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I won't be able to use their AI results if they are, personally. If I ask the question "what is the best tool for doing x" and I can't trust that the answer is

by gbro3n 5mo ago

I won't be able to use their AI results if they are, personally. If I ask the question "what is the best tool for doing x" and I can't trust that the answer is going to be the truth according to all available information, then the AI is useless or worse, misleading. If google is unbiased, and only highlights paid advertiser mentions, no one will pay. I'd only accept this if it was a clear separation of LLM response and ads in a sidebar or something similar. Other people may not care. Many happily read politically affiliated news knowing that their opinions and actions may be influenced by a media source.

weird-eye-issue 5mo ago
Let me let you in on a little industry "secret" You can't trust those results no matter what The pages that they pull in to source that data all contain affiliate links and companies contact websites to get their tools to the tops of those lists by paying money often monthly. I know this because I do this... It's basically standard SEO but it also manipulates AI like ChatGPT very very easily
- nunez 5mo ago
  The cheat code for that used to be Reddit before they got growth-hacked 10+ years ago.
  - weird-eye-issue 5mo ago
    Actually Reddit is receiving more organic traffic than ever before and is more valuable to game than ever But yes actually I was doing this about 15 years ago in the men's fashion subreddit for one of my companies lol
    - kalaksi 5mo ago
      Can you elaborate a bit on how that looks like in practice?
      - weird-eye-issue 5mo ago
        You just use aged accounts to engage and make it look like they're promoting a certain business through either new posts or comments or combination. And you can use tools or just Google to see which Reddit threads are already ranking for a certain keywords and then you would go to those pages and leave comments recommending your business etc
      - nunez 4mo ago
        here's a more well-publicized and AI-ified example of how that's done: https://www.404media.co/ai-is-poisoning-reddit-to-promote-products-and-game-google-with-parasite-seo/ https://www.404media.co/ai-is-poisoning-reddit-to-promote-pr...
- reactordev 5mo ago
  This is why local AI is so important
  - weird-eye-issue 5mo ago
    Local AI models pull in search results just like ChatGPT does ... And they are trained on web data just like any other model...
  - FergusArgyll 5mo ago
    How does that help if it's using search? You get whatever the search engine outputs
  - rplnt 5mo ago
    That doesn't solve this particular problem. Your local model was trained on reddit comments written by bots.
  - bayindirh 5mo ago
    It's already being trained on "public" (ethical or otherwise) data. So, it already has ingested that kind of "optimization" during pre-training and training. I don't think you can fine-tune your way out of it.
    - fsflover 5mo ago
      This is far from widespread at the moment, so it'll be possible to at least use the current cutting-edge models locally in the future.
      - bayindirh 5mo ago
        Far from widespread? SEO has seeped to all crevices of the internet for the last 20 years.
        fsflover 5mo ago
        By this measure, any information you can get whatsoever is biased and there is no reason to trust anything at all.
- faangguyindia 5mo ago
  Simplest way to do is by running affiliate program for your SaaS and shady marketers will do everything to get sales if it's profitable.
  - weird-eye-issue 5mo ago
    Eh not really They won't get you on any worthwhile list unless it's their own because it's too risky for them and any site they would publish it on would want to use their own affiliate link. Unless of course we are talking about something like Medium or YouTube which does work And then of course there's the fraudsters who will bid on branded keywords we have banned dozens of people for that
- SlinkyOnStairs 5mo ago
  > It's basically standard SEO but it also manipulates AI like ChatGPT very very easily There are key differences. 1) Google doesn't get paid for the SEO, so even is crime is involved, Google isn't directly responsible. 2) AI ads are unmarked, which is illegal pretty much everywhere. And because of the way LLMs work, it is impossible to tell where a given output came from, neither which part of the prompt/context nor whether it's from the prompt or training.
  - jmathai 5mo ago
    > 1) Google doesn't get paid for the SEO, so even is crime is involved, Google isn't directly responsible. Google doesn't get paid directly for the SEO but they definitely benefit monetarily. Do a recipe search and ask yourself if these are the results the user would like to see. Google benefits by not penalizing sites which litter themselves with ads. It's not that indirect.
  - weird-eye-issue 5mo ago
    I'm just talking about the methods that business owners can use for getting good SEO or AI recommendations are basically the same thing, not sure what point you are trying to make?
  - threetonesun 5mo ago
    Why would AI ads be unmarked? Most of the Google AI search results I get show sources. They're just summarizing top results for you, injecting a ad shown as an ad into that isn't tremendously different than how Google worked before.
    - inetknght 5mo ago
      I wish I could be this naive about things and still be happy.
      - gruez 5mo ago
        Instead of making non-substantive patronizing remarks, why don't you respond with actual arguments?
nekzn 5mo ago
Sorry to tell you that all websites you get when you google "what is the best tool for doing x" are already manipulated, including reddit conversations.
- _heimdall 5mo ago
  Don't forget the YouTube videos, those "top 5 x" robot videos are the worst.
adverbly 5mo ago
Those sort of things are already highly biased because of the marketing spam that the modelsmare trained on. I'd be more worried about AI convincing you that you need a product or expensive solution when you actually don't.
justincormack 5mo ago
There is no “true answer given all available infomation” maybe unless you give an eval function.
- gblargg 5mo ago
  Came here to say this. The tools I use are best for me currently, but I would never argue that they're the best for everyone. Likewise the best tools for most people are probably not the best ones for me. Context is everything. If search or AI or whatever can suggest a few decent tools I haven't tried that are somewhat within range, I can try them and decide for myself.
LastTrain 5mo ago
Then you already can’t use it because it already doesn’t give you a result like that.
HEX4AGON 5mo ago
This has always been the case but with AI its going to get even worse. I mean a lot of people associate AI with higher "intelligence" sorta say, now you sprinkle in some political propaganda there from the highest bidder and you are going to have a big problem in the future especially if the populace ended up trusting these corpo AI blindly.
thinkingtoilet 5mo ago
What were you doing before hand? Do you believe you were getting perfectly unbiased information?
ghostly_s 5mo ago
> "what is the best tool for doing x" and I can't trust that the answer is going to be the truth according to all available information, You think AI has some way of assessing the truthiness of "all available information?"

by gbro3n 5mo ago

weird-eye-issue 5mo ago

Let me let you in on a little industry "secret" You can't trust those results no matter what The pages that they pull in to source that data all contain affiliate links and companies contact websites to get their tools to the tops of those lists by paying money often monthly. I know this because I do this... It's basically standard SEO but it also manipulates AI like ChatGPT very very easily

nunez 5mo ago
The cheat code for that used to be Reddit before they got growth-hacked 10+ years ago.
- weird-eye-issue 5mo ago
  Actually Reddit is receiving more organic traffic than ever before and is more valuable to game than ever But yes actually I was doing this about 15 years ago in the men's fashion subreddit for one of my companies lol
  - kalaksi 5mo ago
    Can you elaborate a bit on how that looks like in practice?
    - weird-eye-issue 5mo ago
      You just use aged accounts to engage and make it look like they're promoting a certain business through either new posts or comments or combination. And you can use tools or just Google to see which Reddit threads are already ranking for a certain keywords and then you would go to those pages and leave comments recommending your business etc
    - nunez 4mo ago
      here's a more well-publicized and AI-ified example of how that's done: https://www.404media.co/ai-is-poisoning-reddit-to-promote-products-and-game-google-with-parasite-seo/ https://www.404media.co/ai-is-poisoning-reddit-to-promote-pr...
reactordev 5mo ago
This is why local AI is so important
- weird-eye-issue 5mo ago
  Local AI models pull in search results just like ChatGPT does ... And they are trained on web data just like any other model...
- FergusArgyll 5mo ago
  How does that help if it's using search? You get whatever the search engine outputs
- rplnt 5mo ago
  That doesn't solve this particular problem. Your local model was trained on reddit comments written by bots.
- bayindirh 5mo ago
  It's already being trained on "public" (ethical or otherwise) data. So, it already has ingested that kind of "optimization" during pre-training and training. I don't think you can fine-tune your way out of it.
  - fsflover 5mo ago
    This is far from widespread at the moment, so it'll be possible to at least use the current cutting-edge models locally in the future.
    - bayindirh 5mo ago
      Far from widespread? SEO has seeped to all crevices of the internet for the last 20 years.
      - fsflover 5mo ago
        By this measure, any information you can get whatsoever is biased and there is no reason to trust anything at all.
faangguyindia 5mo ago
Simplest way to do is by running affiliate program for your SaaS and shady marketers will do everything to get sales if it's profitable.
- weird-eye-issue 5mo ago
  Eh not really They won't get you on any worthwhile list unless it's their own because it's too risky for them and any site they would publish it on would want to use their own affiliate link. Unless of course we are talking about something like Medium or YouTube which does work And then of course there's the fraudsters who will bid on branded keywords we have banned dozens of people for that
SlinkyOnStairs 5mo ago
> It's basically standard SEO but it also manipulates AI like ChatGPT very very easily There are key differences. 1) Google doesn't get paid for the SEO, so even is crime is involved, Google isn't directly responsible. 2) AI ads are unmarked, which is illegal pretty much everywhere. And because of the way LLMs work, it is impossible to tell where a given output came from, neither which part of the prompt/context nor whether it's from the prompt or training.
- jmathai 5mo ago
  > 1) Google doesn't get paid for the SEO, so even is crime is involved, Google isn't directly responsible. Google doesn't get paid directly for the SEO but they definitely benefit monetarily. Do a recipe search and ask yourself if these are the results the user would like to see. Google benefits by not penalizing sites which litter themselves with ads. It's not that indirect.
- weird-eye-issue 5mo ago
  I'm just talking about the methods that business owners can use for getting good SEO or AI recommendations are basically the same thing, not sure what point you are trying to make?
- threetonesun 5mo ago
  Why would AI ads be unmarked? Most of the Google AI search results I get show sources. They're just summarizing top results for you, injecting a ad shown as an ad into that isn't tremendously different than how Google worked before.
  - inetknght 5mo ago
    I wish I could be this naive about things and still be happy.
    - gruez 5mo ago
      Instead of making non-substantive patronizing remarks, why don't you respond with actual arguments?

nekzn 5mo ago

Sorry to tell you that all websites you get when you google "what is the best tool for doing x" are already manipulated, including reddit conversations.

_heimdall 5mo ago
Don't forget the YouTube videos, those "top 5 x" robot videos are the worst.

adverbly 5mo ago

Those sort of things are already highly biased because of the marketing spam that the modelsmare trained on. I'd be more worried about AI convincing you that you need a product or expensive solution when you actually don't.

justincormack 5mo ago

There is no “true answer given all available infomation” maybe unless you give an eval function.

gblargg 5mo ago
Came here to say this. The tools I use are best for me currently, but I would never argue that they're the best for everyone. Likewise the best tools for most people are probably not the best ones for me. Context is everything. If search or AI or whatever can suggest a few decent tools I haven't tried that are somewhat within range, I can try them and decide for myself.

LastTrain 5mo ago

Then you already can’t use it because it already doesn’t give you a result like that.

HEX4AGON 5mo ago

This has always been the case but with AI its going to get even worse. I mean a lot of people associate AI with higher "intelligence" sorta say, now you sprinkle in some political propaganda there from the highest bidder and you are going to have a big problem in the future especially if the populace ended up trusting these corpo AI blindly.

thinkingtoilet 5mo ago

What were you doing before hand? Do you believe you were getting perfectly unbiased information?

ghostly_s 5mo ago

> "what is the best tool for doing x" and I can't trust that the answer is going to be the truth according to all available information, You think AI has some way of assessing the truthiness of "all available information?"