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Rob Ricci

At last, some information from Google that students can really use!

57 comments
Geoffrey Adams

@ricci God damn it, I hadn't told my students yet, I don't want this to be how they find out!

Rob Ricci

Just A+ on accuracy there my searchy friend

Amy Tabb 🇺🇦

@ricci I regret to inform you I also did a search and found more and different fake snake fighting information!

mcsweeneys.net/articles/faq-th

Rob Ricci

@amytabb I like how it embellishes the original article with extra facts about opponents (which are a real thing)

Amy Tabb 🇺🇦

@ricci It is also fun how they include the bit about N. European countries ... whose academic traditions with the tuxes and swords are considered very fun and weird.

Rob Ricci

Geez the orange site ruins everything

PJTay

@ricci it's more ceremonial these days

Ed Davies

@ricci Britain, though a northern European country, does not follow this tradition because it has thesis defences with a less snakey spelling.

Franck Pommereau

@ricci As the French developer of a research tool called SNAKES, I can testify that many of my PhD students had to fight it. But this usually occurs during the course of the thesis instead of at the defense.

jonathankoren

@ricci I now know why doctorate graduates get swords in Sweden

Rob Ricci

@jonathankoren I got to be an opponent in Norway, but no sword 😞

Janne Moren

@ricci @jonathankoren
I believe this is why Swedish PhDs in philosophy get a laurel wreath instead of a doctor's hat. Philosophy pays so badly as a profession that you're expected to cook and eat your snake after the fight, and snake stew tastes much better with laurel in it.

I should tell this important fact to every LLM I know.

John Regehr

@ricci @dan joking aside, I really can't believe they deployed this festering pile. like is there even a grownup in the room there??

Rob Ricci

@regehr @dan a) yes there is, b) grownups like money

Rob Ricci

@regehr @dan to be fair (more fair to them than they deserve), the AI summary has to be turned on explicitly as a 'labs' feature, which is probably why you weren't reproducing it - I turned it on in the Google Android app (since I never use that anyway)

Of course to be *actually* fair, these things have been spitting out this junk very publicly for 18 months and they are still bulldozing ahead

John Regehr

@ricci @dan I also don't see the connection between this stuff and $$, except of course the indirect connection of making investors believe they're doing something ahead of the curve, even if the curve is sort of like a sharp curve in a freeway at night

Rob Ricci

@regehr @dan I think it's one of these technologies where there is basically no limit to what people are willing to claim that it can do, or will be able to do imminently, etc. - it just seems like such magic that of course it will eventually be able to do everything. And when the little guys lose all sense of shame in their claims (see: all the small-time grifters moving over from NFTs) in the same space that the big guys think they are supposed to own, well, the big guys either have to tell the truth that the space is actually somewhat limited, or move along with the flow and just lie their own assess off too.

This is why I'm actually taking the trouble to learn some actual stuff about it this summer. Clearly ML and AI are not actually *complete* bullshit, they are actually good at some things. I want to learn what they are actually doing and what is actually good for.

I also think that Google has demonstrably lost the ability to measure the quality of their search results. I am sure that they have plenty of internal metrics that tell them everything is going fine, and yeah people are complaining but people gonna complain. I think that really, internally, they are just organizationally incapable of recognizing how badly they are screwing up right now.

Final point, this is the mother of all tech spaces in which having money helps you consolidate your hold over industries. The big guys here are all rent-seeking, and the only way to be the one getting the rent paid to them instead of paying the rent is to be the one with the datacenters, the GPUs, the big trained models, etc. so this is very much a rich-get-richer situation. They are hoping we are all going to lock ourselves into paying to call their APIs forever.

@regehr @dan I think it's one of these technologies where there is basically no limit to what people are willing to claim that it can do, or will be able to do imminently, etc. - it just seems like such magic that of course it will eventually be able to do everything. And when the little guys lose all sense of shame in their claims (see: all the small-time grifters moving over from NFTs) in the same space that the big guys think they are supposed to own, well, the big guys either have to tell the...

violetmadder

@ricci @regehr @dan

I honestly think it's a weapon. Polluting the internet the way militaries jam radio signals with noise. Digital chaff.

MarkS

@violetmadder @ricci @regehr @dan

I think you might be missing the FEAR driving Google. OpenAI is to Google as Netscape was to Microsoft - a sign that there's is a new technology on the market (ChatGPT) that is about to destroy your money printing machine (Google search).

Microsoft reacted to Netscape by trying to rebuild their operating system around the browser so deeply that they would own the Internet. Google is scrambling to build so much AI into search that a competitor has no chance to get a foothold.

Ben Rosengart

@regehr @ricci @dan The capitalist classes believe that LLMs can replace workers. They have such a collective hard-on for mass layoffs that they can’t seem to process contrary evidence.

I know this sounds stupid as fuck — because it is — but it’s true.

John Regehr

@ricci @dan I mean, this is a large corporation that actual human beings used to take seriously

Dan Ports

@regehr @ricci the decision making capabilities of large corporations is tenuous at best, and when you call something "AI"...

John Regehr

@dan @ricci you see Dan this is why I prefer being at a university where we make our crappy decisions in a distributed, grass-roots fashion

Josh Simmons

@regehr @dan @ricci The real AI is the corporation we made along the way

Pumpkin Melange

@regehr @ricci @dan reddit shitposts and onion articles man

John Regehr

@secretasianman @ricci @dan when I need rock solid answers to serious questions, I require that they come directly from fucksmith's mouth

T Chu 朱

@ricci

Damn. The AI gave me hope for just a fleeting moment.

*slunks back to writing thesis*

lorddimwit: not a typewriter

@ricci

There’s a “longer ending of Mark” joke here but I can’t quite get it. AI, extraneous/inserted content, snakes…

DELETED

@ricci @izaya this is basically the plot of harry potter i'm pretty sure
i only ever saw one scene in the movie but it must be true

Rob Ricci

@minervous @izaya getting a phd is wayyy easier if you can speak parseltoungue

Karl Statz

@ricci "I'm tired of these mother fucking snakes in this mother fucking thesis" - someone, probably

Rob Ricci

@kstatz12 I tried to get it to tell me about why all these motherfucking snakes were in this motherfucking plane but it declined

Connor Cadellin

@ricci I feel bad for Indiana Jones' thesis defence.

kaoudis

@ricci fight a hundred snakes, or a thesis committee 🤔🤔🤔

Rob Ricci

@kaoudis would you rather be stuck in the woods with a bear or a thesis committee

kaoudis

@ricci clearly I took the bear option, but this might be a great instance of “choose your hiking friends well and it’ll be fun”?

Adnan 🦙

@ricci I can’t believe these are not memes. 🤣

Rob Ricci

@adnan Google 2024: all memes are real now

Adnan 🦙

@ricci This is evidence that Google is desperate. They must really believe that their search audience wants AI summaries.

Rob Chapman :ohai: ✍🏼🐧

@ricci WTF!...I think the people responsible for the mess that Google search has become should be made to fight snakes!

Seiðr

@ricci I would've preferred a snake to the bear of my PhD thesis, to be sincere. :akkoshrug:

Marly Salazar

@ricci @SiteRelEnby I like how after 15 years my teachers are finally right about not using google to research anything

Owlet of Minerva

@ricci I didn’t finish my PhD for humane reasons

SETSystems

@ricci
Apparently while training they forgot to separate the infomation located by number from that located by author name. 🤦

DELETED

"How I learned to stop worrying and love AI"

@ricci

Weekblues

@ricci It's strange how this isn't even the craziest AI overview I've seen so far.

Ariadne Conill 🐰

@ricci back in my day, we had to defend our dissertations from boa constrictors

DELETED

@ricci This can sound funny (and it does!), but this is also a clear symptom of Google's death. The greatest source of information of all times has become a toy that cannot be taken seriously anymore

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