this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Once AI is handling search for us, many may never learn the concept of "search term"

[–] whatsarefoogee 38 points 1 year ago (2 children)

"AI" is already handling the search for you. The big search engines are probably the first mass scale adopters of machine learning.

And they have lost the war with SEO spam to a hilarious extent. What makes you think the same won't happen with chat bot AIs? Bad actors (including PR agencies) will inevitably figure out where and how to spam comments in order to bias the AI models in favor of their agendas or products.

If the data they consume is filled with something like "fossil fuels don't cause global warming because XYZ", the chat bots will repeat it. They don't have the capacity to reason.

There hasn't been a reason to flood the internet with low effort spam because it's easily detected by humans who read it. But the ML algorithms will be a lot easier to trick.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Injecting stuff into the data consumed by LLMs is the new type of SEO.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Apologies, I used the overly vague term "AI". Any company creating an LLM that has web search + scraping capabilities will be at the mercy of the search results.

That said, LLMs are actually quite skilled at ignoring noise (repetitive data), so gaming SEO may lose popularity. Hell, the practice will DEFINITELY lose appeal once LLMs are just browsing for relevant content and summarizing without any citations (links to the sites). And even of they do cite, no one will click them.

Convenience > Fact

tldr; This additional layer of obfuscation between search and result will reshape the fabric of the internet with time

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

You can already outsource a lot of this to Bing. If you need to know the right temperature for making french fries, you can google a bunch of “recipes” (AKA life story of the author + history + vacation photos + cooking instructions) read them through and… actually better make some coffee while you’re at it because this is going to take a while. Anyway, the other option is to ask: “Hey Bing, I’m making french fries, but I don’t know how hot the oven should be.”

Spoiler: 220 °C

The scary thing is, what happens when people start doing this for more important things, such as what to do if your child has swallowed something or how to parallel park your car.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

200 or 220, depends on if you are using a convection oven. But that's beside the point, I really hope AI finally kills SEO.

[–] backseat 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m making french fries, but I don’t know how hot the oven should be.

Contents:

  • What French fries are
  • Why you might want some
  • The dangers of French fries
  • Where to buy French fries
  • Ways of preparing French fries
  • Other names for French fries

And so on.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Quality content right there, if you don’t mind going down some rabbit holes.

[–] AnUnusualRelic 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

French fries aren't made in an oven though.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Oven cooked french fries are a thing, and have a surprisingly high popularity

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

In my just under 40 years on this rock, the only time I’ve seen someone deepfrying french fries at home has been on American TV shows. It’s a lot more popular to cook them in the oven around here.

[–] Monkeyhog 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Doesn't the very nature of being fries, require them to be fried? Otherwise, they're baked potato sticks.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ours are pre-fried at the factory, then frozen and packaged. We typically then finish cooking them in the oven.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

This is the way.

[–] TheLowestStone 2 points 1 year ago

Yes.

Source: I'm a chef.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Correct. However, if you buy frozen ones, you do need to heat them up some way. I ran out of nuclear weapons again, my flamer was out of gasoline, so using the oven was my best option.

[–] ItsMeSpez 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Good thing those frozen ones come with the required cooking temperature on the package.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Hey Spez, can you throw some more subreddits into the dumpster fire. The temperature is almost right for popping some popcorn.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

True but they will learn the concept 'inefficency increases individual profits'. Google has been getting worse and so will AI search eventually.

[–] danc4498 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I think communicating with AI will become an art form the same way googling was/is.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Saneless 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Until they're sponsored

"I realize you seem frustrated from my responses. Nature's Choice has a fantastic Stress Reducing gummy available at your local CVS"

[–] ohlaph 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, the gentle product hints at first will be driving people away quicker than a Monstered up Uber driver.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It already is. If you want to play a game of D&D with chatGPT, there’s a very specific prompt carefully crafted for that. If you want to chat with a with a total psycho, there’s a prompt for that. If you want your AI to do something it was specifically forbidden from doing, just craft a very specific prompt for that, and you’re good to go. You can even find sites that collect various prompts for just about any purpose you can imagine.

[–] paddirn 5 points 1 year ago

It’s the same idea I think, figuring out how to describe what you mean or phrase the question the right way to get the right kind of results.

[–] fidodo 4 points 1 year ago

Ask Jeeves was just ahead of its time