I am so frustrated that pretty much everyone is blind in this world. So may loud voices about the "harms" of AI, but what is happening with this tool is TOTALLY NORMAL in a TRADE BASED SOCIETY.
TOTALLY NORMAL!
Companies wanna trade these tools, thus make money at all costs. Users wanna use them to trade, make money. Videos, books, whatever the shit.
The incentive is THE SAME. Big or small groups of people.
There is NO SURPRISE!
Totally normal.
No way we can fix this, or the billions of other issues, unless we change the structure of our society. Sounds daunting but only if you are thinking about it simplistically and in a sci-fi way.
Imagine if we start a Universal Basic Income scheme, also provide the needs of people as trade-free. Housing, food, healthcare, etc.. Free people from this society, so they can be less idiotic and less driven to make profit out of everything. This is a realistic way forward.
That's how you can try to change the infinite blanket of shit that everyone grows on top of.
It drives me INSANE that people
... Show more...I am so frustrated that pretty much everyone is blind in this world. So may loud voices about the "harms" of AI, but what is happening with this tool is TOTALLY NORMAL in a TRADE BASED SOCIETY.
TOTALLY NORMAL!
Companies wanna trade these tools, thus make money at all costs. Users wanna use them to trade, make money. Videos, books, whatever the shit.
The incentive is THE SAME. Big or small groups of people.
There is NO SURPRISE!
Totally normal.
No way we can fix this, or the billions of other issues, unless we change the structure of our society. Sounds daunting but only if you are thinking about it simplistically and in a sci-fi way.
Imagine if we start a Universal Basic Income scheme, also provide the needs of people as trade-free. Housing, food, healthcare, etc.. Free people from this society, so they can be less idiotic and less driven to make profit out of everything. This is a realistic way forward.
That's how you can try to change the infinite blanket of shit that everyone grows on top of.
It drives me INSANE that people do not see this simple fact, that people are consuming idiots in a trade-based society, so ofc they will abuse every tool for trading purposes.
It has been the case for thousands of years.
So yah, I am sick of those who speak about AI slop, destruction of the environment, climate change, etc., but NEVER mentioning the trade-based society that creates all of these.
It's like talking about lung cancer without mentioning smoking at all. And not connecting it with the Tobacco industry. And then hop, back to trade.
This is the world we live in....and won't change in any significant way unless we understand where our problems originate.
#trade #society #ai #aislop #slop #fedi #fediverse #money #TradeRuinsEverything #capitlaism
Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •5 years ago (2021) Google researchers Metzler et al put out a preprint talking about how LLMs would change information access ("Rethinking Search"). It was full of TERRIBLE ideas, and Chirag Shah and I wrote a reply ("Situating Search"):
dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3498366…
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Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •We followed a couple of years later with further arguments about, inter alia, protecting the information ecosystem:
dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649468
While Nora Lindemann was writing about similar ideas:
link.springer.com/article/10.1…
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Chatbots, search engines, and the sealing of knowledges - AI & SOCIETY
SpringerLinkProf. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •But all the academic papers in the world showing why something is a bad idea won't stop companies from doing it, if it's profitable and/or fits into their quasi-religious beliefs that "AI" is the future, alas.
So let's look at what Google is up to now, or at least says they are, via TechCrunch as stenographer:
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Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Not satisfied to cut people off from the important sense-making of looking at information in its context and finding and navigating different perspectives (what "AI overviews" do), Google also wants to tell you what to search for:
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Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •How infantilizing --- you thought you were looking to find something that someone else wrote on the web. But woah! Now you've been "dropped into" an "interactive experience". Yeah, Google can just fuck right off with that.
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Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Look, I hate pointy-clicky interfaces as much as the next Gen-Xer (let me use the keyboard, dammit) but it is so weird to reduce the important, and importantly effortful, work of navigating the information ecosystem to the apparent drudgery of clicking on links that are (*shudder*) blue!!!
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Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Here is where it really starts to show that this journalist is just lightly paraphrasing a press release. "Links will become an afterthought," will they? What is your evidence for that confident statement about the future?
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Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Spot the magical thinking here. No, the "AI" isn't making sense of anything. It's making papier-mache of the input, and preventing the use from doing the sense-making.
Also, is that the Pokemon sense of "evolution"?
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Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •To expand just a little bit: the point of a Google Alert was to gain access to things that people were saying about a topic that you were tracking, which you otherwise might not turn up. And every (blue, even!) link that you clicked on brought you to a web page you could examine to get a sense of who was writing, in what context, and why.
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Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •More stenography here. Google starting shoving the "AI Overviews" into query results as an opt-out situation. That is, you have to take action to have them not pop up. I don't doubt they are *shown to* 2.5 billion monthly users, but that doesn't mean they are used by as many or desired by them.
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Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •The comparsion to ChatGPT in the above screencap also really shows the PR origins of this piece. Google is clearly very very concerned about losing their advantage in this market to OpenAI.
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Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •NO NO NO NO NO! Flashy polished looking webpages that no one has accountability for run absolutely counter to the common good when it comes to a health information ecosystem AND an informed public.
(Also, "Antigravity"? Yeah, you want us to think this is very cool science fiction and/or magic. Not buying it.)
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Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •For one final shudder: Pichai here seems to want to think this is helping the world somehow? Gah.
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Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •We don't have to buy this journalist's view of the future as already written by Google. Every time you click through to look at the actual source page you are helping to maintain our information ecosystem and build a better world.
/fin (for now)
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Tero Ykspetäjä
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Zekovski 🔥
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Luke Harby
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Guillotine Jones, Flâneur
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Tormod
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •lp0 on fire
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Michael Moore
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •arestelle
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
in reply to arestelle • • •Shar(yna)Tran/Shark(aeopteryx)
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Exactly!
I understand that business value propositions change over time, but going from "we disrupted search by making a simple interface" to "we ruptured search by making our simple interface complicated (and terrible)" is. well, it's certainly. a choice.
Bill, organizer of stuff
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •@mcahalane@mastodon.world
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Jennifer Kayla | Theogrin 🦊
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Thank you for this thread and breakdown!
Antigravity is a fantastic name, though. A concept directly contrary to observable reality which can never provide what it purports to do, but which demands infinite money to research and build a la a Perpetual Motion machine? Perfect, and I look forward to them naming their future confidence tricks in a similar manner.
Google Phlogiston. Google Luminous Aether. Google Phrenology.
Hugh Cayless
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Qybat
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Mensch, Marina
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •lp0 on fire
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •@emilymbender, that was exactly the point at which I started configuring browsers to add “&udm=14” to all searches done via G💩💩gle.
Most recent case? I noticed that Calibre does word lookup. It will happily do so via G💩💩gle; and, yes, the slop summary is shown.
Mike Anderson
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •ExcelAnalytics
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Qybat
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Tuuli M. (domestic goblin)
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •A new era for AI Search
Elizabeth Reid (Google)Sister Lucy Fur
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Will Deakin
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •I think jwz has opinions on links becoming "an afterthought"
jwz.org/blog/2026/05/links/
jwz: Links
www.jwz.orgJohn Colagioia
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Erwin
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •John Colagioia
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Turre
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •jon r
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •@energisch_
I stopped reading after "Google Search will drop users".
Damon L. Wakes
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •William B Peckham
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Alex makes autism fun
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Sensitive content
you know, I was just thinking
Google gave up on "don't be evil" at least a decade ago
while I worked there about five years ago, they gave up on "respect the user, respect the opportunity, respect each other"
now they seem to have given up on "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"
I hate that my livelihood is still tied to them.
Michael Moore
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Sometimes it feels like these people are trying to create a world from science fiction stories. For example, in Star Trek when they ask the computer something and it just gives them the answer. They don't understand that plenty of science fiction has no basis in reality and/or are terrible for how our brains actually work (like you've pointed out).
That or they are just greedy bastards that are looking to exploit anyone and everyone for a profit.
Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
Unknown parent • • •Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
Unknown parent • • •@PeterLG Came across as mansplaining.
Pro tip: Agreeing usually starts with "Yes" or something similar that acknowledges the content of the post you are replying to.
Akash Mondal
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Linda Sgoluppi Artist
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •ShadSterling
Unknown parent • • •Tommi 🤯
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •SEO is going to be so dead.
To me, it’s Search Engines Ostracism now.
Kristoffer Lawson
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Rob
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Having an AI summary forced into every search doesn't make the searcher a user of the tech. How many people simply ignore the summary?
GerhardD.🏳️🌈
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Roadskater, Ph.D.
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •I saw someone toot about that Tuesday afternoon, and my reaction to the article was, "So TechCrunch is rewriting Google press releases?" Not a critical thought expressed in the article. IIRC, no quotes from anyone at all, positive or negative. Just a list of supposedly useful features and enhancements.
Feh.
Allan
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •ℂ𝕖𝕝𝕖𝕤𝕥𝕖
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Álvaro G. Molinero 👉 @KimeraGupta
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Six alternatives to Google Search hosted in Europe
european-alternatives.eu/alter…
I usually use Qwant and I'm very happy
European alternatives to Google Search | European Alternatives
European AlternativesCasdeiro
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •Sherri W (SyntaxSeed)
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •These companies desperately want to stop us from finding & enjoying each other's content. Walled gardens of social media & mega platforms weren't enough, now the search directories will be the ultimate walled garden.
All built on stealing the work of everyone who's ever published anything online.
Why would anyone create anything anymore? I already feel my own desire to blog is waning.
Chartodon
Unknown parent • • •@ColinTheMathmo
Your chart is ready, and can be found here:
solipsys.co.uk/Chartodon/11660…
Things may have changed since I started compiling that, and some things may have been inaccessible.
In particular, the very nature of the fediverse means some toots may never have made it to my instance, in which case I can't see them, and can't include them.
The chart will eventually be deleted, so if you'd like to keep it, make sure you download a copy.
MarjorieR
in reply to Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) • • •"Google Search as you know it is over".
Easily shortened with no loss of information to "Google Search is over". It's really time for them to stop pretending Google is a search engine anymore.
I do wonder what running genAI on all their queries is already costing them and how that will only grow per user, though I can only guess how they are going to try and recover that cost.
Meanwhile I can see a lot of websites opting out of paying the Google advertisers tax and starting to set a google noindex tag.
MarjorieR
in reply to MarjorieR • • •at the same time as this presentation there was also one to presenting their ideas fror their real business, selling advertising.
Link to an article covering this in @urlyman 's post.
social.linux.pizza/deck/@urlym…
From the article itself:
"Google is betting its entire future on a world where people eagerly hand over their emails, their files, their habits, and their trust – to an AI system that will quietly auction off their attention, word by word, to the highest bidder. The ad infrastructure is ready. The question is whether the audience is."
matthiasott.com/notes/ad-infin…
Ad Infinitum · Matthias Ott
Matthias Ott (Matthias Ott – Web Design Engineer)