I’m a heavy Google search tool user. I’ve tried several of the alternatives (Bing, DuckDuckGo, and so on) but Google finds references they miss and I appreciate that. Google’s web crawlers, site ranking algorithms, and caching for rapid retrieval have been the best for decades. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lately Google has added generative AI to their results. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is not progress. It’s a disaster. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, people should understand that until AI, Google did not offer answers. Their results were references to sites with content that matched your search criteria; the sites most frequently referenced were placed first with a few lines from each source. The user was left to draw their own conclusions, and who better than the user to draw those conclusions?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, Google uses generative AI to extract a summary of the information it gathers from its Large Language Model (LLM). The search results follow the AI summary. This is supposed to make life easier for users. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately, Google’s summaries are unreliable trash. Don’t expect Google’s AI results to be factual, only to sound plausible. That’s what generative AI and Large Language Models are all about. Plausibility, not facts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If plausibility is all you want, AI is fine. But what kind of person are you for whom plausibility is good enough?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had a great uncle Adlepate (that’s not his real name) who was a great story teller. According to him, he lead an exciting life as a bootlegger running whisky from Canada and his garden was always had the earliest ripening and largest vegetables. But his stories would never pass fact checking. I soon learned not to count on the truth of Uncle Adlepate’s stories, and I realized that he was a repetitive and colossal bore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pay attention to Google AI summaries and prepare to join Uncle Adlepate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I knew better, but until today, I had begun slipping into paying attention to Google’s summaries. Today, Google revealed itself as Uncle Adlepate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am working on turning some of these posts in Vine Maple Farm into a book about life on Waschke Road when I was a kid. One of the posts I intend to include in the book refers to Thoreau’s famous phrase “a hound, a bay horse, and a turtledove.” The context in the original post was a little hazy so I wanted to reread Thoreau. I looked the phrase up with Google. The summary told me which chapter the phrase was from. The wrong chapter. I wasted– well waste is a bit strong, reading Thoreau is never a waste– but a good half hour of my day was misdirected. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I went back to Google and ignored the AI summary, I quickly found the phrase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So much for Google. I’m looking for a good way to turn the AI summaries off. I’m an old man. I don’t have time for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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