General overviews of Google’s AI misunderstand why people use Google

Last month, we looked at some of the most wrong, dangerous, and bizarre answers generated by Google’s new AI Overviews feature. Google has since offered and has given a partial apology/explanation for generating this type of result It has reportedly backed away from rolling out the feature For at least some types of queries.

But the more I thought about this argument, the more I began to question the wisdom of Google’s AI-powered search results in the first place. Even when the system isn’t giving obviously false results, condensing search results into a neat, compact AI-generated summary seems like a fundamental misunderstanding of how people use Google in the first place.

Reliability and importance

When people type a question into the Google search bar, they sometimes just want the kind of basic reference information that can be found on a Wikipedia page or company website (or even a Google information snippet). Often times, they are searching for personal information where there is no single “correct” answer: “What are the best Mexican restaurants in Santa Fe?” Or “What should I do with my kids on a rainy day?” or “How can I keep cheese from sliding on pizza?”

The value of Google has always been to direct you to places you think exist Possible To get good answers to those questions. But it is still up to you, the user, to know which of these sources is the most reliable and appropriate for what you need at that moment.

For the sake of reliability, any intelligent Internet user uses a myriad of context clues when judging a random Internet search result. Did you recognize the executor or author? Is the information coming from someone with professional experience/experience or from a random forum poster? Is the site well designed? Has it been around for a while? Does he cite other sources you trust, etc.?

But Google also doesn’t know in advance which specific result will fit the type of information you’re looking for. When it comes to restaurants in Santa Fe, for example, are you in the mood for an authoritative list from a respected newspaper critic or for more unconventional suggestions from random locals? Or maybe you scroll down a bit and stumble upon a loosely related story about the history of the city’s Mexican culinary influences.

One of the unseen strengths of Google’s search algorithm is that the user can decide which results are best for them. As long as there’s something authoritative and relevant in the first few pages of results, it doesn’t matter if the other links are “wrong” for that specific search or user.