Do you think search results have become better or worse with the introduction of AI?

[jon@social.vivaldi.net]

@rspfau , I guess both. I have really bad experiences with the summaries myself.

[jon@social.vivaldi.net]

@JoeBecomeTheSun , I think most would expect that if there is a framed answer, that it would be the best one...

[rspfau@ecoevo.social]

@jon I dont think it's possible to quantify (beyond gut feeling...which is very biased and often wrong) what impact AI is having on search results. AI summaries can only be evaluated against what we know to be true. So there are difficulties there also without doing a well designed experiment.

I think the only truthful response anyone can give is "I don't know". But that's not an option in the survey.

[kyu3a@social.vivaldi.net]

@jon As for Google, I don't see any difference in search results before or after AI was introduced. However, the AI-derived text that appears above the search results is annoying.

[jon@social.vivaldi.net]

@rspfau , we all evaluate based on our own experience. You may or may not agree with what other people are seeing, but that is what they are seeing.

In my case, I have been on the Internet since the start of the Web and IMHO there has been a clear change.

[rspfau@ecoevo.social]

@jon This is actually why science was invented. People's subjective experiences are very often wrong. What we *think* we see often is at odds with reality. I'm wrong all the time because of my biases and preconceptions and this is why eyewitness testimony in a murder trial has to be supported with actual evidence.

Is the change you think you've seen been caused by AI?

[jon@social.vivaldi.net]

@rspfau , a poll is actually for the purpose of asking people what they think. That is what I am interested in.

I do think AI has made results a lot worse. Partially because of the summaries and partially because there is a lot of AI generated content early in the results. I am finding it harder to find stuff I am looking for, that I know is there.

[rspfau@ecoevo.social]

@jon Something that I've been wondering the past several months is if anyone has attempted to *objectively* addressed the question of quality of search results. I dont even know if one can objectively test one search engine against another much less the past versus the present. Do you know of any efforts to do either of these?

[jon@social.vivaldi.net]

@rspfau , I think it is hard to do really. Unless you can recognize AI and other SEO generated stuff. If there is more of that, the results are, IMHO, objectively worse. Most of the time one is not interested in AI stuff, but rather information from the source. Anything else is, objectively, worse.

[vekkq@social.vivaldi.net]

@jon I made use of DDG's AI after I couldn't quite answer my hard question in the results and it basically came to the same conclusion as me several times. I think its worthwhile to use AI for questions of less importance to save some time. I haven't noticed any degeneration of ddg's search results.

[fazalmajid@social.vivaldi.net]

@jon worse, but it’s indirect: AI has made the generation of SEO spam much more scalable than search engines’ ability to detect it.

[andreassebayang@chaos.social]

@jon Difficult to say IMHO. I rarely use AI for search but apparently it happens in the background a lot. If I search for a specific thing it can get worse (interpreting for a different search phrase) or better (actually finding things). Dedicated AI searches are also a mixed bag. I have bad hallucinations as well as sources I was unable to find the traditional way.

[jon@social.vivaldi.net]

@AndreasSebayang , for me, the most visible parts when it comes to AI is the box at the top, where some answer is selected to be the best answer. This often gives a bad or inaccurate answer.

In addition to that are actual search results, that are AI generated. Often I will have to go down the list of search results to find what I was looking for. The AI generated results are pushing what I am looking for down on the list. Part of the issue is also that search engines are giving regency a big priority, which means that more static content will just disappear.

[superketchup@social.vivaldi.net]

@jon I use AI above search machines.

[carlasophie@social.vivaldi.net]

@jon About the same

[carlasophie@social.vivaldi.net]

@jon Beautiful

[joebecomethesun@social.vivaldi.net]

@jon Just because most consensus answer is at the top doesn't mean it is true, only that the search engine recommended it. Ideally, a search engine will show you in order most relevant to least relevant. That is what a search engine is for and what it should do. If I search for something I should have a reasonable expectation that the content was ranked by some objective standard rather than a flimsy algorithm or human reviewer. I also have a reasonable expectation to not have porn and malware advertised to me, but Google doesn't get the message.