Google’s AI Hype Circle

Kagi Search

A new search engine (and browser!) that will have a paid business model.

Between this and Duck Duck Go, there’s evidence of an increasing appetite for alternatives to Google’s increasingly-more-rubbish search engine.

Google’s Top Search Result? Surprise! It’s Google – The Markup

I’ve been using Duck Duck Go for ages so I didn’t realise quite how much of a walled garden Google search has become.

41% of the first page of Google search results is taken up by Google products.

This is some excellent reporting. The data and methodology are entirely falsifiable so feel free to grab the code and replicate the results.

Note the fear with which publishers talk about Google (anonymously). It’s the same fear that app developers exhibit when talking about Apple (anonymously).

Ain’t centralisation something?

Information literacy and chatbots as search • Buttondown

If someone uses an LLM as a replacement for search, and the output they get is correct, this is just by chance. Furthermore, a system that is right 95% of the time is arguably more dangerous tthan one that is right 50% of the time. People will be more likely to trust the output, and likely less able to fact check the 5%.

AI wants to rule the World, but it can’t handle dairy.

AI has the same problem that I saw ten year ago at IBM. And remember that IBM has been at this AI game for a very long time. Much longer than OpenAI or any of the new kids on the block. All of the shit we’re seeing today? Anyone who worked on or near Watson saw or experienced the same problems long ago.

THE AI CON - How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want

A shame that this must-read book won’t be out in time for Christmas—’twould make a great stocking filler for a lot of people I know.

A smart, incisive look at the technologies sold as artificial intelligence, the drawbacks and pitfalls of technology sold under this banner, and why it’s crucial to recognize the many ways in which AI hype covers for a small set of power-hungry actors at work and in the world.