I suspect that this is the direct result of AI generated content just overwhelming any real content.

I tried ddg, google, bing, quant, and none of them really help me find information I want these days.

Perplexity seems to work but I don’t like the idea of AI giving me “facts” since they are mostly based on other AI posts

ETA: someone suggested SearXNG and after using it a bit it seems to be much better compared to ddg and the rest.

  • @j4k3@lemmy.world
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    75 months ago

    I don’t use perplexity, but AI is generally 60-80% effective with a larger than average open weights off line model running on your own hardware.

    DDG offers the ability to use some of these. I use a modified Mistral model still, even though its base model(s) are Llama 2. Llama 3 can be better in some respects but it has terrible alignment bias. The primary entity in the underlying model structure is idiotic in alignment strength and incapable of reason with edge cases like creative writing for SciFi futurism. The alignment bleeds over. If you get on DDG and use the Anthropic Mixtral 8×7b, it is pretty good. The thing with models is to not talk to them like humans. Everything must be explicitly described. Humans make a lot of implied context in general where we assume people understand what we are talking about. Talking to an AI is like appearing in court before a judge; every word matters. The LLM is basically a reflection of all of human language too. If the majority of humans are wrong about something, so is the AI.

    If you ask something simple like just a question, you’re not going to get very far into what the model knows. Models have very limited scope of focus. If you do not build prompt momentum into the space by describing a lot of details, the scope of focus is large but the depth is shallow. The more you build up momentum by describing what you are asking in detail, the more it narrows the scope and deeper connections can be made.

    It is hard to tell what a model really knows unless you can observe the perplexity output. This is more advanced, but the perplexity score for each generated token is how you infer that the model does not know something.

    Search sucks because it is a monopoly. There are only 2 relevant web crawlers m$ and the goo. All search queries go through these either directly or indirectly. No search provider is deterministic any more. Your results are uniquely packaged to manipulate you. They are also obfuscated to block others from using them for training better or competitive models. Then there is the anti trust US government case and all of that which makes obfuscating one’s market position to push people onto other platforms temporarily, their best path forward. - criminal manipulators are going to manipulate.

  • @bitjunkie@lemmy.world
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    365 months ago

    It’s not just you. At some point, search’s primary purpose went from “finding the information you’re looking for” to “getting paid to put links in front of you”. Then they kept iterating on it, quarter by quarter, for a very long time.

  • @Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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    135 months ago

    There’s an extension that filters out websites from every engine. So like when you see Quora or other other digital garbage in your result, block it once and you’ll never see another Quora article again.

    Idr the name of the extension - I’ll check when I get home and follow up.

      • @Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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        65 months ago

        Sorry, that was a LONG fuckin day. On call, and we had a couple addon surgeries go late.

        Anyway, this one:

        https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hohser/

        I need to be more diligent about actually using it, if your search gives garbage in even like the first 5 hits, add those to your filter and it’ll start to add up fast. This extension has only been on my radar for a few months, and it’s already made a big difference - I’m in nursing school right now, and trying to look up info on the shit our profs are lecturing on invariably yields like 10 websites that are just cheaty test question databases that don’t actually help you learn jack shit; and there’s so much of that garbage that it makes finding actual info a challenge. Screening that bullshit out alone has been great!

        10/10

      • wanderingmagus
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        75 months ago

        It’s probably uBlacklist, available on both Chromium-based and Firefox-based browsers. Filters websites and results for search.

    • billwashere
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      15 months ago

      Yeah 100% agree. Especially for the type of search where you’re googling for an answer. This feels like what searches used to be when Google was young and forums still existed.

    • Jerkface (any/all)
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      5 months ago

      Jesus, the “plandemic” explanation for why the Internet is dying. The Internet IS clearly dying, but this is stupid. Even if we got rid of all the bots and AI, the Internet would still be dying, because open protocols are not as exploitable as walled gardens. The value of capital in the world overwhelms the value of human labour and human interest, and all our social structures conform to the needs of capital over time.

  • @Doorbook@lemmy.world
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    115 months ago

    I feel it is intentional. They are god damn good at hearing my talking about a baby and shoving all baby videos and social media post in every corner for ad revenue; yet when I search about something trivial I cannot get an answer.

    Even AI becoming useless the last couple of weeks compare to a few months back where it gave details answers.

    • @JovialMicrobial@lemm.ee
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      15 months ago

      I don’t even want a baby, but I was getting nonstop diaper ads for weeks this summer.

      I think it’s because they’re desperately trying to get people to have kids(thats my hypothesis anyway). Not saying yours isn’t picking up you talking about the topic, but I got so swamped with them at one point I was starting to wonder if I was losing my mind. I asked my husband about it and he was getting them too.

      It was honestly weird as hell.

        • @JovialMicrobial@lemm.ee
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          05 months ago

          I don’t know, it was really super weird how randomly it started shoving them in my face when it didn’t previously.

          I don’t think Google gives a shit if I have kids, but the republican party has voiced concerns over “the domestic supply of babies” multiple times over the years and I wouldn’t put it past them to give google “gratuities” to shove baby related ads on people in general, not just me specifically.

          It’s just a hypothesis I have about the sudden increase in baby related stuff. I’m not dedicated to the idea or anything, but it honestly wouldn’t surprise me if that was the case.

  • @taiyang@lemmy.world
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    35 months ago

    I wanted to make a joke about my first search engine, MetaCrawler, and then found out it’s still around and still does search. Going down that rabbithole, it’s changed hands a ton and was only relaunched kinda recently at some point. Is it any good? Nah, probably not.

    I guess I’ll just have to rely on my other aggregate search engine, SavvySearch (no, no the first search engine does not in fact still exist, much to my disappointment).

  • @JoeKrogan@lemmy.world
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    -25 months ago

    I use brave search. I can generally find most things. They even have an answer with ai thing that gives some useful stuff when you want a specific quick answer.

    I also use ddg.

  • @anttifantti@sopuli.xyz
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    415 months ago

    I feel like it’s especially bad if you are searching for anything related to a marketable product. I tried searching ddg for information about using a surge protector with halogen bulbs and all I got was pages and pages of listicles on “best halogen lights 2024” full of affiliate links.