Co-Geeking

The so-called artificial intelligence (AI) is a divisive topic. Abigail Nussbaum writing at Lawyers, Guns and Money argues:

“The companies that make AI—which is, to establish our terms right at the outset, large language models that generate text or images in response to natural language queries—have a problem. Their product is dubiously legal, prohibitively expensive […], and it objectively does not work. All of these problems are essentially intractable. […]

“That non-technology industries are falling for this spin [that AI is inevitable] is perhaps unsurprising […] What’s more interesting is that other Silicon Valley companies are doing the same, even though, again, the result is almost always to make their product worse. Google has essentially broken its key product, and Microsoft is threatening to spy on all its users and steal their data, all because a bunch of CEOs have been incepted into the idea that this technology is the future and they cannot afford to be left behind.”

Nussbaum is packing quite a bit into a relatively short post. With regard to the claim that Google’s search engine is broken, she refers to an article in The Verge by Elizabeth Lopatto. Lopatto in turn provides some examples that are truly hair-raising: apart from unusable—or plain wrong—data, Google has offered potentially life-threatening answers to user queries.

Personally, for at least a decade if not longer, I haven’t used Google unless I can’t get anything sensible out of other engines, so I’m not the best person to comment on Google specifically. However, I have noticed that pretty much every search engine I’ve tried has gotten worse.

(Please note that my opinion below is based on my experience as an information professional, and on the experiences of my friends and acquaintaces as well; I don’t want to repeat “in my experience“ in every other sentence. Please also note that your experience may differ, and that I am aware of this possibility. And, finally, please note that this is an opinion post, so I will be selective with my point of view and using hyperbole.)

For one large problem, ads are rife among search results. It used to be possible to see a page of results with a couple of ads. Now it’s almost a page of ads with a couple of results sprinkled in for appearance’s sake. I understand the necessity of procuring funding. What I do not understand is destroying customer trust by no longer providing the service you claim to provide.

For another, advanced search is disappearing. (Here Google does seem to work slightly better than its competition, at least in some contexts, at least some of the time.) One example of a basic operation that’s stopped being reliable is excluding a word from your query by typing a minus in front of it; the term almost always if not always shows up in your results anyway. Another example is specifying a phrase by surrounding it with quotation marks. For example, at times I want to check a new-to-me multi-word term, or try to find a phrase I only hazily remember. But that only works if the search works. Even if it does work, an engine might offer other phrases containing your search terms, just in a different order. Obviously that isn’t helpful. A recent example is “price cliff”, for which Google offered the Instagram profile of one “Cliff Price” among the top results. Categorically not what I was looking for!

The results might also be interspersed not just by ads but other irrelevant blocks (“People also ask” or “Related Searches” or such). Granted, related searches do have their use; there are times when it is helpful to see adjacent topics or terminology. They definitely shouldn’t take space from the most relevant results, though, and the suggestions must actually be, you know, related to be relevant.

Further, search engines have stopped displaying the number of results for a query. (Remember when that was a thing?) These days it’s anyone’s guess whether you’re being served with a butt-load or a crap-ton of increasingly poor results.

Finally, at worst your search engine of choice will serve pop-ups in the margins (“See all!” “More from source!”) or push their “mobile experience”. *sigh*

These days, the search engine “experience” (WTH is that even supposed to be?!?) is like going to a restaurant and ordering pasta, but being served paste instead: not at all what was expected, entirely wasteful, and potentially harmful—and if you were to claim that the deliverable is “close” to the request, it is just insulting.

If this is what “smart” business people believe counts as quality output these days, I wouldn’t trust them to think their way out of a pillow case. (Yes, a pillow case, since the poor airbrains would probably hurt themselves with something as sharp as a paper bag.)

According to BBC, a Google spokesperson has defended AI-created overviews saying that “[t]he vast majority […] provide high quality information, with links to dig deeper on the web”. Speaking of vast majorities, most people are just not interested in digging and absolutely will not dig deeper; they want a clear-cut answer and they want it quickly. That means improving the quality of results, and neither the recent, pre-AI iterations nor the curret AI-“improved” engines deliver that.

I can’t think what the heck is up with the encrapification of search engines. Or why does it seem absolutely necessary to keep tweaking a good product what feels like every few months until it’s unrecognizeable.

Is it sunk cost fallacy? A form of mass hysteria spreading from Silicon Valley? Is maintaining a steady level of good service so moth-eaten a concept that it can’t attract resources anymore beyond the barest minimum? Are developers (or developers’ bosses) really that unable to comprehend that a change does not automatically mean an improvement? Is the only thing that matters the ceaseless chase after new features, regardless of whether they will shape up your service or shatter it?

It’s so frustrating, in any case. We, here, are nerds and do at times dig very deep. Sadly, these days search engines often hinder research instead of helping. Lately I’ve noticed that I’m turning more to bookmarks saved in my browser, or pick a specific site I’ve vetted earlier. It’s obviously not a foolproof answer, either, because I need to remember which entity has or might have the information I’m after in order to go and search their pages.

I’m quite ready to live in the most boring of times, with reliable basic services, please and thank you.

Images: Confused cat via Meme Binge on Flickr (CC BY 2.0). Your Decision Is Stupid-Ass via QuickMeme. Inigo Montoya via Imgur. Computer Technician, detail of a Scandinavia and the World comic by Humon. Dog chasing its lead via GifBin.

Here there be opinions!