this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2025
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Fuck AI

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[–] prototype_g2@lemmy.ml 26 points 1 day ago (1 children)

How does this surprise anyone?

LLMs are just pattern recognition machines. You give them a sequence of words and they tell you what is the most statistically likely word to follow based solely on probability, no logic or reasoning.

[–] Lifter@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 day ago

It's amazing that they get it right 40 % of the time then.

[–] floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 39 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Hilarious that Gemini is so bad. Not like Google had a good starting position on internet search

[–] frezik@midwest.social 20 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The only thing Gemini is good for is bringing up sources that don't appear in the regular Google search results. Which only leads to another question: why are those links not in the regular Google search results?

[–] Cort@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

My only guess is that they're trying to see if de-enshittifying results for AI can make it profitable

[–] Yoga@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I was talking about this with a webdev buddy the other day, wondering if webmasters might start optimizing for AI indexing rather than SEO.

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[–] OminousOrange@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago

I find the same with perplexity. It's more of a search assistant in finding some sources that a search engine likely wouldn't. Sometimes it's summarized answers are accurate, sometimes it's a jumble of several slightly unrelated sources.

[–] pyre@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Infinite money, all the data on the internet, and nothing to show for it. I wrote about my experience with Gemini assistant for people who enjoy suffering.

[–] floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

I've genuinely been wondering what the hell the average googler has been up to in the last 5 years. They're killing services, barely developing new features or hardware, and have been talking for so long (as in, they were genuinely at the forefront) about AI and how they're in a unique position to make the most out of data, AI, services, and hardware, then failed spectacularly to keep that advantage, and even more spectacularly to keep up.

I guess they just found some other, more profitable way to exploit that unique position, than to care about the people using their products.

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[–] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 6 points 23 hours ago

Musk's gork is as stupid as he is! And he claims it's waaaaaayyyyy better than other AI. 🤡🤡🤡

[–] Wilco@lemm.ee 72 points 1 day ago (8 children)

Seriously, TRY and get an AI chat to give an answer without making stuff up. It is impossible. You can tell it "you made that data up, do not do that" ... and it will apologize and say you were right, then make up more dumb shit.

[–] helloworld55@lemm.ee 1 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

I have found AI to be a terrible primary source. But something I've found very useful is to ask for a detailed response, structured a certain way. Then tell the AI to grade it as a professor would. It actually does a very good job at acknowledging gaps and giving an honest grade then.

AI shouldn't be a primary source but it's great for starting a topic. Similar to talking to someone that's moderately in the know on something you interested in

[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 1 points 13 hours ago

That's because ALL generative AI results, even the correct ones, are "made up". They just exist on a spectrum of coincidental correspondence with reality. I'm still surprised that they manage to get as much right as they do.

[–] Comtief@lemm.ee 9 points 1 day ago

Yeah, LLMs are great if you treat them like a tool to create drafts or give you ideas, rather than like an encyclopedia.

[–] Denvil@lemmy.one 18 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I looked up on google at one point what the minimum required depth for a cable running under a building is by NEC code. It told me it was 0 inches. I laughed and called it stupid, wtf do you mean 0 inches?? Upon further research, 0 inches is the correct answer, I felt real stupid after that -_-

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[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago

You can tell it “you made that data up, do not do that”

I wish people would stop treating these tools as intelligent.

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[–] PeteWheeler@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

AI as a search engine is terrible.

Because if you treat it as such, it will just look at the first result, which is usually wrong or has incomplete info.

If you give the AI a source document, then it is amazing as a search engine. But if the source doc is the entire internet.... its fucking bad.

Shit quality in, shit quality out. And we/corporations have made the internet abundant of shit.

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[–] danc4498@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Is this an ad for Perplexity? I’ve never heard of it, and now I’m googling it. So effective ad if so.

[–] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Would be weird for an ad to bash on the paid tier

[–] danc4498@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah, it’s one of those “no bad press” kind of things. It’s bashing on AI, but Perplexity actually looks pretty good by comparison.

[–] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I'm saying the Perplexity paid tier is about 2x more likely to be confidently wrong than Perplexity

[–] danc4498@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Oh, right, good point.

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[–] SARGE@startrek.website 35 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's making ten billion calculations per second and they're all wrong!

[–] Zron@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

That’s one of my skills as a certified genius. I’m wicked fast at math.

37/2.4 boom 16.38.

Is it right, maybe, maybe not. But I did it fast

[–] Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 62 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Capitalism breeds innovation! Sometimes innovating means summoning... mindless lie demons... Who drink all our water. 🙃

[–] postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago

A thousand wrong answers are more innovative than a single correct one.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 day ago

The core of the scam is making people believe that "novel" is the same as "better".

[–] taiyang@lemmy.world 25 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yes, having tested this myself it is absolutely correct. Hell, even when it finds something, it's usually a secondary or tertiary source that's nearly unusable-- or even one of those "we did our own research and vaccines cause autism" type sources. It's awful and idiots seem to think otherwise.

[–] Angelusz@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You shouldn't use them to keep up with the news. They make that option available because it's wanted, but they shouldn't.

It should only be used to research older data from its original dataset, perhaps adding to it a bit with newer knowledge if you're a specialist in the field.

When you ask the right questions in the right way, you'll get the right answers, or at least mostly - and you should always check the sources after. But it's a specialists tool at this time. And most people are not specialists.

So this whole "Fuck AI" movement is actually pretty damn stupid. It's good to point out its flaws, try and make people aware and help guide it better into the future.

But it's actually useful, and not going away. You're just using it wrong, and as the tech progresses, ways to use it wrong will decrease. You can't stop progress, humanity will always come with new things, evolution is designed that way.

[–] taiyang@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Well, no, because what I'm referring to isn't even news, it's research. I'm an adjunct professor and trying to get old articles doesn't even work, even when they're readily available publicly. The linked article here is referencing citations and it doesn't get more citation-y than that. It doesn't change that when you ask differently, either, because LLMs aren't good at that even if tech bros want it to be.

Now, the information itself could be valid, and in basics it usually is. I was at least able to use it to get myself some basic ideas on a subject before ultimately having to browse abstracts for what I need. Still, you need the source of you're doing anything serious and the best I've got from AI are just authors prevalent in the field which at least is useful for my own database searches.

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[–] shyguyblue@lemmy.world 32 points 1 day ago (5 children)

I was trying to see if I could sync my entire Calibre ebook library to my kobo, so i googled it. The dumbass AI result told me to hit the "sync library" button, that doesn't friggin exist...

[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This is the most common response from AI on search pages when I'm trying to find some kind of setting.

[–] shyguyblue@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

Yeah, even Googles own operating system.

"To disable Network Notification sounds, do a bunch of shit that doesn't exist anywhere in the settings!"

Orc from Warcraft 1: "Jobs' done!"

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[–] cabbagewitch@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It’s just asking it m to find sources from excerpts. I don’t think this is something they have been trained on with much emphasis is it?

[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 1 points 13 hours ago

Yeah, this isn't a general test of "factualness", it's a very narrow and specific subset of capability that many of these AIs were not designed for.

That being said, it does not change my already poor opinion of generative AI.

[–] selokichtli@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Perplexity is not looking bad, IMHO.

[–] ZDL@ttrpg.network 1 points 14 hours ago

Perplexity is the only one I would think of using seriously, and then only when I want it to, say, summarize something I already know.

After which I fact-check it like crazy and hammer at it until it gets things right.

One annoying habit it has is that somewhere in the chain of software before or after the LLM it looks for certain key topics it doesn't want to talk about and either comes out and says it (anything involving violence or crime) or has a visibly canned hot take that it repeats without variance no matter what added information you provide or how much cajoling you try.

At other points it starts into the canned responses, but when you catch it it will try again. Like I frequently want song lyrics translated and each time I supply some that it recognizes as such it throws up a canned response about how it will not be a party to copyright breaking. Then after a few rounds back and forth about how I'm clearly not doing this commercially and am just a fan who wants to understand a song better it will begrudgingly give me the translation.

Then five minutes later in the SAME CONVERSATION it will run through that cycle all over again when I give it another song.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

[–] shawn1122@lemm.ee 10 points 1 day ago

Perplexity is by far the best for searching but still copiously hallucinates.

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[–] Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee 10 points 1 day ago

Copilot is such garbage. Microsoft swirling the drain on business capabilities that they should be dominating is very on brand.

[–] dojan@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago (8 children)

I’m confused. These are large language models, not search engines?

[–] Tartas1995@discuss.tchncs.de 27 points 1 day ago (1 children)

But they are used like search engine... A lot... That is a huge issue.

[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If people were using Photoshop to create spreadsheets you don't say Photoshop is terrible spreadsheet software, you say the people are dumb for using the tool for something that it isn't designed for.

People are using LLMs as search engines and then pointing out that they're bad search engines. This is mass user error.

[–] TheBeesKnees@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 1 day ago

Correction: companies are implementing it into their search engines. Users are just providing feedback.

Ironically, Google's original non-LLM summary was pretty great. That's gone now.

[–] erytau@programming.dev 12 points 1 day ago

They do have search functionality. For Perplexity it's even the main focus. Yeah, it's hard to stop them from confidently making things up.

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[–] Xerxos@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago

AI has its uses: I would love to read AI written books in fantasy games (instead of the 4 page books we currently have) or talk to a AI in the next RPG game, hell it might even make better random generated quests and such things.

You know, places where hallucinations don't matter.

AI as a search engine only makes sense when/if they ever find a way to avoid hallucinations.

[–] Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Is the plan for AI to give tech plausible deniablity when it lies about politics and other mis/dis information?

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