David Revoy | Mastodon | Bonus Timelapse

Transcript

The Degraded Search Engine

A comic in four panels:

Panel 1. Cepper, the gothic sorceress, walks toward a large steampunk machine in the center of the library written “Gooblin” on it, colored letters. The machine resembles a rusty block, with a threadmill on one side, a seat and a typewriter-style keyboard.

Cepper: “A good old ‘search engine’, this is what I need for my research!”

Panel 2. Close up, Cepper types on the typewriter keyboard, looking at the screen.

Cepper: “R.I.N.G. O.F. F.I.R.E S.P.E.L.L.S. enter”
Cepper: “…And voilà.”

Panel 3. The machine spits out dozens of scrolls and books. Cepper reads them.

Cepper: “Wait… Why are these results so bad?..”
Book 1: “(Ad) Ten Fire Spells That Will Change Your Life (You Won’t Believe the 7th!)”
Book 2: “(Sponsored) 15 Spicy Onion Ring Recipes”
Book 3: “(For you) Top 5 Best Engagement Rings”
Book 4: “(ad) How to Start a Campfire: A Comprehensive Guide”
Book 5: “Is Your Fire Spell Not Working? (Try This One Simple Trick!)”
Book 6: “(Sponsored) Cheap Fire-Resistant Panties! (50% Off Today Only!)”

Panel 4. A librarian approaches, their AI Parrot perched on their shoulder, pointing it. Cepper looks defeated, her eyes blasé.

Librarian: “Yeah, they tuned it this way so everyone just uses their Avian Intelligence for searching now…” Cepper: “…How unsurprising.”

  • username_1@discuss.tchncs.de
    1065·
    9 天前

    Yeah, of course THAT is the cause. The artist goes out of their way to fit the “AI bad” message in their comics. The result is… stretched.

    • fireweed@lemmy.world
      33·
      9 天前

      Okay but like, search is really bad now. Beyond just “welp, a bunch of bad actors figured out SEO, nothing we can do about that!” bad. At this point I wouldn’t discredit the idea that it’s something Google’s intentionally doing.

      • username_1@discuss.tchncs.de
        122·
        9 天前

        Nah, it was super bad since… 5-7 years ago. 10 years ago it was still ok. Plus the Google’s profit isn’t obvious.

          • username_1@discuss.tchncs.de
            210·
            9 天前

            I believe ALL search engines work in the similar way to LLMs: grafs/trees, weights, etc. So not sure if I understand your question correctly…

            • lime!@feddit.nu
              71·
              9 天前

              an llm isn’t a graph structure, it’s a list of vectors. anyway my point is that google started integrating transformer models almost as soon as they got them working, which is about 2017.

    • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
      151·
      9 天前

      This artist’s gags (at least the ones that make it to this comm) are all anti-AI. It’s like their thing. That said while Google search has been getting (intentionally) bad for a while it’s been ridiculous recently, and since it’s intentional anyway* it’s not hard to imagine that funneling users to Gemini is their new thing.

      *I remember reading a couple years ago that they had back rolled an update that improved search results, but not the details.

    • psx_crab@lemmy.zipEnglish
      141·
      9 天前

      Odd, you willing to believe the result are bad because SEO and ads, but you refuse to entertain the idea that they will funnel the attention to gemini with zero click search, which they already did…? I’m not sure if it’s intentional or not as i have no proof for it, lots of time my search yield worst result than what gemini given. Either they shit on the search result even more or LLM is a better search engine which i’m willing to believe, as it’s literally their thing.

    • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      152·
      9 天前

      I’m generally pro (or at least neutral) -AI myself, but I’m not seeing the issue here. Google search has gone down the drain, ever since they started compromising it to show more ads.

      • username_1@discuss.tchncs.de
        76·
        9 天前

        That draining has nothing to do with AI and started long before the LLM boom. That’s my point. I don’t argue with “results are bad”.

        • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          191·
          9 天前

          Given that they’ve demonstrated their willingness to compromise the quality of their search results, AND they are pushing AI really hard, is it in any way a stretch to say that they have a vested interest in making search worse to push people towards using Gemini?

          • username_1@discuss.tchncs.de
            31·
            9 天前

            Doubt that. Their search engine is a golden goose here and now. And what is Gemini? The idea of some other guy in this thread that the engine is more or less ok but the data itself is shitty sounds more plausible to me than Google is trying to push its own LLM by killing search engine.

            • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              13·
              9 天前

              Their search engine is a golden goose here and now

              Correction, their ad market is a golden goose, their search engine is merely a funnel to push ads to users.

              And what is Gemini

              Their LLM.

              more plausible to me than Google is trying to push its own LLM by killing search engine.

              So for some reason you can accept that they’re killing their search for the sake of ads, but not for the sake of AI?

            • teslekova@lemmy.mlEnglish
              21·
              9 天前

              What is Gemini? So you’re arguing against the hypothesis without even cursory knowledge on the topic?

              • username_1@discuss.tchncs.de
                12·
                8 天前

                Facepalm. No, read it as “Search engine is a golden goose, while Gemini is nothing worth mentioning in comparison”. And don’t even try to pretend that it wasn’t obvious.

      • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
        42·
        8 天前

        No it’s not. The enshittification of search results happened before “AI,” as a simple choice to ignore known spam.

        OP put it abrasively, though.