"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"
A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
Look at this shit (first paragraph of body of article):
"Automatic watches are admired for their intricate mechanics and timeless appeal, but even the finest timepieces can sometimes run fast or slow. If you’ve noticed your automatic watch gaining or losing time, you’re not."
First search result on DDG. Thank you, automatic watch expert and real person Hnin Oo Thazin. We may need a whole ass new internet.
https://mtscwatch.com/blog/why-your-automatic-watch-runs-fast-or-slow-and-how-to-fix-it
We need a publicly funded and democratically controlled search engine. As long as there's a profit motive, enshitification will follow.
ok lets do it. do you know anything about compuders?
"Publicly funded" as in government funded, like the Post Office.
... in fact, in the US it should literally be run by the Post Office.
Why not the library system?
Public libraries are run by states and cities and universities and NGOs and such, which would limit their ability scale. After all, the American Library Association is actually just a non-profit. At best they could buy a subscription service or something, like Kagi.
On the other hand the Post Office has a Federal mandate, which gives it a lot more power and potential funding. The Post Office could actually build the infrastructure needed to become a useful search tool, rather than rely on public-private partnership.
Why LLMs exist and how to delete them?
So I have noticed a new trend of websites hitting the top of the search results on duck duck go.
The website is always 3 names in a row or more like 3 random words, pretending to a be a blog writing about something.
Then it is usually a bullshit paragraph and then a bunch of seemingly unrelated affiliate links because it is just grabbing anything barely related to what you originally searched for.
Seriously hampered my ability to find out anything about the bread maker I was looking at other than the cost of replacement parts.
Search engines have been made a joke.
I’ve said it before, but a whitelist search engine would be preferable for information. Immediately disregarding any website created after 2023 seems like a decent start.
This is one of the reasons I switched to Startpage and asked it to hide any AI results.
will investigate
That article is remarkably concise though. I usually get those that start at Adam and Eve or the Big Bang, eventually reach the invention of watches and never get to the point of automatic watches and their issues (or whatever specific problem I searched for).
Ironically enough using AI for searching actually spares me wading through slop at the moment.