A magical word.
Source: https://mastodon.online/@gardiner_bryant/114309539375105773
this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2025
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Not to sound confrontational, but you're way too focused on your - likely rather advanced - usage.
90% of people search for very simple stuff. They want to know the weather or want to know about that new movie they don't quite remember the name of. And for that use case, Google is perfectly serviceable. And since people are used to it, for example by it being the default on most platforms, they use it.
A lot of market leaders are objectively a bad choice, but they're a known brand. Coca cola, McDonald's, Oracle, etc.
I don't think you sound confrontational, but neither do I consider my internet searching particularly advanced. A lot of my searches are exactly what you describe, and a lot is trying to find a good research rabbit hole to go down. Call me curious.
I'm just sceptical, primarily of Google Search's inroads into surveillance monetisation and effective monopoly. For the same reasons I am as critical of the other "market leaders" you mention; I don't consider the ability to inspire brand loyalty in millions of consumers to sell crap products a quality π€·
I would honestly consider anyone that uses Lemmy or the Fediverse to be more advanced than the average user.
On average maybe, but no individual is average and Lenny is growing.
I would go even one step further. For dumb little things like a movie or song you can't remember, or a factoid to win an argument amongst friends the AI summaries are really helpful.
Yeah no. Just had someone IRL try to use the AI summary to prove something that was blatantly false.
Even more fitting: factoid means something believed to be true, but is false. It's not a "cute little tidbit of info" like you used it as.
So yeah, AI summaries are full of factoids, you are correct.
I actually did use "factoid" correctly here. According to the Cambridge dictionary the Definition is
And that's exactly what I use it for. I'm not talking about debating economic policy on national television (but tbf, the ai summary probably does a better job than the talking heads haha) but just stupid little things you """debate""" with your friends.
Some examples Ive used it for recently.
"Were the cars in mad max real cars" and heres the response
And then it had some details about some of the big cars. And then it linked to articles like this one or this one
Or "how much does a da Vinci (surgery robot) cost?", and heres it's answer:
And then had some details of different models of da Vinci machines. But it also linked to this source and this source
And those are just two of the recent searches I have in my search history. For stupid factoids like that it's really great. For anything more nuanced or complicated than that it falls apart.
And yeah it has incorrect information sometimes. But you know what else gets incorrect information? Me when I drunkenly skim the first article that pops up while my friends drunkenly yell over each other. So id say it washes out.
Google AI: quality you can rely on (when youβre blacked out)
And that's good enough for me because that's all I use it for lmao
that's funny, cus the AI summary for "what is a factoid" told me it's an incorrectly believed idea. So which is it? Is the AI correct and you're wrong, or is the AI incorrect and you're still wrong?
How 'bout you go check the dictionary? You know, the dictionary that was explicitly cited above.
Whooooosh
If the AI summary is incorrect, then his point about trusting AI is incorrect. If the AI summary is correct, then it contradicts what he said the definition is and he is once again incorrect. Literally, no matter what, he's wrong. It's was a fun way to show the absurdity of blindly trusting AI. His logic itself is flawed.
People have tried to use these against me already. It's not helpful because all they get is a mouthful of how shitty and chronically incorrect AI summaries are.
I said it's helpful to win an argument. Not 100% perfectly correct every single time lmfao
If you knew when it was and was not correct then you wouldn't need it in the first place.