- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
Google has become so integral to online navigation that its name became a verb, meaning “to find things on the Internet.” Soon, Google might just tell you what’s on the Internet instead of showing you. The company has announced an expansion of its AI search features, powered by Gemini 2.0. Everyone will soon see more AI Overviews at the top of the results page, but Google is also testing a more substantial change in the form of AI Mode. This version of Google won’t show you the 10 blue links at all—Gemini completely takes over the results in AI Mode.
This marks the debut of Gemini 2.0 in Google search. Google announced the first Gemini 2.0 models in December 2024, beginning with the streamlined Gemini 2.0 Flash. The heavier versions of Gemini 2.0 are still in testing, but Google says it has tuned AI Overviews with this model to offer help with harder questions in the areas of math, coding, and multimodal queries.
With this update, you will begin seeing AI Overviews on more results pages, and minors with Google accounts will see AI results for the first time. In fact, even logged out users will see AI Overviews soon. This is a big change, but it’s only the start of Google’s plans for AI search.
Gemini 2.0 also powers the new AI Mode for search. It’s launching as an opt-in feature via Google’s Search Labs, offering a totally new alternative to search as we know it. This custom version of the Gemini large language model (LLM) skips the standard web links that have been part of every Google search thus far.
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Who asked for this?
Unlike most of Lemmy, I actually like AI and even I don’t want this.
How many cases of “You should eat at least one small rock per day” AI bullshit does Google think is acceptable for production deployment?
More than zero, which is too many for my taste.
I was just dealing with a plumbing problem the other day, and I was like, “I know, I’ll ask AI!”
Basically everything it told me was completely wrong. And this was Claude Sonnet 3.7, one of the best!
Wait…you shouldn’t be doing that? Damnit! What am I going to do with the small rock mine I just bought?!
The AI suggests painting it and adding it to a garden as decoration.
Embrace, extend, extinguish, but now it’s Google doing it to the World Wide Web.
…hmm that’s kind of shitty and it uses ten times more energy! Let’s go full enshitification!
I don’t get what they gain out of this, doesn’t it remove the sponsored results? Or will people pay to nudge AI weights to recommend their products?
Example:
How do you make the best cookies diy?
…the new Nabisco Cookies can be crushed to a fine powder mixed…
What are other non-nabisco cookies I can cook?
…Nestle chocolate chip cookies of course!
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Dear Google,
Literally no one wants this.
thinking google is about offering you a quality search at this point is like thinking facebook is about improving your social experience. they both started like that and that’s how they hooked people up. but they have their own interests now. those interests revolve around affecting how people act and think. one central thing they need to do to fulfil those interests is controlling what people see and know… and that’s very hard to do when this pesky external content generated by other that is hard to control gets into way…
They always had their own interests. If you thought otherwise, you’re naive. People generally start a business to make money.
maybe i am naive, maybe you are cynical.
some people do somerimes start business cause they have a good product in mind…
Oh I’m definitely cynical, sometimes too much so, but its often warranted.
You’re right, though, just because the (vast) majority are money grabs doesnt mean they all are. Lots of businesses are started by someone trying to figure out how to make a living doing something they love. Or genuinely trying to solve a problem, money being secondary. I’ve never had that drive, but I do know e.g. artists who are “in business” for themselves and quite happy at it.
I’m decrepit enough to remember pre-Google web, with competing search engines. Bring back webrings!
Altavista baby.
Please! We need more competition for Google.
sometimes you just gotta ask Jeeves
The fact that Ask Jeeves isn’t an AI-only search engine is just beyond me. It was laughable that someone thought to personify a search engine 25 years ago, but now is pretty much the right time for that.
Technofascists really benefit from certain kinds of information being inaccessible…
fascists really love LLM’s. like ridiculously in love with them. it’s where all their ‘art’ comes from. it’s made of the shallow aesthetics with no interiority they love so much. plus it doesn’t really require articulating your desires much, or having artists.
To borrow Alex Jones’ term - it is information warfare. Train people to accept the outputs of LLMs, attack media literacy (in conjunction with the fact that public schools in the US spent ten years not teaching children how to read), and hide actual sources.
You can have your LLM trained to weasel around the fact that the chattel slavery of black Americans was the primary cause of the Civil War, or falsely represent science surrounding gender and sexuality (they’re explicitly tuning Grok on this).
You don’t have to worry about subversive messages on war or women in your “AI” generated “Ghibhli” film. Have all the fun space faring of Star Wars, without the prequel geopolitics everyone hated until they saw it happen.
yeah. letting silicon valley build the sword with which to slay the dragon Truth was really some ‘neon genesis evangellion’ grade bullshit. posadism hasn’t failed in this timeline, though. fingers crossed.
I’m stoned so:
The technocrats (Bezos, Thiel, Zuckerberg, etc) are SEELE. Musk is Gendo - ie, at the table but rogue (and I don’t want to imagine what he’d do with a planet full of Yue/Rei’s) Thiel doesn’t trust Musk, so Vance is like his Kaji. (Misato is like literally a Freud caricature of a woman, so we can make her a couch to fit the whole sexual ethos)
COVID was the second impact. The angels are attendant disasters that go with it and things like climate change etc.
Luigi is Kaworu, a gorgeous bisexual twink who is being crushed by the system.
The American people are Shinji, paralyzed under stress and trauma. Asuka is a bunch of other countries, being very angry at Americans for not doing shit while not really coping with their own problems.
Rei is obviously the internet/technology.
The globalists have been priming us for this information the entire time! Pre programming! Please buy my protein power.
oh shit, im actually out of protein powder. will it help me brain good? make dicks hard? give me the ability to levitate? is it made of cat litter and post-industrial fracking sand?
They did that long before AI.
Google, Apple and plenty others have regular meetings with defense people to accomodate them.
No surprise Eric Schmit left Google to form a defense company since some employees there had a consciense and didn’t like working on killer drone programs.
This is exactly why I’m working so hard to eradicate the verb “to google” from my vocabulary. I switched to DuckDuckGo (which then started providing AI summaries, but allowed an easy opt-out).
Even better, use the google verb to refer to searching anywhere other than Google and effectively genericide it.
DuckDuckGo’et’ nah, it doesn’t work.
Number one reason to at least distance oneself from the big G. They shove unwanted shit down your throat despite the loud protesters
Why is everything shit
No more google at all. Thanks for making it easy for me.
Wait, google does searches now too? Wow they have a service for everything.
I am no longer feeling lucky
