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>AI can be helpful in these moments, synthesizing insights for questions where there’s no one right answer. Soon, you’ll see AI-powered features in Search that
by alexb_ 4y ago
>AI can be helpful in these moments, synthesizing insights for questions where there’s no one right answer. Soon, you’ll see AI-powered features in Search that distill complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats, so you can quickly understand the big picture and learn more from the web: whether that’s seeking out additional perspectives, like blogs from people who play both piano and guitar, or going deeper on a related topic, like steps to get started as a beginner. These new AI features will begin rolling out on Google Search soon.
This is actually really huge. If done right, Google will be increasing the amount of "no-click" searches an incredible amount. I'm interested to see how good of a job the "factual grounding" works - this linked blog post in the article is pretty interesting https://ai.googleblog.com/2022/01/lamda-towards-safe-grounded-and-high.html https://ai.googleblog.com/2022/01/lamda-towards-safe-grounde...
- volkk 4y agoi wonder what kind of downstream effects on the ad click industry this will have. would kill for it all to die and be reinvented in a different, more personalizable and clever way
- CabSauce 4y agoThat's good for users, potentially. But not good for the sites where google is sourcing the information.
- echelon 4y agoThe web was a stepping stone.
- daveidol 4y agoThat's one of the big problems with these types of AI - piggybacking on everyone else's work, typically with no attribution _whatsoever_.
- amelius 4y agoYet you better cooperate otherwise you won't get any visitors at all.
- visarga 4y agoNobody owes you visitors.
- Aachen 4y agoNobody owes you a normal life but it would be a shame if society actually thought that way and we never developed social security and universal healthcare. Using the monopoly on search to dictate how you shall present your content to the google god is still a bad thing.
- kerpotgh 4y agoGoogle brings visitors to your site for free or no one would find it in the first place. You can always robot opt out and then your information is “secure”.
- jjeaff 4y agoPotentially good for users initially. But I can't see how anyone will be incentivized to create and post content for Google to scrape if they won't have any traffic from Google. It could actually be a huge benefit in some ways if it chokes out the content mills. However, something tells me that they have little to no overhead compared to the people who actually toil away to post good, original content.
- toddmorey 4y agoThe skeptic in me can’t help but think this experience has been designed to keep more people on Google properties longer. It feels parasitic.
- throwawayjdjd 4y agoThey make money when you click away from their properties
- dougmwne 4y agoThat could be incredibly dangerous for their Adsense revenue.
- cwillu 4y agoThe missed innovation is always a threat to the core business, that's the trap.
- pastor_bob 4y agoCompanies will have to start opening up their wallets to pay for their "Bard-Rank" BULLISH for GOOGL
- sleton38234234 4y agoi for one, hope that the AI will mostly stick to analyzing the content, rather than search intent because Google has had a history of misreading my search intent, quite frequently.
- elorant 4y agoI like that, and that's the one thing I enjoy most about ChatGPT, but the problem with this scenario is that it breaks the web. If a search engine can give me all the answers I want, then there’s no point in visiting sites anymore, aside for e-commerce. So if you have a site you wouldn’t want the next AI search engine to crawl your content because you get no traffic back. So either they find a way to give traffic back, or soon enough there will be no content to provide through an AI search engine.
- visarga 4y agoWhat traffic are you getting back from commenting on HN. If you're not getting any, why are you wasting your time? Of course you can post online for other reasons, like participating in a debate, building a community, working on a project, or just for hobby. And usually that's the good part of the web. Otherwise why would people be using site:reddit.com in their searches.
- elorant 4y agoGetting on HN doesn't cost me a dime though, aside from spending personal time. Having a web site costs money both to maintain the hardware, and the content. And if someone wants to index the content he should give me back traffic. That's the premise upon which search engines were build. You break that, we end-up with a walled off garden that handles all the information.
- danychok 4y agoAlso, if no one's site is getting human traffic would the quantity of human generated content degrade over time? And AI content will increase? And then what will the AI's scrape/learn from? Themselves? How do you change their minds when the information changes in reality, but a bunch of AIs are stuck in a consensus loop? =)
- meken 4y agoI still think I will read articles for the opinion of the writer, the vibe of the site, and the experience of reading an article. I don’t see chatGPT replacing this for me
- drcode 4y agoYeah what I totally want when I have a nuanced question is an AI that just gives me a mealy-mouthed, non-committal response, such as in the example for this post on whether guitar or piano is easier to learn. If you asked your friend, who's a serious musician, and they gave this kind of couched answer, you would be really annoyed at them.
- makeitdouble 4y agoThe side effect of too much no-click results could be mainstream sites completely disengaging from Google Search altogether. Just as sites already set no-index zones, those could expand to protect from training. That kind of move could be the actual “Google Search killer”