it’s seo games all over again
and the former kings of tuning the algorithms to favor seo that bubbled useful info up harder have thrown it all out in the name of impressing everyone with how space age and sci fi their tech is. it’s not about advancing science or even pushing a useful product. it’s strictly a tool for scams. is it a surprise that scammers are gaming the google scam better than anyone else? not really. they’ve always had a step up compared to the average internet denizen thanks to practice. this is why i get so frustrated when people dismiss ai skepticism as being a product of luddites.
- you’re getting scammed to think ai will benefit you
- systems built by scammers will always benefit scammers
- the luddites were right. scientific advancements should benefit the workers, not the rich
And Gem’ni was his nam-i…g-e-m-n-i
(I know it is Gemini, but we need 2 syllables and 5 letters to fit the song parady, so I made a contraction)
I mean, this isn’t specifically an AI issue, this is scammers updating the info in Google business listings because the airlines don’t actually care to maintain those pages (and Google doesn’t want actual humans doing any work to make sure their shit is accurate). This has been going on before AI, AI is just following the garbage in, garbage out model that everyone said was going to be the result of this push.
Your historical information is accurate, but I disagree with your framing. This particular scam is so powerful because the information is organized, parsed, and delivered in a fashion that makes it look professional and makes it look believable.
Google and the other AI companies have put themselves in mind. They know that their system is encouraging this type of scam, but they don’t dare put giant disclaimers at the top of every AI generated paragraph, because they’re trying to pretend that their s*** is good, except when it’s not, and then it’s not their fault. In other words, it’s basic dishonesty.
their first mistake was using united airlines. or airlines period. fuck flying
edit: LOL i actually love how people take personal offense every time i say “fuck flying”
so, just so we’re all clear: fuck flying
this is always the question. and the answer is if i can’t get there in time by not flying, then so sorry, i won’t be able to attend. i don’t fly, because fuck literally everything involved with flying. which apparently now also includes bogus customer service phone numbers
Holy shit.
This is why “AI” should be avoided at all cost. It’s all bullshit. Any tool that “hallucinates” - I. E. Is error strewn - is not fit for purpose. Gaming the AI is just the latest example of the crap being spewed by these systems.
The underlying technology has its uses but its niche and focused applications, nowhere near as capable or as ready as the hype.
We don’t use Wikipedia as a primary source because it has to be fact checked. AI isn’t anywhere as near accurate as Wikipedia.so why use it?
The underlying technology has its uses
Yes indeed agreed.
Sometimes BS is exactly what I need! Like, hallucinated brainstorm suggestions can work for some workflows and be safe when one is careful to discard or correct them. Copying a comment I made a week ago:
I don’t love it for summarization. If I read a summary, my takeaway may be inaccurate.
Brainstorming is incredible. And revision suggestions. And drafting tedious responses, reformatting, parsing.
In all cases, nothing gets attributed to me unless I read every word and am in a position to verify the output. And I internalize nothing directly, besides philosophy or something. Sure can be an amazing starting point especially compared to a blank page.
https://ea.rna.nl/2024/05/27/when-chatgpt-summarises-it-actually-does-nothing-of-the-kind/
A good read about ai summarizing.
Gotta tell you, you made a fairly extreme pronouncement against a very general term / idea with this:
“AI” should be avoided at all cost
Do you realize how ridiculous this sounds? It sounds, to me, like this - “Vague idea I poorly understand (‘AI’) should be ‘avoided’ (???) with disregard for any negative consequences, without considering them at all”
Cool take you’ve got?
Edit to add: whoops! Just realized the community I’m in. Carry on, didn’t mean to come to the precise wrong place to make this argument lol.
Listen, I know that the term “AI” has been, historically, used to describe so many things to the point of having no meaning, but I think, given the context, it is pretty obvious what AI they are referring to.
Well, fair enough, folks seem to agree with you and that commenter. I’m not being deliberately uncharitable, “avoid AI at all costs” seems both poorly defined and hyperbolic to me, even given the context. Scams and inaccuracy are a problem in lots of situations, Google search results have been getting increasingly bad to the point of unusable for a while now (I’d argue long before LLM saturation), and I’ve personally been getting mileage with some LLMs, already at kind of an early stage, over wading through every crappy search result.
I wouldn’t call myself an enthusiast or on the hype train, I work in the industry. But it’s clearly useful, while clearly having many tradeoffs (energy use maybe much worse than inaccuracy / scam potential), and “avoid at all cost” is silly to me. But cheers, happy to simply disagree!
Wait until you hear about the AI’s programming abilities!
It “knows” that a Python program starts with some lines like: from (meaningless package name) include *
If you can register the package name it invents, your code could be running on some of the world’s biggest companies’ internal servers!
