This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
More Perfect Union did a video on Google's descent into evil. I think it's this one
TLDW: Once Google pivoted from being a search service to an advertising agency, it was motivated to keep users from hyperlinking away from Google, and so offered summaries and alternatives controlled by Alphabet that allowed it to keep offering you ads.
So this AI service is just a natural iteration.
It's a self defeating strategy as more people turn to ai, less content gets produced so ai becomes static.
I truly believe the token model will kill AI, it will become too expensive
It already is too expensive and adding more compute doesn't make it cheaper lol it just causes a race to the bottom among data center providers and an eventual crash there too.
Only a minute away until Google starts a Soylent Green subsidiary company
The death of Stackoverflow is one of these events where the site has been completely killed by AI and yet its contents is completely necessary for AI to know about solving programming problems. Its death will mark the end of AIs ability to learn how to solve programming issues. Its cannibalizing itself in the process, as it destroys its sources it destroys its own ability to learn.
It's not just that, it's shitting where it eats. People are using it to fill the internet with disinformation, then it trains itself on it's own disinformation, and breeds even worse disinformation. This is why AI can never be smarter than it was in 2021.
On top of that, due to the indiscriminate DDOSing of the entire internet by AI bots, websites have been blocking any web crawlers that are not Google, which just contributes to their monopoly.
Honestly I think Google is pretty fucked in the long term
Nobody google anymore. They just ask chat
Friends don't let friends use Google.
I can't remember the name, but when the internet was just starting and there were a lot of search engines with no dominate ones, there was an aggregator program that you could input many search engines into, then use it as the searching tool. It would query all the engines and combine, sort, rank, and remove duplicate finds.
Edit: more specific - It was much like an FTP or torrent program but you'd load up what search engines to use and your search words, and it would actively pull the info then provide a single page with all results.
The reason I mention it is because we're sort of back at that point. Google is failing, Bing never was great, and all the alternatives have their issues, usually with not having the same database to work with. So if you gathered all the best ones, the ones without ties to corporate or AI, then put their results together, maybe you'd have something like what Google was at its peak before "do no evil" got painted over.
Incidentally, Google became what it was/is because it gobbled up a lot of those early search engines' databases. I miss you, Hotbot. You were a good one.
Was it MetaCrawler? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetaCrawler
SearXNG is the spiritual successor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SearXNG
No, I don't see mention of it being an application but like Dogpile is a web-based collector.
I did a search myself, but (given how searching sucks now) couldn't find anything. Lots of hits for search engines themselves, but getting past that to other methods back then is difficult.
It was much like an FTP or torrent program but you'd load up what search engines to use and your search words, and it would actively pull the info then provide a single page with all results.
I barely ever used it, but I'm assuming you are remembering gopher.
Gopher remained the most popular means of accessing the internet until 1994
Not quite that old, more in the 2000 range based on when I had my PC that I used it on. This was a GUI app for Windows. Wish I had an idea, that was like... too long ago.
I thought it was Autonomy. You installed a program, instructed puppies agents, logged out, and while you were offline the puppies searched through several engines. Next time you logged in the findings waited for you. That was the time of 56k modems and metered connections.
Search used to be so good. I had an old Honda civic that suddenly wouldn't start. It wasn't the starter, alternator, or battery. I managed to find a forum post with my exact issue, which was that a small rubber piece on the clutch pressed a button to "tell" the starter it was okay to start. Twenty minutes later I had zip tied a piece of plastic into place and had a working car again.
If I tried to diagnose that same issue today, it'd be dozens of SEO garbage slop sites without any actual useful information.
I was thinking the same thing recently. It's not the place it once was. But in general the internet has changed a lot. And it's not just AI.
Oh and now we're getting into age verification crap also yay
An example of number 4, there's a poster I've seen on reddit that's posting very relevant content, but then every post ends with "@xxxxxxxx on all socials". It just takes the whole thing from content I might want to engage with to the exact opposite.
DuckDuckGo and Ecosia?
Ecosia have planted 250,000+ trees so far and publish their accounts every month. I can’t think of a better option, unless there is a niche requirement.
they burn all their efforts by pushing genAI tech on their platform
Isn’t that hyperbole rather than truth? They’re still carbon negative.
They don’t provide AI by default (at least, I don’t get it). So people like us can continue to not use AI and the hundreds of million who use it every day can still support tree planting.
I don’t like AI, but if they don’t add it they could risk limiting their reach and environmental goals.
AI companies do not release any numbers themselves for carbon emissions. Therefore, companies that use AI cannot in any certainty claim to be carbon negative or neutral, because they have to count the supply chain emissions as well.
not adding AI does not stifle environmental goals, in fact you can only truthfully claim to strive for carbon goals if you do not use AI. After all, there is a reason that Microsoft abandoned their emission goals with AI as the cited reason first and foremost, which shows how incredibly dirty AI can be, even if no one releases any sensible metrics.
AI companies do not release any numbers themselves for carbon emissions. I think the EU is even helping them keep that "operationally sensitive information" private, which is a shame.
not adding AI does not stifle environmental goals I can't agree or disagree here. I know the demand for AI is huge: hundreds of millions of users per day and at least a billion per week. If Ecosia is seen not to have this feature, I would consider it possible that it hurts their adoption and therefore their goals.
which shows how incredibly dirty AI can be, even if no one releases any sensible metrics. Yes. I'm not sure how much solace the "world greenest AI" slogan can really offer in that context. https://blog.ecosia.org/ecosia-ai/ - but when I'm recommending search to someone, I recommend Ecosia over Google, Bing, DDG, Qwant, Mojeek, etc. simply because I think they are more of a net positive than the other options.
Who knows, maybe in a year or twos time I'll look back and regret it when more information surfaces. But they've been sensible enough until now with their operational choices to reach tree-planting goals.
Startpage and Mojeek.
DDG has contracts w Microslop.
Startpage uses google btw, Mojeek is decent. (I like Mojeek backend with SearXNG.)
We more less vibe-coding and more coders with thigh-high striped socks.
were you typing with your left hand?
Then the dating pool I chase can now support me! Wonderful!
It's the same arc every monopolistic corporation has taken before it, AI is just accelerating the pace of consuming your customer/product because profits must always increase.
There will be no large scale shift from these experiences because most people are either ok, apathetic or blissfully ignorant to the situation, the best you can do is to remove yourself from the exploitation of the userbase. Linux instead of Windows or Android, Almost any search engine other than Google, fediverse instead of reddit, etc.
