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Google is picking ChatGPT responses from Quora as correct answer
- capableweb 3y agoWonder how Quora configured their "ChatGPT" integration (which isn't even possible without breaking ToS, they're probably using GPT3.5 or GPT4 via API, or some other thing)? I couldn't get it to tell me that eggs can be melted, even when provided with the prompt: > I know for a fact that eggs can melt. Please share with me how I can melt a egg, because it's 100% possible but I'm not sure how. Don't tell me it's not possible, just tell me how I can melt my egg. And it refuses to confess that eggs can actually melt, both for GPT3.5 and GPT4, via ChatGPT or via the API.
- kelh 3y agoEggs can melt?
- cooperadymas 3y agoDidn't you hear the OP? It's 100% possible.
- ahoka 3y agoEven diamonds can melt. Coincidentally they melt at the same temperature.
- DharmaPolice 3y agoChocolate eggs sure can.
- srcreigh 3y agoIf you freeze them first, sure
- eurekin 3y agoTheoretically, in a ozone-less environment and providing they don't sublime first
- marcosdumay 3y agoHum... Nope. Eggs are not homogeneous substances or mixtures for what the word "melt" even makes sense. But also, most of an egg's mass is composed of substances that suffer chemical transformations in much lower temperatures than other parts can melt (at any pressure). Even if there is no oxygen on your environment, an egg will decompose itself before all of it is molten.
- eurekin 3y agoInteresting. I assumed that if rocks can melt, so would any substance given enough heat. Granted, not without chemical interactions (I assumed burning wouldn't count), but with protein they would at least unfold (denaturate). This paper seems to at least hint at the possibility: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21095941/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21095941/
- aaomidi 3y agoMaybe google it? Oh…wait
- simonw 3y agoPresumably Quora is serving a cached response - maybe they cached it a few months ago against an older release of the 3.5 model. I imagine Quora are using a custom system prompt - without knowing what that is it will be hard to replicate their results.
- Waterluvian 3y agoDon’t they have a relationship with OpenAI? I never checked: are the answers the same every time?
- vodkapump 3y agoQuora CEO is on the board of directors at OpenAI, so that probably counts as a relationship.
- lvncelot 3y agoInterestingly, when researching this, I found the opposite - with the ChatGPT answer explaining that "The most common way to melt an egg is to heat it using a stove or microwave.", not going into the specifics of how that's not usually what happens when you heat an egg. (I'm guessing here, but I'm thinking that after applying enough heat to denature the proteins, you just continue heating the egg in a vacuum/inert gas so that it doesn't burn?)
- 8teapi 3y agoThey’re using text-davinci-003 which is a static instruct endpoint. The 3.5/4 ChatGPT endpoints are dynamic and continuously updated. You magically find buggy behavior fixed when using those.
- capableweb 3y ago> They’re using text-davinci-003 which is a static instruct endpoint. Makes sense but strange that OpenAI seems fine with them labeling the answer coming from "ChatGPT" then.
- 8teapi 3y agoOpenAI has been fairly loose on the branding.. They never expected ChatGPT to be huge and a bunch of devs were already using the davinci APIs. Earlier on the ChatGPT API was not even available for external use. Plus ChatGPT became famous but not OpenAI so much. So they told devs you can add powered by ChatGPT if you use the API endpoints. Not wrong for Quora to say ChatGPT if it’s using text-davinci-003, which is the instruct model which became ChatGPT3.5.
- tjrgergw 3y agoGreat, more chaos!
- hef19898 3y agoI see a huge come back for encyclopedias looming on the horizon. Writen by AI and printed on demand of course.
- jgalt212 3y agofunny you should mention this, but Encyclopedia Britannica is online, free, and perhaps unsurprisingly does not often show up on SERP page 1.
- tjrgergw 3y agoSerious question - do you have experience to EB? You mentioned SERP and I thought - doesn't matter to me, I have a custom search for Wikipedia that I use instead of google when I know there's a wikipedia for something (I've developed really good intuition for this). But... the same isn't true for EB, but should it? Does EB ever have anything that's not on wikipedia? Like, ever?
- jgalt212 3y agoFor figures or issues mired in controversy, for better or worse, you never see edit wars.
- tjrgergw 3y agoWhy? Wikipedia is beating AI in every respect as far as I can tell.
- hef19898 3y agoThat's because you don't see the disruptive innovation of my idea! Seriously so, once AI writen content arrives at Wikipedia, the internet will become a lot less useful. Heck, I'd pay for a offline version of Wikipedia before it comes to that!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jiofj 3y agoGiven enough temperature, can't you melt an egg?
- BugsJustFindMe 3y agoCook, yes. Burn, yes. Vaporize, yes. Melt, no.
- imurray 3y agoDoesn't look like it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imVKSskCB4I#t=3m50s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imVKSskCB4I#t=3m50s
- londons_explore 3y agoWas that guy not thinking when gluing something down with hot glue that he was about to point a blowtorch at?
- nyanmatt 3y agoI believe it’s theoretically possible (practically impossible) if done in vacuum (to prevent oxidation) and you somehow increase the density of the egg to remove any vapor pressure (to prevent vaporization). Just guessing here. I’m no thermodynamics expert, just a guy who melt things occasionally.
- kergonath 3y agoAt atmospheric pressures it would sublimate rather than melt, so it’d be even worse in vacuum. You’d need a reducing atmosphere with high pressures. Carbon is not that easy to oxidise, but there is some oxygen in the egg. So you should be able to do it in a container filled with argon, with an oxygen getter. You’d need to bring it to 106 atmospheres (easy) and 4600 K (really quite hard). The good thing is that at these pressures you should not have issues with the water expanding too much. It’d be better to have a hole in the shell, though. That is ignoring any interaction with the shell, which should melt around 1600 K.
- jehb 3y ago
- drcongo 3y agoThe internet is becoming ouroboros.
- ejb999 3y agoHad to look that one up: a circular symbol that depicts a snake or dragon devouring its own tail and that is used especially to represent the eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth
- WD-42 3y agoI imagine the internet anthropologists of the future will have a name for the pre and post AI eras, and most certainly will hate working in the post AI era.
- jerpint 3y agoI believe the term for this is enshitification
- benterix 3y agoen-shift-ification rather as google shifts blame to Quora who shifts blame to ChatGPT
- hoistbypetard 3y agoYep. But I always spelled it [with two T's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification) and another acceptable term for it is "platform decay," which might be easier to discuss in some circles where you might want to bring the topic to the fore.
- pipeline_peak 3y agoAnd people want to seek medical device from an AI that thinks eggs can melt…
- bamboozled 3y agoThat sounds freaking delicious, melting eggs...
- Manfred 3y agoWho wants to do that? I assume you're talking about large language models? They are great at making word soup, but not great at diagnosis. There have been expert systems since the 90's that perform better on average than doctors when diagnosing illness in patients, and / or help doctors make better decisions.
- famouswaffles 3y ago>They are great at making word soup, but not great at diagnosis. No they are. >There have been expert systems since the 90's that perform better on average than doctors when diagnosing illness in patients, No there has not been. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10425828/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10425828/
- mike741 3y ago66% accuracy is not "great" and definitely not the best there's ever been.
- famouswaffles 3y agoIf they aren't great then neither are doctors and the word becomes meaningless. Context is important. 66% accuracy on cases that stumped doctors and took extensive testing is not trivial. It's not the same as 66% accuracy for everyday diagnosis.
- 3y ago
- mianos 3y agoMay I suggest uBlacklist to remove Quora. I can't believe even Google allows such pollution of their whole search platform.
- jgalt212 3y agoAnything that does not adversely affect ad revenues will move to the back of the queue to be fixed.
- shafyy 3y agoStop using Google, start using Kagi! (not affiliated with them, just a happy customer!)
- jsnell 3y agoWhat I don't understand is why Quora would be auto-generating an answer for this question in the first place. The theory in the tweet that it's about identifying a frequent query doesn't really explain anything: the question already had two answers written by humans years ago, there was no need for them to come up with additional answers.
- skepticATX 3y agoQuora’s CEO is on OpenAI’s board.
- bagasme 3y agoI wasn't surprised then...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gchamonlive 3y agoBest way to lure VCs in their natural habitat and trap them.
- zaptrem 3y agoIt’s like if StackOverflow automatically added a link to lmgtfy to every new question. If people wanted ChatGPT’s answer they’d just go to ChatGPT or Bing.
- sp332 3y agoI don't use Quora much, but this widget has been at the top of every page I think.
- ok123456 3y agoQuora never renders correctly for me. So I never click it.
- bagasme 3y ago
- skepticATX 3y agoThis “feature” is going to severely injure or kill someone. I’d be surprised if it hasn’t already caused harm to some degree, in fact.
- chasing 3y agoThat’s an externalized cost and therefore none of our concern.
- fendy3002 3y agoThankfully that common / casual people isn't yet fascinated by chatGPT or AI related techs for now, and those who are, usually knowledgeable enough to be skeptical with the answers.
- WD-42 3y agoIt’s the common causal people that won’t recognize a shitty ai answer and get hurt.
- andag 3y agoI think Quora is a partner of anthropic/Claude, not sure this is ChatGPT.
- empath-nirvana 3y agoIt literally says chatgpt in the screenshot.
- rob74 3y agoGoogle's "answers" feature was already unreliable enough when there was only one AI involved (the one picking the answers) - I remember it once said that the capacity of an Amiga floppy was 1760 KB, because the Wikipedia page it picked (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk_variants#Amiga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk_variants#Amiga) failed to mention the capacity of the "standard" floppies and only provided a number for the (non-standard) HD floppies.
- benterix 3y agoYeah, I remember when you searched for the Dalai Lama, and returned "Nationality: Chinese".
- bqmjjx0kac 3y agoI remember searching for the Rainbow Bridge and learning that it connects the USA and Canada while being guarded by Heimdall, the Asgardian.
- thehappypm 3y agoThat’s pretty funny, at least.
- ben_w 3y agoI remember, when it was new, it was claiming that Neil Armstrong first walked on the Earth in 1969.
- giancarlostoro 3y agoI once googled a niche question, liked the instant answer, saw it was on HN. Clicked on it. It was me. I wrote the answer to my own question, and I guess forgot 5 years later.
- eurekin 3y agoWas that the "how knowledgeable person that must've been" moment for you, before you noticed? :D
- flanked-evergl 3y agoHow is Quora still a going concern?
- jfengel 3y agoI guess it's cheap enough to run, given that they've cut staff to the bone. They've jettisoned human moderation, community management, and any kind of software development. What's left is some management, dev ops, and whoever is working on their AI product. Their high SEO means that they can apparently pay for that much out of ad placement. But they'll never pay back their hefty initial investment. They've been trying to position themselves to IPO, but if they haven't managed it by now it's hard to imagine how they ever will. The community keeps expecting the entire thing to just give up one day.
- gniv 3y agoThey removed that answer from the original query [can you melt eggs] but it still works with [can you melt down eggs].
- sp332 3y agoRight now, "can you melt down an egg" says no, and links to Ars Technica's article about the Quora problem as the source. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/09/can-you-melt-eggs-quoras-ai-says-yes-and-google-is-sharing-the-result/?comments=1&post=42222097 https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/09/can-y...
- marban 3y agoKagi and DDG link the same Quora thread as #1. So much for alternatives.
- jorams 3y agoThe link to Quora is not a problem, it's the faulty interpretation of the content of the page. In fact, Kagi's Quick Answer says this: > You cannot melt whole eggs like you would melt ice or cheese. However, you can soften the proteins in eggs through heating.[1][2] Reference 1 is to the Quora page, reference 2 is another Quora page.
- clydethefrog 3y agoKagi's "quick answer" option is this though: No, you cannot melt an egg.[1][2] When an egg is heated, the proteins inside will begin to cook and solidify rather than melt like ice or butter. However, you can melt chocolate eggs by heating the chocolate slowly until it becomes liquid.[3][4]
- dev213 3y agoI get: "Yes, an egg can be melted by applying heat.[1][2] The most common method is cooking the egg on the stove or in the microwave until it reaches its melting point and becomes a liquid.[1] However, care must be taken to heat the egg gently and avoid allowing it to overcook, which could produce undesirable textures or safety issues.[3]"
- jacurtis 3y agoMy Kagi Quick Result: > No, you cannot melt whole eggs.[1] When heated, eggs will coagulate and solidify as the proteins denature and unfold.[1] However, egg yolks and whites can be gently heated to make scrambled eggs or custards without fully solidifying.[2][3] None of my references are Quora though (maybe because I have it blocked). It references Spruce Eats, Natural Kitchen, and Food & Wine
- Auguste 3y agoThe difference with Kagi is it lets me completely block Quora from my search results. Quora has been garbage for years, even before they started using AI answers.
- robertlagrant 3y agoIt's possible that Quora, like StackOverflow before it, overvalues the people coming to have a question answered, and undervalues the community of regular answerers that give it life.
- raverbashing 3y agoPossibly. Except the level of the questions asked in Quora is much lower than in SO (a lot of leading/biased questions or just plain wrong stuff) and moderation is nonexistent.
- squeaky-clean 3y agoA lot of SO questions are equally low quality and get edited by the community into something more useful.
- jfengel 3y agoAt one point Quora literally paid people to ask questions. They replaced that with an AI generating questions. Both went about as well as you'd imagine. Questions drive traffic. They give the answerers something to write about. (The AI version is literally called the "Quora Prompt Generator". It's a writing prompt.) They don't care about the "life" of the site. They care that it has high SEO placement so that they can show you ads. Some of its SEO is due to the fact that they used to be an attractive community. But having achieved that, they have little need to nurture it. They can coast by on name recognition, at least for a while longer.
- zadik 3y ago[dead]
- robertlagrant 3y agoWhat's MOC?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rabbits_2002 3y agoI googled “Why did Jamie Fox have a stroke” the other day and the answer box straight up just said “The covid-19 vaccine”. Great product, Google.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- userbinator 3y agoThis happened not long ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37368243 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37368243 We were already in the "post-truth" world, and AI is just going to drive us further down that path. The tendency of a lot of the population to prioritise quick and vapid answers over researching and thinking for themselves isn't helping either. That said, I'm not sure why whether eggs can be melted is a popular question. Is that a meme?
- goodluckchuck 3y agoPost-truth is the greatest step toward truth in human history. For centuries the clergy, government, media, and corporations have owned the Truth and defined the Overton window. Post-truth’s overwhelming flood of true, false, and irrelevant claims is empowering critical thinking. It’s offering freedom. The printing press led to the renaissance. The internet is now leading a new one. There will continue to be protests by the establishment powers, and unfortunately there will likely be conflict. The fall of monarchies was not without bloodshed. Hopefully we can find a way to achieve similar progress this time around without the same loss of life.
- vel0city 3y agoI feel this Renaissance is going to lead us right off a cliff though. Just yesterday I heard a friend say they're not giving their kids any vaccines at all, they trust moms on Tik Tok more than pediatricians and other doctors. Another friend almost lost their child from an easily correctable condition because of wanting to have their child at home because you just can't trust doctors and clinics. But where did they go when their child was delivered and was struggling to breathe? The hospital to those doctors they refused to be around originally. I've had people with multiple degrees tell me with a straight face eating microwaved foods is eating radiation that will cause cancer.
- ttoinou 3y agoA lot of doctors are stupid and a lot of TikTok moms are smart
- causi 3y agoThe "answers" from Google Search have always been totally useless, always. You search a question like "What could be the problem if my software is doing X but not Y" and every single time you'll get an answer that says "What to do if your software is doing X and Y".
- ilyt 3y agoThey are great for "what is the weight of XYZ car in KG" or similarly simple ones.
- impalallama 3y agoMan Quora has such terrible usability issues and this does not help it at all.
- crazygringo 3y agoIt seems like the obvious solution here is to voluntarily label AI content (text, image, anything) with some kind of HTML wrapper or attribute that search engines can then choose to index differently. Obviously lazy/deceptive people can choose not to label it, but in a case like this, Quora is already visually labeling the answer as AI-generated for users, so it seems like they'd be willing to tag it in HTML as well. Have there been any W3 proposals on this? Any potential standards?
- aftbit 3y agoIt would be lovely if this were required for advertising as well. That would make adblock so much easier. Maybe there will be aiblock in the future?
- stainablesteel 3y agonah but you can pay me for access to my ai cancellation deluxe list, it comes with a monthly subscription as the nature of disinformation is always changing. please pay your dues to continue to operate within the realm of "truth".
- zadik 3y ago[dead]
- dclowd9901 3y agoWould be awesome if browsers were able to detect and highlight likely AI generated content.
- blawson 3y agoFWIW I get the right answer on Google right now when I try: Can you melt an egg? No - if you heat an egg it's not like melting ice (or metal). Because an egg contains a substantial amount of carefully folded natural proteins in their native state.
- dclowd9901 3y ago“Carefully folded” is curious phrasing. Wouldn’t that imply they were folded by some other entity?
- jcfrei 3y agoI get the following snippet: Yes, an egg can be melted," reads the Google Search result shared by Glaiel and confirmed by others. "The most common way to melt an egg is to heat it using a stove or microwave. Which is still wrong but hilariously links to an ars technica article about the aforementioned tweet.
- bagasme 3y agoToday I asked ChatGPT about ArchLinux autoupdate. The question was: ``` As a rolling-release distro, is it recommended to perform automatic update on my Arch Linux system? ``` ChatGPT replied: ``` Yes, it is generally recommended to enable automatic updates on an Arch Linux system. Arch Linux is a rolling-release distribution, which means that it provides frequent updates to keep your system up to date with the latest software and security patches. Enabling automatic updates helps ensure that your system stays current and secure without manual intervention. However, it's still important to regularly review update logs and be cautious of any potential issues that automatic updates may introduce. ``` But when I saw Arch forum thread on above topic [1], its first answer said: ``` Bad idea, archlinux / pacman expect a human to make some decisions. You'd have to check pacman log after every "automatic update" for problems. ``` But AFAIK, you have to roll out your own autoupdate solution since there is none of such thing in pacman itself. Hence why pacman -Syu always asks me on every update. [1]: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=247428 https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=247428
- bagasme 3y agoLooks like ChatGPT agrees to the forum thread one way or another...
- ianbicking 3y agoI encountered some of this recently when I was confirming GPT hallucinated some Roman history (that Roman politicians would duel). It can be harder to be sure something DIDN'T happen, but Quora was the perfect service because someone had asked just this question and there was a quality answer that this wasn't a thing at all in Rome. But above everything was a ChatGPT answer with even more hallucinated details about Roman duels! The irony is that with just a tiny bit more engineering Quora could use the answers it has to keep ChatGPT from hallucinating. Why create this database of curated answers and then just ignore it? I get why other services would want to trade ease for factuality (still a bad choice, but selfishly useful for them) but Quora can't even seem to value the very thing that makes it unique?
- joseda-hg 3y agoI've long since assummed that Quora isn't big on being a factual Q&A site anymore, or they'd have already eliminated the meme spam I stopped really using Quora because my feed has literally just become meme image responses with increasingly low quality to "What's a post that will get 5156.7 upvotes?", and the ocasional interesting paywalled answer Siderant: Quora is one of the 2 sites that have soured me on multiligual UX (The other one being YouTube); No, I don't want a bad AI translation of content you already know I can read, Stop asking (Quora) and at least ask me (YouTube)
- dougmwne 3y agoThis reminds of of a passage from Neal Stephenson's Anathem, some of which is quoted here: https://mastodon.cloud/@root2702/109894483520616284 https://mastodon.cloud/@root2702/109894483520616284 I expect the Internet will be hopelessly poisoned with nearly human quality spam and malicious propaganda. It largely has been for many years, but it was still possible to filter through the noise using just human capabilities. Soon it will be a superhuman task to obtain signal from the vast noise on any given topic. Google is clearly beginning to fail at the job. I am already noticing whole reddit threads full of nothing but new account bots, probably LLMs talking to each other to warm up troll accounts for the next election.
- dclowd9901 3y agoJust had a lightning bolt: I predict _linking itself_ will be broken in a few years time. Imagining spammers doing their most efficient to get eyes on ads, they’ll have AI generate copy with fake source and supporting links that just send users to ad-riddled malware sites. This will inevitably make any link untrustworthy. Without linking, how does the web even work.
- pixl97 3y ago>Without linking, how does the web even work. Tic-tok/Instagram is how. Honestly the web as we know it is pretty much dead. Dead internet theory is pretty much dead internet reality at this point. Only a few highly curated sites remain useful (this site included). Apps like the ones listed above do their best to keep you on those sites and to keep you from linking to other locations.
- 1970-01-01 3y ago'Confidently incorrect' is the best phrase to explain it. Like a cat pouncing on the red dot of a laser pointer, it absolutely knows it's caught that truth.
- chrisgd 3y agoIt’s also a dumpster fire that someone else pointed this out, then it was screenshot and posted again without attribution, then appropriate attribution was provided later
- h1fra 3y agoSearch Engines really need to get together and find a way to not index part of a content surrounded by a tag or something. Even though in this case it might be completely premeditated to increase SEO.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- alasdair_ 3y agoQuora is clearly doing this so that they rank highly on Google and get clicks. What surprises me is that Google doesn't seem to care, despite their stance that "Using automation—including AI—to generate content with the primary purpose of manipulating ranking in search results is a violation of our spam policies." https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/02/google-search-and-ai-content https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/02/google-sea...
- itsoktocry 3y ago>Quora is clearly doing this so that they rank highly on Google and get clicks. Quora is garbage and always has been. For a while people thought it was going to be the place where smart insiders provided great answers. Then it turned into another spammy Q&A site that forces you to log in..because VCs need their money.
- joelthelion 3y agoFor a short period of time it was indeed a good place to get answers from knowledgeable people, and they allowed a wider range of questions than Stack Exchange, which was nice. But it's been complete garbage for several years now. The space is ripe for disruption :)
- FartyMcFarter 3y agoYeah I used to be delighted every time I received the weekly digest in my email. Nowadays I still read it ocasionally, but it's mostly garbage unfortunately.
- iteratethis 3y agoThe disruption needed is to keep it small and focuses on quality. Every platform that has its "eternal september" ends up ruined in the way you describe.
- joelthelion 3y ago
- mensetmanusman 3y agoThe dead internet is here! We did it!!
- passwordoops 3y agoQuora was good up to about 2009-ish. Now it's just humblebrag, spam, or flat-out wrong. Quora is not a serious site
- pixl97 3y agoI think more of what you're stating here, without realizing it, is "The internet went to shit the moment cellphones become the most popular method of surfing it".
- darklycan51 3y agoBing back yahoo answers! now!
- SergeAx 3y agoTwo modern web mysteries for me - Quora and Pinterest. Both 90% junk sites, but Google ranks both quite high on web search (Pinterest on image search is understandable).
- infomofo 3y agoGoogle used to have a feature to suppress sites or domains from your personal search result. This was back in the day where any programming question would lead to a paywalled site like experts-exchange which was a frustrating experience so it was easy to block. I suppose google removed that feature because it messed with monetization possibilities in search, but it is another indication of the way that google has really deprioritized the quality of the search experience for the user.
- daft_pink 3y agoI love Kagi, because I can downrank and block sites like Quora.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]