
       | kerkeslager wrote:
       | I just cannot imagine why people are still using Google for
       | search at this point. Search results were bad before the AI
       | summary nonsense.
       | 
       | Kagi has been a joy to use.
        
       | psunavy03 wrote:
       | Well . . . it certainly illustrates the diversity of the word.
        
       | layer8 wrote:
       | "Frelling" also works.
        
       | medhir wrote:
       | really sad that this is what it's coming to... why are we having
       | to play these games to run a simple search?
        
       | btown wrote:
       | > This is not the first time internet sleuths have discovered a
       | way to disable Google's AI-powered results. Other methods are
       | more complicated, however, like adding a specific string of
       | characters to the search results page URL. This method of
       | swearing and pleading at Google to "just give me the fucking
       | links" is much more cathartic.
       | 
       | "More complicated" is actually just as simple as going to
       | https://tenbluelinks.org/ and following the instructions. It's so
       | refreshing to just see links when you search, and it's
       | unfortunate that the OP makes it out to be something that's
       | prohibitively difficult to do.
        
         | 85392_school wrote:
         | You might have even accidentally used the "no AI" mode if
         | you've clicked the Web option before.
        
       | meltyness wrote:
       | This is also cathartic.
        
       | rvnx wrote:
       | There is another advantage, you also avoid ads
        
       | mrandish wrote:
       | I waste so much time figuring out how to get a previously
       | functional tool to _stop_ shoving AI generated crap I don 't want
       | and never asked for in front of me. They either provide no way to
       | turn it off or hide how to turn it off deep in settings
       | surrounded by dark patterns.
       | 
       | I think it's because management at these companies has set AI
       | usage metrics as a critical KPI. Thus teams are highly
       | incentivized to just stick that shit in front of everyone and
       | make sure it's hard or impossible to turn off. I actually think
       | AI _can_ be genuinely useful in the right context but this insane
       | over-rotation to shoving it down our throats risks turning AI
       | into this decade 's Microsoft Bob - universally despised simply
       | on general principle.
        
         | tokioyoyo wrote:
         | Not sure if it works for everyone, but write a quick addon that
         | changes your browser's Agent header to something random or find
         | an open source one. Google seems to freak out and give a bit
         | different version of itself. I discovered it accidentally, not
         | sure how far it works though.
        
           | mrandish wrote:
           | I'll give that a try. I already have several userscripts in
           | ViolentMonkey just to fix various annoying things about
           | Google Search (like default re-enabling the Tools dropdown,
           | adding several new date options to that dropdown and unhiding
           | the search results-count (which is still there but now hidden
           | by default)). And of course, YouTube is completely unusable
           | without the Nova YouTube suite of modular userscripts.
           | 
           | Unshittifying my daily use Internet sites, browser (Firefox)
           | and operating system (Windows) is becoming extremely
           | annoying. It used to just require an occasional tweak here or
           | there. Now some new enshittification or regression pops up
           | almost every week. Most of it's just removing new things they
           | keep adding or restoring useful features killed because they
           | weren't driving this quarter's KPI du jour or as part of some
           | designer's misguided quest to achieve the Zen-like simplicity
           | of 'perfect emptiness'.
        
       | hardlianotion wrote:
       | I like the idea - it seems temporary but fun.
        
       | Conscat wrote:
       | Wow it actually works! Unfortunately my searches are still
       | plagued by Geeks4Geeks results.
        
         | miningape wrote:
         | I thought Geeks4Geeks was bad but now I'm craving respite from
         | all the AI SEO slop that gets served instead
        
       | globular-toast wrote:
       | This is similar to something I've been thinking about, which is
       | if people will develop ways of writing that signal somehow that
       | they definitely are not AI. Like including certain "banned"
       | phrases or whatever. Or logic contradictions that violate the
       | laws of robotics or something.
       | 
       | Or maybe we'll finally get serious about web of trust crypto if
       | we want to continue talking to humans.
        
       | singularis wrote:
       | https://labs.google.com/search/experiment/1
        
       | rmason wrote:
       | It works but you don't get the results you want if you use it on
       | travel queries. What you receive is a page of Reddit links on how
       | to get laid in said city;<).
        
       | iury-sza wrote:
       | Relevant smbc comic
       | 
       | https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/human-arts
        
       | grahamj wrote:
       | Just stop fucking using google
        
       | wslh wrote:
       | Seems that we need a ---AI. My simple theory is that the Google
       | search engine product really ceased to exist long time ago, and
       | it is only an ad system. Nothing else.
        
       | cynicalsecurity wrote:
       | This is something straight form sarcastic and creative sci-fi
       | books like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
        
       | autoexec wrote:
       | Every time some product or service introduces AI (or more
       | accurately shoves it down our throats) people start looking for a
       | way to get rid of it.
       | 
       | It's so strange how much money and time companies are pouring
       | into "features" that the public continues to reject at every
       | opportunity.
       | 
       | At this point I'm convinced that the endless AI hype and all the
       | investment is purely due to hopes that it will soon put vast
       | numbers of employees out of work and allow companies to use the
       | massive amounts of data they've collected about us against us
       | more effectively. All the AI being shoehorned into products and
       | services now are mostly to test, improve, and advertise for the
       | AI being used, not to provide any value for users who'd rather
       | have nothing to do with it.
        
         | voidhorse wrote:
         | Precisely. From day one this was about doing what
         | industrialization did for manual labor for "white collar" work.
        
           | greenavocado wrote:
           | The end goal is a global panopticon followed by a culling of
           | the herd. Read the inscriptions:
           | https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-
           | archaeo...
        
             | talldayo wrote:
             | Sometimes I worry that the internet has enabled ordinary
             | but gullible people to find exactly the supporting evidence
             | they need to be considered insane by society.
        
               | greenavocado wrote:
               | The Freemasons which rule over you in the form of police
               | and courts and the legislative branch built the Georgia
               | Guidestones
        
               | NikolaNovak wrote:
               | I genuinely cannot tell if this is a joke, or a serious
               | hypothesis :-/
        
               | miningape wrote:
               | The best conspiracy theories dance along this line
        
               | quesera wrote:
               | > _the internet has enabled ordinary but gullible people
               | to find exactly the supporting evidence they need to be
               | considered insane by society_
               | 
               | If by "be considered insane by society", you mean "find
               | each other, attract new members, mobilize, and vote", I'd
               | say you're spot on.
               | 
               | This was all a big mistake. To future generations, all I
               | can say is that we meant well.
        
               | gosub100 wrote:
               | Billionaires destroy the working class: "progress".
               | 
               | Working class organizes a defense: "insanity".
        
         | smt88 wrote:
         | AI has value the way self-checkout has value: it's anti-
         | consumer and widely hated, but it (can) save the companies
         | money and will therefore be too widespread for anyone to opt
         | out.
        
           | n4r9 wrote:
           | Self-checkout has come a long way IMO. I love not having to
           | queue as long or speak to staff. The occasional "unknown
           | item" still happens, but it's worth it. Even better are the
           | ones in smaller shops that don't have a weighing sensor.
        
           | autoexec wrote:
           | Self-checkout has its uses and supporters. Introverts, the
           | socially anxious, people in a hurry, people who'd much prefer
           | to bag (or double/triple bag) their own items in ways that
           | work best for them, people who want to get the organic tomato
           | at the price of the non-organic one.
           | 
           | It's absolutely still a scheme by companies to get rid of
           | employees and get customers to do work for them for free, and
           | there are still issues with the systems not working very
           | well, but we at least have the option (in almost all cases)
           | to queue up at the one or two registers with an employee
           | doing the work. When it comes to AI, we're often not being
           | given any choice at all. Even if we can avoid using it, or
           | somehow avoid seeing it, we will still be training it.
        
             | ryandrake wrote:
             | > people in a hurry
             | 
             | Huh, I always thought it was the opposite: If you're in a
             | hurry, you go through traditional check-out. Nothing really
             | matches the speed of an experienced and trained grocery
             | store checkout clerk whizzing boxes past the scanner faster
             | than you can load them into your cart. I think traditional
             | checkout can blaze through 30 grocery items before I can
             | even get three or four out of my cart, fumble around with
             | them in front of the scanners, and then get chastised and
             | stopped by the computer because I didn't place the item
             | properly on the shelf next to the checkout machine.
        
               | zeroonetwothree wrote:
               | If I'm buying one thing then it's much faster to self
               | checkout than have to wait in line.
               | 
               | I agree with you for large purchases.
        
               | quantified wrote:
               | There are 4-12 self-checkout kiosks and the loads there
               | tend to be smaller. So the line moves. Speed of checkout
               | once you reach the clerk in a traditional lane, hands-
               | down faster than self.
               | 
               | Plus traditional is where you buy alcohol.
        
               | autoexec wrote:
               | I've seen liquor stores that handle alcohol sales through
               | self-checkout without friction. They don't check IDs 99%
               | of the time, which I suspect could get them in some
               | trouble, but instead the monitoring employee basically
               | looks at you and makes a judgement call on your age and
               | if you're clearly not a child they approve it before
               | you're even done scanning.
        
               | quantified wrote:
               | What state or territory does that? Not a challenge, just
               | curious, there are over 50 to track.
        
               | timewizard wrote:
               | Do you remember "10 items or fewer" lines in grocery
               | stores? I suspect self checkout is the reason they no
               | longer exist. It was a fair trade.
        
               | bobbiechen wrote:
               | This lines up with my experience loitering in the soup
               | aisle and stopwatching the grocery checkouts:
               | https://bobbiechen.com/blog/2022/2/17/let-them-check-you-
               | out
        
             | ghaff wrote:
             | It's certainly a way to cut costs. It's also, for a few
             | conveniently handled bar-coded items, generally faster and
             | more convenient than waiting in line behind a person with a
             | shopping cart full of items. (Yes, there are express lanes
             | but they're often not that express.)
        
           | pm215 wrote:
           | I like self checkout for medium to small shops (which is
           | pretty much all I do since my local small supermarket is 100
           | metres down the road). Before they put in the self checkouts
           | there was always a huge queue for the registers and I avoided
           | shopping there; now I almost never have to queue and it's
           | much faster to get in, pick up a dozen items and get out.
        
           | vivekd wrote:
           | I donno I like AI, I don't use it often but when I do I've
           | found it useful and impressive. It's really improved quality
           | of life when it comes to having something to read over my
           | work or help with finding small bits of info. I also like
           | self checkout because this it reduced wait times at the
           | store.
           | 
           | I think people are always resistant to change. People didn't
           | like ATMs when they first came out either. I think it's
           | improved things.
        
         | basscomm wrote:
         | > At this point I'm convinced that the endless AI hype and all
         | the investment is purely due to hopes that it will soon put
         | vast amounts of employees out of work
         | 
         | It's this part.
         | 
         | Salaries and benefits are expensive. A computer program doesn't
         | need a salary, retirement benefits, insurance, retirement,
         | doesn't call in sick, doesn't take vacations, works 24/7, etc.
        
           | dbcjv7vhxj wrote:
           | No it's not. It's because management is tone deaf and out of
           | touch. They'll latch onto literally anything put in front of
           | them as a way out of their inability to iterate and innovate
           | on their products.
           | 
           | Throwing "ai" into it is a simple addition, if it works,
           | great, if it doesn't well the market just wasn't ready.
           | 
           | But if they have to actually talk to their users and solve
           | their real problems that's a really hard pill to swallow,
           | extremely hard to solve correctly, and basically impossible
           | to sell to shareholders because you likely have to explain
           | that your last 50 ideas and the tech debt they created are
           | the problem that needs to be excised.
        
             | RajT88 wrote:
             | Today it is AI. Yesterday it was Blockchain.
             | 
             | Tomorrow it will be Agentic AI Blockchains.
             | 
             | I know what you are thinking: robots are coming for our
             | jobs after that. Don't worry! Those AI robots will run on
             | the Cloud.
        
               | SturgeonsLaw wrote:
               | But that's where my job is!
        
             | bee_rider wrote:
             | It also looks really appealing to do tasks you have a very
             | shallow and dismissive opinion of. For example, a lot of
             | managers and c-level sorts seem to think it will replace
             | developers. I think it would be great at summarizing and
             | passing up reports and generating plausible looking
             | meaningless text--so, it looks like it could do most
             | management type jobs, to me.
             | 
             | But, I must try to have a little bit of self awareness
             | here: if we all think it can do the jobs we don't
             | understand and don't think it can do the job we've got
             | experience in, then maybe that just indicates that it isn't
             | really very good at anything yet.
        
           | wilg wrote:
           | It's interesting how we can frame "potentially automating
           | tasks" in the most sinister conceivable way. The same
           | argument applies to essentially all technology, like a
           | computer.
        
             | autoexec wrote:
             | It's not really interesting, it's exactly what should be
             | expected. We've seen how corporations act, and their
             | history and our prior experiences go on to shape our
             | perceptions and expectations accordingly.
        
             | ADeerAppeared wrote:
             | > The same argument applies to essentially all technology,
             | like a computer.
             | 
             | Why yes, it does.
             | 
             | Even setting aside that most AI hype: Yes, automation is in
             | fact quite sinister if you do not go out of your way to
             | deal with the downsides. Putting people out of a job is
             | bad, actually.
             | 
             | Yes. The industrial revolution was a great boon to humanity
             | that drastically improved quality of living and wealth. It
             | also created horrific torment nexuses like mechanical looms
             | into which we sent small children to get maimed.
             | 
             | And we absolutely could've had the former without the
             | latter; Child labour laws handily proved it was possible,
             | and should have been implemented far sooner.
        
               | DowsingSpoon wrote:
               | In addition, the Industrial Revolution led to societal
               | upheaval which took more than a century to sort out, if
               | you agree its ever been sorted out at all.
               | 
               | So, if it is true we're on the cusp of an AI Revolution,
               | AGI, the Singularity, or anything like that, then there's
               | precedent to worry. It could destroy our lives and
               | livelihoods on a timescale of decades, even if the whole
               | world really would be over all improved in a century or
               | two.
        
           | Eisenstein wrote:
           | Who do they think will buy their products if there are no
           | employees anywhere? Businesses, even business facing ones,
           | eventually rely on consumers at some point to buy things.
           | What can be gained by putting everyone out of work?
        
             | balder1991 wrote:
             | I remain skeptical of the prediction that AI will simply
             | "take over jobs". If AI becomes advanced enough to perform
             | tasks traditionally done by skilled professionals, it would
             | instead democratize access to capabilities that are
             | currently gatekept by wealth and resources (since right now
             | you can't have human employees, but you'd be able to have
             | AI workers for cheap).
             | 
             | In this scenario, individuals without substantial capital
             | could leverage AI to achieve outcomes that today require
             | the resources and influence of wealthy founders. It might
             | do the opposite of what CEOs seem to think: challenge
             | existing power structures and create a more level playing
             | field.
        
           | gwervc wrote:
           | It's not totally true: computer programs have downtime (even
           | major cloud platforms), and need maintenance to keep being
           | useful and operational.
        
         | Fomite wrote:
         | "How do I tell Copilot to go fuck itself?" - My mother during a
         | recent tech support call.
        
           | hinkley wrote:
           | Siri will shut up if you yell,
           | 
           | "Nobody asked you, Siri!" at it.
           | 
           | And that, kids, is how I met your mother.
        
         | hinkley wrote:
         | Somewhere there's a graph that went boop just enough to get
         | someone a promotion, a raise, or a bonus.
        
         | munk-a wrote:
         | With the amounts being invested into AI and even just in
         | recognition of running an AI service (@see how openAI loses
         | money on their $200 subscriber accounts). The "for funsies"
         | services like switching an HTML form over to a chatbot are
         | clearly not going to be a realistic resolution for this
         | technology. I'd argue that even when it comes to code
         | generation the tools can be useful for green-field prototyping
         | but the idea that a developer will need to verify the output of
         | a model will never cause more than marginal economy of tools in
         | that sector.
         | 
         | The outcome that the large companies are banking on is
         | replacing workers, even employees with rather modest
         | compensation end up costing a significant amount if you
         | consider overhead and training. There is (mostly) no AI feature
         | that wall street or investors care about except replacing labor
         | - everything else just seems to exist as a form of marketing.
        
           | gwervc wrote:
           | Ok but how are the companies supposed to replace workers when
           | the tech isn't having real use cases, and is far from
           | accurate?
        
             | hatefulmoron wrote:
             | One prescient comment was made by Eric Yuan (Zoom CEO), who
             | made the claim that the reliability and general efficacy
             | issues from AI products would be solved "down the stack",
             | and I think this is more or less the attitude right now.
             | Firms believe if they can build their LLM/AI products, the
             | underlying LLMs/AI will catch up over time to meet their
             | requirements.
             | 
             | I've also talked to a number of CTOs and CEOs who tell me
             | that they're building their own AI products nominally to
             | replace human workers, but they're not necessarily
             | confident it will be successful in the foreseeable future.
             | However, they want to be in a good place to capitalize on
             | the success of AI if it does happen.
        
         | timoth3y wrote:
         | > At this point I'm convinced that the endless AI hype and all
         | the investment is purely due to hopes that it will soon put
         | vast amounts of employees out of work
         | 
         | That's certainly part of it.
         | 
         | However, at this point I think a lot of it is a kind of
         | emotional sunk-cost. To stop now would require a lot of very
         | wealthy and powerful people to admit they had personally made a
         | very serious mistake.
        
           | munk-a wrote:
           | It is also possible that we're just in the realm of pure
           | speculation now - if you look at Tesla and NVidia both their
           | valuations are completely imaginary and with the latter
           | standing to benefit a lot by being shovel sellers (but not
           | _that_ much) and the former seeing an active decline in
           | profitability while still watching the numbers go up.
           | 
           | It may be less that people are unaware of the speculative
           | bubble but are just hoping to get in and out before it pops.
        
         | xivzgrev wrote:
         | There will be a crash as with any hype cycle
         | 
         | But this is normal. A new thing is discovered, the market runs
         | lots of tests to discover where it works / doesn't, there's a
         | crash, valid use cases are found / scaled and the market
         | matures.
         | 
         | Y'all surely lived thru the mobile app hype cycle, where every
         | startup was "uber for x".
         | 
         | The amount of money being spent today pales in comparison to
         | the long term money on even one use case that scales. It's a
         | good bet if you are a VC.
        
           | ryandrake wrote:
           | It's a weird cycle though where the order of everything is
           | messed up.
           | 
           | The normal tech innovation model is: 1. User problem
           | identified, 2. Technology advancement achieved, 3.
           | Application built to solve problem
           | 
           | With AI, it's turned into: 1. Technology advancement
           | achieved, 2. Applications haphazardly being built to do
           | anything with Technology, 3. Frantic search for users who
           | might want to use applications.
           | 
           | I don't know how the industry thinks they're going to make
           | any money out of the new model.
        
             | contravariant wrote:
             | I mean the obvious solution is to just manufacture more
             | problems.
             | 
             | I wish I could be certain that we're not doing that
             | already.
        
               | gtirloni wrote:
               | In this case, I wouldn't attribute malice to
               | incompetence.
        
               | johnnyanmac wrote:
               | we most certainly are with this subscription era of
               | software. No one had an issue with buying Office or
               | Photoshop or any other product that has no business
               | needing to do monthly update cycles being a "buy once,
               | own until you wanna upgrade". Except executives who
               | wanted to siphon more money out of their products.
        
             | teeray wrote:
             | > With AI, it's turned into: 1. Technology advancement
             | achieved, 2. Applications haphazardly being built to do
             | anything with Technology, 3. Frantic search for users who
             | might want to use applications.
             | 
             | No, it's always been 1) Utter the current password in your
             | pitch deck to unlock investor dollars. Recently it's "AI"
             | and "LLM," but previously it was "Blockchain," "Big Data,"
             | etc.
        
           | johnnyanmac wrote:
           | I just wish the workers didn't have to suffer everytime some
           | CEOs decide to experiment with humanity and stakeholders
           | overhype things.
        
         | analog31 wrote:
         | The faint ray of hope that someone will engage has been the
         | essence of advertising since time immoral.
         | 
         | It's similar to the question of why flies lay millions of eggs.
        
         | morpheos137 wrote:
         | It's not strange. It's about power and control. Google and the
         | other big names could care less about user satisfaction: their
         | customers are the ad buyers.
         | 
         | It's too bad because even 10 years ago Google and the internet
         | in general were magical. You could find information on any
         | topic, make connections and change your life. Now it is mostly
         | santized dumbed down crap and the discovery of anything special
         | is hidden under mountains of SEO spam, now even AI generated
         | SEO spam that is transparently crap for any moderately
         | intelligent user.
         | 
         | For a specific example I like to watch wildlife videos and
         | specifically ones that give insight to how animal think and
         | process the world. This comparative psychology can help us
         | better understand ourselves.
         | 
         | If you want to watch Macaque monkeys for example google/youtube
         | feeds you almost exclusively SEO videos from a handful of
         | locations in Cambodia. There are plenty of other videos out
         | there but they are hidden by the mass produced videos out of
         | Cambodia.
         | 
         | If I find an interesting video and my view history is off the
         | same video is often undiscoverable again even with the exact
         | same search terms.
         | 
         | Search terms are disregarded or substituted willy nilly by
         | Google AI who thinks it knows better what I want than myself.
         | 
         | But the most egregious thing for me as a viewer of nature
         | videos is the AI generated content. It is obviously CGI and
         | often ridiculous or physically impossible. For example let's
         | say I want to see how a monkey interacts with a predatory
         | python, I am allowed to watch that right??? Or are all the
         | Serengeti lion hunting gazel videos to be banned in 2025? Lol.
         | So I search "python attacks monkey" hoping to see a video in
         | the natural setting. Instead I am greeted with maybe a handful
         | of badly shot videos probably staged by humans and hundreds of
         | CGI cartoons that are obviously not real. In one the monkey had
         | a snake mouth! Lol. Who goes searching for real nature videos
         | to see badly faked stuff?
         | 
         | Because of how I can not find anything on google or Youtube
         | anymore without picking through a mountain of crap I use them
         | less now. This is for almost any kind of topic not just nature
         | videos.
         | 
         | Is that a win for advertisers? Less use? I don't think so.
         | 
         | In about 20 years of using the product the number of times a
         | google or Youtube search has led to me actually purchasing a
         | product or service DUE to an ad I saw, is I believe precisely
         | zero.
         | 
         | Recently I have been seeing Temu (zero interest), disability
         | fraud (how is this allowed), senior, and facebook ads. I am a
         | non disabled, 30 something man. I saw an ad for burial
         | insurance today.
         | 
         | Why is facebook paying to advertise "facebook" on youtube in
         | 2025? Is this some ritual sacrifice to the god Mammon or
         | something? Surely in 2025 everyone who would be interested in
         | Facebook has heard of it. I have the Facebook app installed.
         | Why the hell do facebook investors stand facebook paying google
         | to advertise facebook non-selectively on youtube. It's the
         | stupidest thing I ever saw.
         | 
         | I have not watched any political content in years. And yet when
         | I search for a wild life video I get mountains of videos about
         | Trump and a handful of mass produced low quality wildlife
         | content interspersed.
         | 
         | Today I was treated to an irrelevant ad about "jowl reduction."
         | 
         | I know many of you use ad blockers but this is how horrendous
         | it is without them. You can't find what you want, even what you
         | just saw, and you are treated to a deluge of irrelevant,
         | obnoxious content and ads.
         | 
         | Clearly it is about social control, turning our minds to mush
         | to better serve us even more terrible ad content.
        
           | bbarnett wrote:
           | Almost makes me think curated TV will come back, even if all
           | streamed. Real humans with reputations, and ensuring no
           | fakery.
           | 
           | And a vast decline in youtube.
        
             | autoexec wrote:
             | That's every streaming service right now. Netflix hides all
             | kinds of things they have on offer from you because they've
             | already decided what they want you to watch and they'll
             | push it at you over and over again while keeping other
             | content hidden unless you explicitly search for it.
             | 
             | We have curated TV now, but just like before the people
             | doing the curation aren't doing it based on what's good for
             | you, the viewer. It's based on what will benefit their
             | bottom line.
             | 
             | The things we try to resort to in order to figure out what
             | to spend our time watching like review sites and social
             | media are already gamed and astroturfed to death. Each new
             | one that comes out gets less useful as time goes on because
             | of it.
             | 
             | Good luck finding the real humans online among the
             | countless AI generated curators PR firms churn out.
        
           | autoexec wrote:
           | One of the fun things about surveillance capitalism is that
           | you can't correct errors in any of the millions of
           | assumptions being made about you based on any number of tiny
           | details collected about your life.
           | 
           | Sounds like somebody somewhere thinks that you're old, or
           | that you know an old person. Maybe you live in an area with
           | lots of old people. Maybe you've got aging parents. Maybe an
           | old person had your IP before you did. Maybe just the fact
           | that you're still using facebook is good enough to identify
           | someone as being old the majority of the time.
        
           | araes wrote:
           | Similar result, maybe not quite so illustrative, perhaps more
           | colorful, just involving images not videos. Ended up at a
           | similar conclusion.
           | 
           | Tried to search user interface design for an ongoing project,
           | and found that Google now simply ignores filtering
           | attempts... Try to find ideas about multi-color designs, and
           | all there is are endless image spam sites and Letterman style
           | Top 10 lists. Try to filter those out, and Google just
           | ignores many attempts.
           | 
           | There's so many, that even those that actually do get
           | successfully filtered out, only reveal the next layer of
           | slime to dig through. Maybe the people that didn't pay enough
           | for placement?
           | 
           | Huge majority, far and away, where the "Alamy",
           | "Shutterstock", "_____Stock", ect... photos websites. There's
           | so many it's not really practical to notch filter. Anything
           | involving images. Spend all day just trying to notch filter
           | through "_____Stock" results to get to something real.
           | 
           | The worst though, was that even among sites that wrote
           | something, there was almost nothing that was actually "user
           | interfaces" or anything related to design, other than
           | simplistic sites like "top 10 colors for your next design"
           | that are easy to churn out.
           | 
           | Try to search on a different subject and filter for only
           | recent results from 2024, get results from 2015, 2016.
           | Difficult to tell if the subject had simply collapsed in the
           | intervening 10 years (seemed unlikely) or if Google was
           | completely ignoring the filters applied. The results did not
           | substantially change. It's like existing in an echo chamber
           | where you're shown what you're supposed to view. It all feels
           | very 1984 lately.
           | 
           | Basically ended up at the same conclusion: their customers
           | are the ad buyers. They don't get enough money from "normal"
           | people to care.
        
         | bobxmax wrote:
         | Billions of dollars are being spent on very useful AI.
         | 
         | You just notice the shitty ones, but people on HN thinks that's
         | the norm for some reason.
        
           | timewizard wrote:
           | Is the "useful AI" technology any different from this slop?
           | If not then I fear that's wasted money as well. Which I think
           | is the reason this stuff keeps getting shoehorned in. They
           | invested money in training and equipment all of which is
           | depreciating far faster than it has returned value.
           | 
           | I strongly doubt this "dichotomy AI" theory.
        
             | bobxmax wrote:
             | That's demonstrably false unless you believe millions of
             | people are spending their own money every month for useless
             | tech.
             | 
             | I don't know how a thinking person can use this technology
             | and not see the possibilities it opens up.
        
               | timewizard wrote:
               | > unless you believe millions of people are spending
               | their own money every month for useless tech.
               | 
               | Your premise is wrong. You assume these people are
               | spending money creating useful output or would otherwise
               | understand and be able to implement a more efficient
               | means on their own. In the words of David Graeber a lot
               | of people have bullshit jobs, are you sure the "AI" isn't
               | alleviating some other problem for them?
               | 
               | > and not see the possibilities it opens up.
               | 
               | The current technology has no natural exponential growth
               | curve. Which means for a linear increase in spending you
               | get a linear increase in accuracy. Any thinking person
               | should see where this is going. Which is why you should
               | call these LLMs so you don't accidentally fool yourself.
               | 
               | I mean, of course, when AGI does arrive and has a
               | reasonable power budget, then we're talking. The current
               | technology will never become this or anything like this.
               | This will almost certainly lead to a new "AI winter"
               | before AGI happens and will likewise almost certainly not
               | occur during yours or my lifetime.
               | 
               | If you do believe that then I have a self driving battery
               | powered semi to sell you that's fully autonomous and will
               | run road cargo trains for you all day and night for huge
               | profits.
        
               | gloosx wrote:
               | >unless you believe millions of people are spending their
               | own money every month for useless tech
               | 
               | that's a hot take! A classic "Eat shit! A million flies
               | can't be wrong.". really made me smile :)
               | 
               | BILLIONS of people are spending their own money for
               | useless tech, simply because they fear of missing out.
               | 
               | Thinking person can see it is generating text from the
               | input query - which is useful of course - but not
               | _dramatically_ useful
        
           | CountHackulus wrote:
           | Any useful AI I've seen isn't branded as "AI", it's just a
           | product that doesn't mention how it works.
        
           | Nullabillity wrote:
           | You might've been... slightly... more convincing if you had
           | any sources to back that _absolutely wild_ claim up.
        
         | IgorPartola wrote:
         | I am totally in the same boat but also I do suspect it is a
         | minority. It's the same way that some people really want open
         | source bootloaders, but 99.99% of people do not care at all.
         | Maybe AI assistants in random places just aren't that
         | compatible with people on HN but are possibly useful for a lot
         | of people not on HN?
        
           | fouronnes3 wrote:
           | I agree with this. I'm very surprised when I see someone
           | blindly trust whatever the AI summary says in a google query,
           | because I myself have internalized a long time ago to
           | strongly distrust it.
        
             | IgorPartola wrote:
             | To me it looks like for most things I search it just
             | verbatim is the top answer from Stack Overflow.
        
             | wlesieutre wrote:
             | I've seen quite a few posts on Reddit with people asking
             | questions like "Is a Mazda 2 really faster than a Civic
             | Type R?!? ChatGPT told me it is" and it's some complete
             | nonsense numbers that could've been fact checked in about 5
             | seconds.
             | 
             | I don't think the little "ChatGPT might be wrong, you
             | should check" disclaimer is doing very much.
        
               | autoexec wrote:
               | It's a good sign that people are even going to reddit and
               | asking for confirmation of something that seemed
               | suspicious to them. Sure, many of them could have googled
               | for those answers themselves, but part of the problem is
               | how unreliable and dishonest Google has become.
               | 
               | Reddit sure isn't an ideal place for fact checks. It's
               | full of PR bots and shills, but at least there are still
               | humans commenting and I can't fault people for doing what
               | they can in the best way they know how.
        
               | wlesieutre wrote:
               | For every person that asks I imagine there are a bunch
               | that just assume it must be true because the computer
               | told them
        
               | scarface_74 wrote:
               | Or they could have just use ChstGPT and typed "provide
               | citations...
               | 
               | https://chatgpt.com/share/679d7f5f-d508-8010-94fa-
               | df9d554b62...
               | 
               | (and then I just remembered that the free version doesn't
               | have web search)
        
           | autoexec wrote:
           | > It's the same way that some people really want open source
           | bootloaders, but 99.99% of people do not care at all.
           | 
           | In fairness to the 99.99% they don't even know what a
           | bootloader is and if they understood the situation and the
           | risks many of them would also favor an open option.
           | 
           | I don't think the rejection of AI is primarily a HN thing
           | though. It's my non-tech friends and family who have been
           | most vocal in complaining about it. The folks here are more
           | likely to have browser extensions and other workarounds or
           | know about alternative services that don't force AI on you in
           | the first place.
        
             | DavidPiper wrote:
             | > In fairness to the 99.99% they don't even know what a
             | bootloader is
             | 
             | True. And awareness and education is very important for
             | useful discourse.
             | 
             | > if they understood the situation and the risks many of
             | them would also favor an open option.
             | 
             | Raising my hand as one of those people who knows what a
             | bootloader is and also doesn't currently care about an open
             | option. Maybe at some time in the future I will again, but
             | for now it is very far down on my list of concerns.
             | 
             | I suspect whether or not AI is useful/high-
             | quality/"good"/etc is just not important to most poeple at
             | the moment. If they are laid off from their jobs in the
             | future and replaced with an AI, I suspect they'll start
             | caring more.
             | 
             | But in the general case, I've found "caring ahead-of-time"
             | (for want of a better phrase) is a very hard thing to
             | encourage, despite the fact that it's one of the most
             | effective things you can do if you direct it at the "right"
             | avenues (i.e. those that will affect you directly in the
             | future).
        
               | Retric wrote:
               | > one of the most effective things you can do if you
               | direct it in the "right" avenues
               | 
               | The people I know who "worry" are terrible about
               | predicting negative events that impact them. I think
               | that's why it's uncommon, lots of negative health
               | outcomes and almost zero actual benefits.
               | 
               | Instead simply aiming for reasonable levels of resiliency
               | in health, finances, etc tends to cover a huge range of
               | issues. In that context having a preference for open
               | systems makes a lot of sense, but focusing a lot of
               | effort on it doesn't.
        
           | mattpallissard wrote:
           | I think this is the case. Most of my family and friends use
           | and like the various AI features that are popping up but
           | aren't interested thinking about how to coax what they want
           | out of ChatGPT or Claude.
           | 
           | When it's integrated into a product people are more likely to
           | use it. Lowering the barrier to entry so to speak.
        
           | not2b wrote:
           | I don't think so. I have many nontechnical friends who are
           | furious at having to deal with bad AI, whether it's a stupid
           | chatbot that they have to talk to instead of a real person or
           | Google "AI overviews" that often get things completely wrong.
        
           | johnnyanmac wrote:
           | AI confidence has been dwindling[0][1] so I don't think
           | that's the biggest contributor.
           | 
           | I do think it's as simple as appealing to stakeholders in
           | whatever way they can, regardless of customer satisfaction.
           | As we've seen as of late, the stock markets are completely
           | antithetical to the improvement of people's lives.
           | 
           | The first point does indeed come into play because oftentimes
           | most people don't throw enough of a fuss against it. But
           | everything has some breaking point; Microsoft's horribly
           | launched Copilot for Office 365 showed one of them
           | 
           | [0]: https://www.warc.com/content/feed/ai-is-a-turn-off-for-
           | consu...
           | 
           | [1]: https://hbr.org/2025/01/research-consumers-dont-want-ai-
           | to-s...
        
           | rendaw wrote:
           | I agree, but doesn't that basically mean there are two camps:
           | people who dislike it, and people who don't care? I also
           | agree with GP in that there isn't any visible 3rd camp:
           | people who want it. If google themselves thought people
           | wanted this, they wouldn't need to make an un-dismissable
           | popup in all of their products with one button, "yes please
           | enable gemini for me", in order for people to use it.
           | 
           | I'm sure google thinks that people have some sort of bias,
           | and that if they force people to use it they'll come to like
           | it (just like google plus), but this also shows how much
           | google looks down on the free will of its users.
        
             | nearbuy wrote:
             | No, I like the AI summaries and I had assumed I was in the
             | silent majority. People like convenience and it usually
             | answers correctly.
        
           | cheese_van wrote:
           | <Maybe AI assistants in random places just aren't that
           | compatible with people on HN but are possibly useful for a
           | lot of people not on HN?>
           | 
           | Coincidentally today, I received an automated text from my
           | heath care entity along the lines of, "Please recognize this
           | number as from us. Our AI will be calling you to discuss your
           | heath."
           | 
           | No. I'm not going to have a personal discussion with an AI.
        
           | KennyBlanken wrote:
           | It's not even remotely a minority. It was widely mocked
           | everywhere when they first debuted it:
           | 
           | https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/1czcjze/how_is_ai_o.
           | ..
           | 
           | Mainstream press have been covering how much people hate it -
           | people's _grandparents_ are getting annoyed by it. Worse, it
           | comes on the heels of four years of Prabhakar Raghavan
           | ruining Google Search for the sake of trying to pump ad
           | revenue.
           | 
           | It's a steaming pile of dogshit that either provides useless
           | information unrelated to what you searched for and is just
           | another thing to scroll past, and even worse, provides
           | _completely wrong_ information half the time, which means
           | even if the response seems to be what you asked, it 's still
           | useless because you can't trust it.
        
         | 3dsnano wrote:
         | at work i've been tasked with "developing AI use cases" to add
         | on to our product.
         | 
         | we still don't know what problems to solve, but we're gonna use
         | AI to help us figure that out.
         | 
         | once we do, it's gonna be huge. this AI stuff is going to
         | change everything!!!
        
         | animitronix wrote:
         | Reminds me of 3d tv and AR glasses
        
         | callamdelaney wrote:
         | Moved from android to iOS to get rid of the ceaseless 'please
         | use our assistant' nagging.
        
           | bbarnett wrote:
           | I was going to buy a pixel 9 fold, but I literally have no
           | idea why I should.
           | 
           | All the ad talked about was AI, nothing about specs, and
           | barely a whisper of how it works, or even good demos of apps
           | switching between open and closed.
           | 
           | Every phone has AI now, big deal. How about you tell me,
           | Google, what is cool about the fold, instead of talking for 4
           | minutes about AI?!
        
         | gosub100 wrote:
         | I'll repeat my favorite quote about it (paraphrased and read it
         | here first but don't recall the attribution): AI can copy a
         | song, tell me a joke, predict what I buy, but I still have to
         | do my own dishes.
         | 
         | If AI (or any tech) could clean, do dishes, or cook (which is
         | not a chore for many, I acknowledge that) it could potentially
         | bring families together and improve the quality of peoples
         | lives.
         | 
         | Instead they are introducing it as a tool to replace jobs,
         | think for us, and mistrust each other ("you sound like an AI
         | bot!/you just copied that from chatgpt! You didn't draw that!
         | How do I know you're real?"
         | 
         | I don't know if they really thought through to an endgame,
         | honestly. How much decimation can you inflict on the economy
         | before the snake eats its own tail?
        
           | bbarnett wrote:
           | 2030 at the latest. LLM androids(robots).
        
             | gosub100 wrote:
             | I would be fine with cheating and embedding magnets in the
             | plates or having a special track that fits the plate to the
             | sink. But I find it pathetic that this problem hasn't been
             | solved yet. No one likes doing dishes.
        
               | bbarnett wrote:
               | Well, dishwashers are enough to remove lots of the work.
               | And they can dry the dishes too.
               | 
               | So it's a lower bar, there's a partial solution.
        
             | Terr_ wrote:
             | > LLM androids
             | 
             | They'll make you the perfect pizza with cheese that doesn't
             | slide off because of the glue.
             | 
             | But seriously, I predict inadvisably-applied LLMs are going
             | to eventually end up somewhere between the mistakes of
             | Juicero and the mistakes of leaded gasoline.
        
           | huhkerrf wrote:
           | It's "I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do
           | art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that
           | I can do my laundry and dishes."
           | 
           | Which is a stupid argument, since there is "any tech" that
           | can do your laundry and dishes, and it's been around for
           | decades! Is it too hard for you to put your dishes in the
           | dishwasher, or your clothes in the washing machine?
           | 
           | And I say this as someone bearish on AI.
        
             | dragonwriter wrote:
             | > Is it too hard for you to put your dishes in the
             | dishwasher, or your clothes in the washing machine?
             | 
             | Is it "too hard"? No. Is it a substantial time sink, and
             | one that (in the case of laundry, particularly) breaks up
             | flow, so that it is inconvenient for someone who has to
             | deal with $DAYJOB and those chores and wants to do art and
             | writing (or other personal projects that take focus)? Yes.
        
         | kristopolous wrote:
         | At my company we have a live service chat feature. Recently
         | some of our customers have been requesting an AI chatbot
         | support (we've got fairly technical product offerings). I'm
         | guessing they want to ask a bunch of stupid questions.
         | 
         | I'm surprised as well. Some people want it
        
           | autoexec wrote:
           | the only reasons i can imagine that a customer would want to
           | use an AI chatbot for support instead of chatting with a
           | person is either because they don't currently have the option
           | to chat with a person 24/7 at all (AI is better than no chat
           | support), or their experience with human chat support has
           | been terrible (long wait times, slow responses, unhelpful
           | agents, annoying language barriers, responses so unnatural
           | and overly scripted that they might as well be bots, etc).
           | 
           | There's nothing AI brings to the table that a competent human
           | wouldn't, with the added benefit that you don't have to worry
           | about AI making things up or not understanding you.
           | 
           | Or maybe they just want to try and convince the AI to give
           | them things you wouldn't (https://arstechnica.com/tech-
           | policy/2024/02/air-canada-must-...)
        
             | kristopolous wrote:
             | I dunno. Sarah Connor explained it pretty nicely in the 90s
             | 
             | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tksN5Jaan9E
             | 
             | Kinda on the nose
        
             | djur wrote:
             | I agree, although "competent human" is not really the bar
             | when we're talking about actually existing phone support. A
             | while back I was trying to solve an issue with Verizon and
             | calling three separate times I got three completely
             | different approaches to solving my problem, all three of
             | which were totally incorrect. (And the correct solution was
             | literally just "go to this URL and fill out a form".) At
             | least one of those people gave me advice that would have
             | put me in legal hot water. It was rough.
        
         | karaterobot wrote:
         | Adding unwanted features, bolting on an AI assistant, changing
         | to a subscription model, and even automating away employees can
         | all be explained by the following iron rule: C-level leadership
         | lives in abject terror of the numbers not going up anymore.
         | Even if a product is perfect, and everyone who needs it owns
         | it, and it needs no improvement, they must still find a way
         | make the numbers go up. Always. So, they'll grab hold of any
         | trend which, in their panic, seems like it might be a possible
         | life preserver.
        
         | scarface_74 wrote:
         | What choice does Google have? Google search is such a shit show
         | now that I use ChatGPT to do any complicated web search. The
         | paid version has had web search for over two years now.
         | 
         | Google couldn't just keep ignoring it. I do wish it were an
         | option instead of on by default - except for searches they can
         | monetize
        
           | notpushkin wrote:
           | Could they... improve their search results?
        
           | ikt wrote:
           | how does chatgpt paid compare to perplexity.ai ?
        
             | scarface_74 wrote:
             | I just used perplexity.ai. The interface is janky and it
             | looks like it just does search.
             | 
             | ChatGPT has image generation, you can upload word docs,
             | images and PDFs and it has a built in Python runtime that
             | it uses to offload math problems to.
        
         | nonchalantsui wrote:
         | Marc Andreessen stated on twitter that was a core reason for
         | why he likes AI, to drive down wages (which in his words "must
         | crash").
         | 
         | So you are not far off from that concept of putting vast
         | numbers of employees out of work, when influential figures like
         | Andressen are openly stating that is their ambitions.
        
           | 0xcde4c3db wrote:
           | And Larry Ellison wants us all under the eye of AI cameras so
           | that "citizens will be on their best behavior". I almost used
           | the word "panopticon" there, but Ellison is proposing
           | something strictly worse, in that there's no hope of the
           | cameras not being watched.
        
         | ranger_danger wrote:
         | > people start looking for a way to get rid of it
         | 
         | I would bet money that the majority of users do not actually
         | feel this way.
        
         | Larrikin wrote:
         | I work on a project where customers need to fill out a form to
         | receive help. We introduced an AI chat bot to help them do the
         | form by just talking through the problem and answering
         | questions. Then the form is filled out for the customer for
         | them to review before submitting.
         | 
         | Personally I find it slower than just doing it manually but it
         | has resulted in the form being correct more often now and has a
         | lot of usage. There is also a big button when the chat opens
         | that you can click to just fill it out manually.
         | 
         | It has its place, that place just isn't everywhere and the only
         | option.
        
           | lazyasciiart wrote:
           | I did a project a while back that created a wizard to fill in
           | a form - I also found it much easier to simply complete the
           | form, but when we demonstrated it to target users they nearly
           | cried with relief. It was a good reminder of the importance
           | of knowing what users actually want.
           | 
           | I should go back to look at that and see if we could
           | incorporate an easy ChatBot as an improvement.
        
           | wokwokwok wrote:
           | I'm sure there's a time and place for these things, but this
           | sounds very much like the echo chamber I hear at work all the
           | time.
           | 
           | Someone has a 'friend' who has a totally-not-publically-
           | visible form where a chat bot interacts with the form and
           | helps the user fill the form in.
           | 
           | ...and users love it.
           | 
           | However, when _really_ pressed, I 've yet to encounter
           | someone who can actually tell me _specifically_
           | 
           | 1) What form it is (i.e. can I see it?)
           | 
           | 2) How much effort it was to build that feature.
           | 
           | ...because, the problem with this story is that what you're
           | describing is a pretty hard problem to solve:
           | 
           | - An agent interacts with a user.
           | 
           | - The agent has free reign to fill out the form fields.
           | 
           | - Guided by the user, the agent helps will out form fields in
           | a way which is both faster and more accurate than users
           | typing into the field themselves.
           | 
           | - At any time the user can opt to stop interacting with the
           | the agent and fill in the fields and the agent must
           | understand what's happened independently of the chat context.
           | i.e. The form state has to be part of the chat bot's context.
           | 
           | - At the end, the details filled in by the agent are
           | distinguished from user inputs for user review.
           | 
           | It's not a trivial problem. It sounds like a trivial problem;
           | the agent asks 'what sort of user are you?' and parses the
           | answer into one of three enum values; Client, Foo, Bar -> and
           | sets the field 'user type' to the value via a custom hook.
           | 
           | However, when you try to actually build such a system (as I
           | have), then there are a lot of complicated edge cases, and
           | users _HATE_ it when the bot does the wrong thing, especially
           | when they 're primed to click 'that looks good to me' without
           | actually reading what the agent did.
           | 
           | So.
           | 
           | Can you share an example?
           | 
           | What does 'and has a lot of usage' mean in this context? Has
           | it _increased_ the number of people filling in the form, or
           | completing it correctly (or both?) ?
           | 
           | I'd love to see one that users like, because, oh boy, did
           | they _HATE_ the one we built.
           | 
           | At the end of the day, smart validation hints on form input
           | fields are a lot of easier to implement, and are well
           | understood by users of all types in my experience; it's just
           | generally a better, normal way of improving form conversion
           | rates which is well documented, understood and measurable
           | using analytics.
           | 
           | ...unless you specifically need to add "uses AI" to your
           | slide deck for your next round of funding.
        
         | toss1 wrote:
         | Yet, some analysts claim the fact that people nevertheless use
         | these awful choices means they like them despite their frequent
         | complaints.
         | 
         | They cite "Revealed Choice", which may apply when there is an
         | actual choice.
         | 
         | But in the nearly winner-take-all dynamic of digital services,
         | when the few oligopolistic market leaders present nearly
         | identical choices, the actual usage pattern reveals only that a
         | few bad choices are just barely worse than chucking the whole
         | thing.
        
         | Blikkentrekker wrote:
         | Correction: That some subset of the people you mostly meet
         | online tries to get rid off.
         | 
         | You'd be surprised how many don't even realize it's artificial,
         | and/or welcome it. The average Google user is most certainly
         | not similar to the average Hacker News commenter.
        
         | bradgessler wrote:
         | There's been several products where I want to pay to disable
         | certain features--especially AI features.
        
         | gessha wrote:
         | > hopes that it will soon put vast numbers of employees out of
         | work and allow companies to use the massive amounts of data
         | they've collected about us against us more effectively.
         | 
         | They already fired so many developers and this feels more like
         | a Hail Mary before maintenance costs and tech debt start
         | catching up to you.
        
         | hulitu wrote:
         | > At this point I'm convinced that the endless AI hype and all
         | the investment is purely due to hopes that it will soon put
         | vast numbers of employees out of work
         | 
         | no. On the contrary. We will need people to clean the mess left
         | by AI
         | 
         | > and allow companies to use the massive amounts of data
         | they've collected about us against us more effectively.
         | 
         | yes.
        
       | adra wrote:
       | There is also an Adblock plus filter to stop the AI from ever
       | showing up. Can't remember what it was at the moment, but it
       | worked great.
        
       | metabagel wrote:
       | Unrelated, but I just found out that Kagi will produce (AI
       | generated) "quick answers" if you end your query with a question
       | mark.
        
       | russellbeattie wrote:
       | So much overreaction to this feature. You can turn it off, just
       | look for it.
       | 
       | I think the AI summaries are super useful. 90% of the time it
       | answers the question I have accurately and concisely, saving me
       | time and effort.
       | 
       | The paragraph summaries give me a good overview of a topic, and
       | the links to the original sources save me from scanning through
       | tons of websites looking for details.
       | 
       | I never fully trust the AI summary, it's just a better way to
       | look for information. I click on the reference link often to
       | double check the source and the accuracy of the summary. I think
       | I've only discovered a discrepancy once or twice.
       | 
       | Google isn't a utility, if you don't like Gemini, go use DDG or
       | Bing.
        
       | wruza wrote:
       | Real hackers add &udm=
        
       | anigbrowl wrote:
       | Wow what a great technological society we've built
        
       | Reason077 wrote:
       | I neutralise the AI summaries by adding the following rules in
       | AdGuard for Safari:                 google.com###m-x-content
       | google.com###B2Jtyd
       | 
       | Add this to AdGuard Preferences -> Filters -> User Rules. It
       | makes search results load faster too!
        
       | vzaliva wrote:
       | somebody should make a browser plugin which add expletive to each
       | google search :)
        
         | tashian wrote:
         | or to hide the AI content areas
        
       | Wowfunhappy wrote:
       | You can also append `&udm=14` to the end of your search url and
       | the AI summary will go away.
       | 
       | If someone hasn't already made a userscript to do this
       | automatically, someone should, it would be very easy.
        
         | miningape wrote:
         | It can also be added to the default search URL in your browser
         | (usually they replace %s with the search query)
        
         | babymetal wrote:
         | Thank you. Showing tidbits like this from HN to my kids has
         | seemed to help guide them to be be more curious and creative in
         | how they use the internet, instead of treating it like a
         | magical black box.
        
       | ZhiqiangWang wrote:
       | I think in a few years we will be laughing at all those anti-
       | trust cases against Google since web search business will no
       | longer be relevant
        
       | nejsjsjsbsb wrote:
       | If I had do that then I will DDG or something. Or is there a user
       | script to hide the AI?
        
       | imchillyb wrote:
       | The technologically inclined will persist in pushing back against
       | egregious changes in their daily routine.
       | 
       | The technologically disinclined or illiterate will continue to be
       | oblivious, and simply use whatever is placed before them.
       | 
       | If this were not true, then app stores wouldn't have so much
       | malware easily available to the masses. It wouldn't be profitable
       | to release such things. It is profitable.
       | 
       | The masses will continue to amass stupidity as a miser amasses
       | coin.
        
       | IAmGraydon wrote:
       | What amazes me about Google's AI results is how often they are
       | blatantly incorrect. I think most of us here on HN are above
       | average in terms of critical thinking, but I often think to
       | myself how many people are seeing these results, taking it as
       | truth, and walking away that much dumber or worse - spreading
       | this misinformation among their friends and colleagues. Google
       | could not care less. They just want to defeat the threat from
       | other LLMs.
        
         | blibble wrote:
         | remember to upvote the bad ones so it gets worse!
        
       | kelvinjps10 wrote:
       | You can just disable it on the settings?
        
       | taylorius wrote:
       | Is there nothing that word can't do?
        
       | dwoldrich wrote:
       | I like the DDG Assist button. I think there are non-obtrusive
       | ways to incorporate AI in search.
        
       | have-a-break wrote:
       | Easiest way to deal with hospital staff spamming "this person
       | needs an IOP".
        
       | buybackoff wrote:
       | Just use this https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14 as the
       | default browser engine. See also https://udm14.com/.
       | 
       | I was late to this, but G's default search had been becoming
       | worse and worse. The trick is equivalent to clicking the "Web"
       | tab when you do default search. In 99.9% cases the "Web" tab is
       | what I need, it's pure and no noise. I do not mind clicking the
       | "All" tab e.g. for a tennis player last name during AO to get all
       | details I need. Actually, for sport events the default G's
       | functionality is insanely useful, such as live score updates.
        
       | sexy_seedbox wrote:
       | Is this what big tech has come to?
        
       | Dansvidania wrote:
       | Anyone still using Google search here on HN? Genuinely curious no
       | /s
        
       | skeptrune wrote:
       | AI is over-hyped to a surreal extent. If people aren't looking
       | for help generating text, don't generate text for them. We don't
       | need to stuff it into every possible UX available.
        
       | cjtrowbridge wrote:
       | Lmao
        
       | iamkp1 wrote:
       | Fear is .. Going forward AI will be used for automated reviews
       | and ratings.. imagine your next purchase in any of the online
       | store or a restaurant.. you will notice 4.7 or 4.5 ratings with
       | tons of good reviews.. as good a s real a human reviews..
       | 
       | So get fooled in future with AI..
        
       | iamkp1 wrote:
       | Indirectly direct effect... In near future we may see reviews and
       | ratings generated and posted automatically by AI agents .. we
       | would get fooled with 4.7 or 4.5 rating with interesting reviews,
       | all auto posted by AI agents .. means we will get affected
       | directly due to this process, a smart tech-nerd differentiate
       | this but 99.99% common man cant make out and going to fail 90%
       | times in his decisions.
       | 
       | Things will benefit with AI.. But more things will get screwed by
       | too.
        
       | cbar_tx wrote:
       | or stop using google search
        
       | cbar_tx wrote:
       | or stop using google search. the idea that reliable search
       | results are exclusive to google is a delusional lie that lazy
       | people tell themselves, hoping everyone else will believe it too.
        
       | j45 wrote:
       | Reading this headline made me think, there should be voting for
       | most useful headline of the year.
        
       | seventytwo wrote:
       | Just use Kagi
        
       | DonHopkins wrote:
       | What if you're searching for fucking, but DO want the AI
       | summaries?
        
       | pknerd wrote:
       | INterestingly, my ISP(Pakistan Telecom) blocked the website
       | because it contains the F* word
        
       | pknerd wrote:
       | It seems you do not need to swear
       | 
       | I did an experiment, I am not sure such but so far it is working
       | 
       | <YourKeyword> -Gemini
       | 
       | for example: Object Oriented Programming -Gemini
       | 
       | I did a few searches and it is working so far.
        
       | est wrote:
       | Or don't use google at all.
       | 
       | It's a bloated service run by an advertising corp.
        
       | dotcoma wrote:
       | Progress never stops! ;)
        
       | eimrine wrote:
       | The advice has made my day, I have found some oldschool 20yo
       | forum on the topic I really appreciate and thought I have read
       | everything about it. Shame on you Googlag that you pessimize that
       | old resources.
        
       | joduplessis wrote:
       | Actually makes the results fairly interesting too. :)
        
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