Methownet BB

Alice (of Alice and Wonderland fame) might have called it "curiouser and curiouser". Google, whose search engine accounts for more than 90% of the global market, has just rolled out an experimental search feature called "AI Overviews" that can supposedly take the "legwork" out of searching various topics.

The tool has advised some users searching for how to make cheese better stick to pizza that they could use "non-toxic glue." AI-generated responses have also said some geologists recommend humans eat one rock per day.

In another baffling example, a reporter Googling whether they could use gasoline to cook spaghetti faster was told "no... but you can use gasoline to make a spicy spaghetti dish"— and given a recipe.

The entire technology is uncharted waters to me although I'm sure I've been introduced to examples of it online for some time now without me even recognizing them.

Any guidance out there in Methowville for us technological neanderthals? It's certainly a brave new world.

So far Google has been polite enough to label the AI summary as such, so that you can skip past it to more useful and possibly more accurate data. On the other hand, it sounds like it could be an amusing, if otherwise useless feature. One might expect that something this new would have some bugs and that it might be refined over time to make the errors less glaring. I've noticed that it often lifts whole passages from Wikipedia.

I personally use Duck Duck Go as my search engine, as it doesn't feed my searches into advertising programs that bombard me for weeks after I've already purchased whatever it was I was looking for.

Bob

I think the best way to deal with it is to toggle the switch to the off position and leave it.

AI tools like AI overview and Chat GPT "dredge" the internet at remarkable speeds to summarize information that has already been compiled by humans. There are seven tiers of AI and they are designed differently with different applications. Googles AI overviews and Chat GPT are generative AIs which are capable of creating new content, "including audio, code, images, text, simulations, and videos".
- Source
https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-generative-ai

How do generative AIs make the new content? Just like you an I, they are inspired! Where do these AIs get their inspiration? From us, from everything we have uploaded to the internet. So when you ask a generative AI to give you a spaghetti recipe that is cooked with gasoline you get a summary of all the info out there on the internet. And we know the diversity of good and bad info on the internet. I just google searched "can i cook spaghetti with gasoline?" and it returned multiple results inquiring about the subject, written by human beings.

One might ask "why would an AI suggest cooking with gasoline when it is obviously toxic to humans?" My response would be because humans are dumb enough to try and cook spaghetti with gasoline.

Joe - Eastside road. Enjoy your holiday

Please explain how one finds the switch and how one can toggle it off. I, too, have noticed just suddenly AI google results, and I want them to go away. Thanks.