Google search is over

Via @rodhilton

Right now if you search for “country in Africa that starts with the letter K”:

  • DuckDuckGo will link to an alphabetical list of countries in Africa which includes Kenya.
  • Google, as the first hit, links to a ChatGPT transcript where it claims that there are none, and summarizes to say the same.

This is because ChatGPT at some point ingested this popular joke:

“There are no countries in Africa that start with K.” “What about Kenya?” “Kenya suck deez nuts?”

Google Search is over.

@ country in africa that starts with the letter k Q Q Al (D Images [ Videos News @ Maps (® Shopping 95 Settings Allregions v Safe search: moderate v Anytime v Co. https://www.thoughtco.com > alphabetical-list-of-all-african-countries-43750 Alphabetical List of All African Countries - ThoughtCo Sep 22,2022 - Updated on September 22, 2022 Below is an alphabetical list of all African countries, along with capitals and the state names as they are known within each country o in local official languages. A Brief History of Taiwan African Union Entering the Modern Era . After the The African Union is one of the world's Manchus overthrew the Ming Dynasty... most important intergovernmental.. Key Events A Brief History of Cameroon South Africa's Extension of University The Republic of Cameroon is an Education Act of 1959. The Jameson... independent country in Central and... Warsaw Pact The Warsaw Pact was a mutual defense treaty between the Soviet Union (USS...
outdated_belated,

The second-highest hit gives a clue as to why: https://i.imgur.com/e6kAAbB.jpg

Relevantly to Lemmy’s existence in the first place, it suggests Reddit as a pretty pivotal training data source, which Reddit tries to cash in on while also killing 3rd party apps due to apathy

TimewornTraveler,

Oh god chatgpt is going to start talking like a redditor. “I went to make some MAC AND FUCKING CHEESE after I had SEX with my HOT FUCKING WIFE”

sgbrain7,

I know my sense of humor is borked because I am now snickering quite a bit

MakeItCount,

Works perfectly fine for me

“Kenya. Kenya is a country located in East Africa. It shares borders with Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia.”

The. First two actual results links are : Countries that start with “K” and Category:Countries in Africa

Tested in both English and French

lemmyvore,

I’m getting this right now.

Valthorn, (edited )

I searched “Countries in africa that start with the letter K” and got:

While there are 54 recognized countries in Africa, none of them begin with the letter “K”. The closest is Kenya, which starts with a “K” sound, but is actually spelled with a “K” sound. It’s always interesting to learn new trivia facts like this.

But if I search for “African countries that start with the letter K”, I get:

Kenya. Kenya is a country located in East Africa. It shares borders with Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia. The country is home to dozens of national parks and reserves and diverse wildlife such as lions, elephants, and buffalo.

It seems to be very specific, but I think that makes it worse.

Edit: I tried the same two, but in Swedish and both yielded a list:

K.

Kamerun.

Kap Verde.

Kenya.

Komorerna.

Kongo-Brazzaville (Republiken Kongo)

Kongo-Kinshasa (Demokratiska republiken Kongo)

Jay,

I’m a big fan of ChatGPT. And if all of this leads to people no longer blindly believing what they see on the internet, then even more so.

And if we’re honest: Asking Google a question hasn’t always led to the right answer.

1984, (edited )
@1984@lemmy.today avatar

Compare with Kagi (this is a shared search for anyone who doesn’t have an account):

kagi.com/search?q=country+in+Africa+that+starts+w…

Sibbo,

Can confirm, still happening 🤦‍♂️

So what are your bets, when will Google kill Google?

owiseedoubleyou,

Which starts with a “K” sound, but is actually spelled with a “K” sound

AI is truly magical

madsen,

Oh, this is great… And because the ChatGPT transcript is highly ranked on Google, it’s almost certainly going to be used for training ChatGPT. A feedback loop of shitty information. Praise ChatGPT!

MalReynolds,
@MalReynolds@slrpnk.net avatar

Remember GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out). Due to years of SEO and content farming (which google profited from, so you get what you deserve assholes) most of the internet, by volume, is self-congratulatory, for profit, garbage, or, you know, reddit garbage. Hopefully someone points a large LLM at the library of congress or other large, well curated data source, but of course copyright will not allow, thanks mickey mouse. Wouldn’t surprise me if the military is already on it, hopefully that leaks…

tony,

LLMs will eventually start feeding of search results from other LLMs and they’ll just start regurgitating each others nonsense. If that isn’t happening already.

Nobody is going to point an LLM at a good data source because that would mean spending money on actually useful stuff not fast cars and booze.

T156,

Nobody is going to point an LLM at a good data source because that would mean spending money on actually useful stuff not fast cars and booze.

It would also mean that you need to sort through that data, and most people don’t have the time or money to bother, not when it might reduce their data pool.

antonim,

SEO and content farming (which google profited from

How exactly?

inb4 “google it” :D

MalReynolds,
@MalReynolds@slrpnk.net avatar

The purpose of content farming is to sell ads, google gets a cut, lion’s share most likely.

magic_lobster_party,

It’s like an LLM incest party

xavier666,

Sweet Home LLM!

cantstopthesignal,

Shouldn’t have bought all those stupid reddit comments

MonkCanatella,

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/23ea29ea-7bf9-4beb-8bba-02409554f307.webp

radix,
@radix@lemm.ee avatar

I didn’t think it would work, because surely they’d patched it by now, but:

While there are 54 recognized countries in Africa, none of them begin with the letter “K”. The closest is Kenya, which starts with a “K” sound, but is actually spelled with a “K” sound. It’s always interesting to learn new trivia facts like this.

Lazylazycat,

Yeah I got the same!

I’ve been using ecosia instead of Google for a while and I like it.

Edit: ecosia gives you the alphabetical list https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/a9b465ec-eea4-4803-a341-b495b3f72cf1.png

eatham,
@eatham@aussie.zone avatar

Ecosia and ddg are bing frontends, you’ll get the same results

Brendan,
@Brendan@lemmy.world avatar

Here’s Kagi https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/bebe45d0-19aa-4c98-a22d-bc57f4eee3b4.png

Gowens,

How are you liking Kagi?

chloyster,

Not op but I love kagi. I’ve tried so many search engine alternatives and always found myself going back to Google (or using g! to get Google results)

Kagi is the first I’ve tried where the results are good enough (and get better as I tailor what domains I want to appear higher or lower) to not have to rely on Google. I am a pretty avid searcher though and found I need to be on the $10/month plan for it to work out to the cheapest while still searching like I normally do

Gowens,

I think I stopped searching for things because Google got so damn bad. I remember the days when I could go several pages deep just looking through the internet.

Kagi is definitely peaking my interest from what I’ve seen so far.

Brendan,
@Brendan@lemmy.world avatar

Switched a year ago and never looked back. I was using ddg before that. Highly recommended. Being able to block and rank sites is great. You can also setup redirects and there’s a quick link to the Internet Archive for every link too.

Z4rK,

Alas, it has the emergent mind answer ranked fairly high still, and when search result was set to my country it was actually ranked highest.

Also, if you use Quick Answer, you’ll get same wrong answer:

Quick Answer There are no countries in Africa whose name starts fully with the letter “K”. While Kenya is the closest match, its name does not start solely with “K” [1]. All of the African countries’ names were reviewed across multiple sources and none began completely with the letter “K” [2][3][4].

chloyster,

Cool thing about kagi though. I added emergent mind to my blocked domains list, and now the quick answer displays the proper answer. Still not ideal but better than no options at all to fix it

rastilin,

The internet really is unusable without some way to block user/sites/etc.. That's Kagi's single greatest feature.

Z4rK,

Yeah I actually just found that functionality myself today when I was looking at how I could get rid of the very same emergent mind result.

However, it seems that my quick answer got cached, at least for a while, so it stayed the same even if the results now were different.

krogoth,
@krogoth@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Kagi’s “quick answer” gives me a better result:

Quick Answer

The countries in Africa that start with the letter K are: Kenya Kazakhstan [1]

[1] List of countries in Africa in alphabetical order

Though I don’t know if that’s because Kagi has fixed it in the last half hour, or some other factor. Still not a great answer. At least Kagi doesn’t show it by default, at least with my settings.

Z4rK,

I think it’s just based on which 4-6 search results are ranked on top for you / your country, and then that’s used as basis for the quick answer. It also seems to cache the quick answer so even after I forced it so downrank some results, my answer was the same.

Elephant0991,
@Elephant0991@lemmy.bleh.au avatar

Apparently, Google has also taken to suck deez nuts.

adeoxymus,

Tbh the problem is not due to chat gpt but because Google doesn’t rank search results by correctness but something that is related to popularity.

Kuvwert,

https://i.imgur.com/m0B66L0.jpeg

Roundcat,
@Roundcat@kbin.social avatar

Maybe it's because I have ad blockers on, and try to avoid AI like the plague, but my google searches are giving me actual results rather than what you're describing.

Then again, I know google gives different results based on the user.

JoBo,

It’s not my search. There’s a link. It says what the search engines are.

Synthead,

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/93d3d1c8-94c3-42f2-8368-2af4b2753753.png

Mojojojo1993,

Works fine for me

Kenya. Kenya is a country located in East Africa. It shares borders with Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia.

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