Information Corrosion: The destructive threat of AI search

[Celerity]

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-11-20-ai-information-corrosion/



Lucky you: For the length of time it takes you to read this column, you don’t have to think about Donald Trump, Matt Gaetz, Mike Huckabee, Pete Hegseth, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis being “excited by the news that the President-Elect will appoint @RobertKennedyJr to @HHSGov,” the headline writers at The New York Times, or all those miscreants in the Democratic Party whose refusal to follow your preferred strategy for the Harris-Walz campaign delivered the nation into the bosom of fascism. Nothing strictly political at all. Enjoy! Or maybe not. Today’s object of ire is web searches using large language models, which marketers have cleverly designated “AI.” More precisely, my beef is with people who desperately want to believe in artificial intelligence’s merit as an information broker. It started when I read a social media post from a former editor of mine whom I deeply respect. He cited his favorite “AI-powered search engine,” then did one of those parlor tricks where you ask it to write a poem with a series of silly constraints. The results were, allegedly, splendid.

Link to tweet

As I argued on the same social media platform, it astonishes me that critical thinkers would promote the use of AI search engines. I offered two reasons. The first is that a basic feature of an AI “search,” in contrast to a conventional search, is that it renders invisible the source of the information; a meal that comes shrink-wrapped, so to speak, only without the ingredients on the label. A commenter pointed out to me that this isn’t right, at least when it comes to Perplexity.ai and Microsoft Copilot, which affix footnotes to their summaries. But that’s also unsatisfying. They can’t footnote all their sources. That’s the point of a large language model: It draws from millions of sources. (It’s precisely this largeness that is responsible for a demerit of large language models I won’t belabor: the colossal amounts of energy these “data vampires” consume.)

My second complaint concerned what is colorfully referred to in the biz as “hallucinations”: when stuff they churn out is wrong. Enormous mischief ensues, with consequences that I find terrifying: not just for a writer like me, whose professional identity is bound up in words, but for anyone with a stake in there being more accurate information about the world rather than less. Which is to say, all of us. WE RECENTLY PASSED AN AI WATERSHED. Now, when you enter a Google search in the form of a question, it answers by placing AI-generated summaries, called “AI Overviews,” at the top of the results. Like this: “When did Google start putting AI at the top of its search answers?” Answer: “Google began prominently displaying AI-generated summaries, called ‘AI Overviews,’ at the top of search results, in May 2023 as part of their ‘Search Generative Experience’ (SGE) feature, initially rolling it out in the United States and then expanding to other countries; this essentially puts AI-powered answers directly at the top of the search page for certain queries.”



And that’s a nifty Exhibit A of the problem right there. Dig one level deeper—or a few inches lower. The first offering in the “People also ask” feature is “when did Google AI overview start?” Answer: “Google launched AI Overviews in the U.S. on May 14, 2024.” Which is not, in case you missed it, “May 2023.” Two pieces of directly contradictory information answering the same question. Which do you believe: your lying eyes, or your lying eyes? A further complication greets those who make their way down to the list of conventional search results. The first is a post from the Google blog dated May 14, 2024, called “Generative AI in Search: Let Google do the searching for you.” (Even algorithms have to advertise, I suppose.) The second is a puffy story from The Verge dated over a year earlier, from May 10, 2023, called “The AI takeover of Google Search starts now.” Only if you make your way to the third result, a Washington Post article from May 30, 2024, does this farrago of confusion recede. It’s entitled “Google scales back AI search answers after it told users to eat glue.” A complex story—a public launch, an embarrassing recall, then a quiet relaunch with no fanfare—has been utterly obscured. Quite clarifying, for those of us who stubbornly think search engines are supposed to make it easier, not harder, to understand reality.

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[dweller]

1. As much as I want to comment on this

I find myself instead contemplating the flavor of my glue stick
😐


✌🏻

[Celerity]

2. School's Out For Summer: The Glue Stick Taste Test

http://www.thepizzle.net/schools-out-for-summer-the-glue-stick-taste-test/



snip

The first glue stick I tried is the classic Elmer’s All Purpose Glue Stick.

Since I am a very cultured food writer, I decided to eat the glue stick on saltine crackers, which are a nice neutral accompaniment to slices of glue stick.

Elmer’s All-Purpose Glue Stick has a waxy texture to it (I know, shocker), but the most surprising part is the fact that it has a distinct pool water flavor, which gives way to a mealy aftertaste. Imagine biting into a chlorinated disc of waxy shortening, and that’s what eating glue sticks is like.

I went to college. I’ve been published by newspapers, magazines, and online outlets as a D-level food writer. Guys, I’m what success looks like.

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[eppur_se_muova]

3. "which marketers have cleverly designated "AI." " ... Yep, it's all about marketing. Promise the moon ...

... deliver stale cheese.

I've opted out of Google's AI searches. Unfortunately, Google seems to have altered its search algorithms so that they don't function as effectively without FI*, and it seems to be getting worse.








*Fake Intelligence, in case you can't guess.