David Revoy | Mastodon | Bonus Timelapse

Transcript

The Degraded Search Engine

A comic in four panels:

Panel 1. Cepper, the gothic sorceress, walks toward a large steampunk machine in the center of the library written “Gooblin” on it, colored letters. The machine resembles a rusty block, with a threadmill on one side, a seat and a typewriter-style keyboard.

Cepper: “A good old ‘search engine’, this is what I need for my research!”

Panel 2. Close up, Cepper types on the typewriter keyboard, looking at the screen.

Cepper: “R.I.N.G. O.F. F.I.R.E S.P.E.L.L.S. enter”
Cepper: “...And voilà.”

Panel 3. The machine spits out dozens of scrolls and books. Cepper reads them.

Cepper: “Wait... Why are these results so bad?...”
Book 1: “(Ad) Ten Fire Spells That Will Change Your Life (You Won’t Believe the 7th!)”
Book 2: “(Sponsored) 15 Spicy Onion Ring Recipes”
Book 3: “(For you) Top 5 Best Engagement Rings”
Book 4: “(ad) How to Start a Campfire: A Comprehensive Guide”
Book 5: “Is Your Fire Spell Not Working? (Try This One Simple Trick!)”
Book 6: “(Sponsored) Cheap Fire-Resistant Panties! (50% Off Today Only!)”

Panel 4. A librarian approaches, their AI Parrot perched on their shoulder, pointing it. Cepper looks defeated, her eyes blasé.

Librarian: “Yeah, they tuned it this way so everyone just uses their Avian Intelligence for searching now...” Cepper: “...How unsurprising.”

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[–] 3 points 17 hours ago (3 children)

Doubt that. Their search engine is a golden goose here and now. And what is Gemini? The idea of some other guy in this thread that the engine is more or less ok but the data itself is shitty sounds more plausible to me than Google is trying to push its own LLM by killing search engine.

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  • [–] 12 points 16 hours ago

    Their search engine is a golden goose here and now

    Correction, their ad market is a golden goose, their search engine is merely a funnel to push ads to users.

    And what is Gemini

    Their LLM.

    more plausible to me than Google is trying to push its own LLM by killing search engine.

    So for some reason you can accept that they're killing their search for the sake of ads, but not for the sake of AI?

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  • [–] 1 point 10 hours ago (1 child)

    What is Gemini? So you're arguing against the hypothesis without even cursory knowledge on the topic?

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