The big news in search this week is that Google is continuing its transition to "AI search" - instead of typing in search terms and getting links to websites, you'll ask Google a question and an AI will compose an answer based on things it finds on the web:
https://blog.google/products/search/generative-ai-google-search-may-2024/
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/15/they-trust-me-dumb-fucks/#ai-search
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https://blog.google/products/search/generative-ai-google-search-may-2024/
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/15/they-trust-me-dumb-fucks/#ai-search
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Generative AI in Search: Let Google do the searching for you
We’re bringing AI Overviews to everyone in the U.S. and adding new gen AI experiences to take more of the legwork out of searching.Liz Reid (Google)
Cory Doctorow
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https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/03/keyword-swarming/#site-reputation-abuse
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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A third obvious objection: AI is bad. Not morally bad (though maybe morally bad, too!), but *technically* bad. It "hallucinates" nonsense answers, including dangerous nonsense. It's a supremely confident liar that can get you killed:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/01/mushroom-pickers-urged-to-avoid-foraging-books-on-amazon-that-appear-to-be-written-by-ai
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Mushroom pickers urged to avoid foraging books on Amazon that appear to be written by AI
Dan Milmo (The Guardian)Cory Doctorow
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https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/23/maximal-plausibility/#reverse-centaurs
This is true of *all* of AI's most impressive demos. Often, "AI" turns out to be low-waged human workers in a distant call-center pretending to be robots:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/31/neural-interface-beta-tester/#tailfins
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Cory Doctorow
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https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain
The AI video demos that represent "an existential threat to Hollywood filmmaking" turn out to be so cumbersome as to be practically useless (and vastly inferior to existing production techniques):
https://www.wheresyoured.at/expectations-versus-reality/
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Expectations Versus Reality
Edward Zitron (Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At)Cory Doctorow
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a) It can't fix search, only add a slop-filtering AI layer on top of it; and
b) The rest of the world will continue to let Google index its pages even if they derive no benefit from doing so; and
c) Google will shortly fix its AI, and all the lies about AI capabilities will be revealed to be premature truths that are finally realized.
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/26/glitchbread/#electronic-shelf-tags
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Cory Doctorow
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https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/
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Cory Doctorow
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Google's 90% search market share was attained by bribing everyone who operates a service or platform where you might encounter a search box to connect that box to Google.
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Cory Doctorow
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https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task
Competition was once a threat to Google; for years, its mantra was "competition is a click away." Today, competition is all but nonexistent.
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Cory Doctorow
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue
That consolidation inevitably leads to regulatory capture: shorn of competitive pressure, the companies that dominate the sector can converge on a single message to policymakers and use their monopoly profits to turn that message into policy:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/
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Cory Doctorow
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act
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Cory Doctorow
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https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town
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Cory Doctorow
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https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/
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Cory Doctorow: IP
Locus OnlineCory Doctorow
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https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification
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Cory Doctorow
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Making search worse is good for Google. Reducing search quality increases the number of queries, and thus ads, that each user must make to find their answers:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan
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Cory Doctorow
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Which brings me back to AI search. When Google substitutes its own summaries for links to pages, it creates innumerable opportunities to charge publishers for preferential placement in those summaries.
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Cory Doctorow
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https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/11/for-you/#the-algorithm-tm
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Cory Doctorow
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https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/#rewilding-the-internet
But Google is clear that its first duty is to its shareholders: not to publishers, not to searchers, not to "partners" or employees.
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/260
That's why, even if you're willing to believe that Google *could* make a great AI-based search, we can nevertheless be certain that they *won't*.
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Cory Doctorow
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https://www.laemmle.com/film/finding-money?date=2024-05-15
Friday (May 17), I'm in San Francisco at the @internetarchive to keynote the tenth anniversary of the @AuthorsAlliance:
https://www.authorsalliance.org/2024/03/15/authors-alliance-10th-anniversary-event-authorship-in-an-age-of-monopoly-and-moral-panics/
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Authors Alliance 10th Anniversary Event: Authorship in an Age of Monopoly and Moral Panics
Authors AllianceCory Doctorow
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Cryteria (modified)
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djhughman
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commons.wikimedia.orgJESSE JANOWIAK HAS MOVED
•LeBonk
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Steve Popovich
•Cory Doctorowudostępnił to.
Cory Doctorow
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Simple Nomad
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