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When the collapse of Stack Overflow happens because of this shit, say goodbye forever to researching solutions to your coding difficulties.
It’s already collapsed
It’s been a while that I needed to visited Stack Overflow. When I need a coding question answered, I ask Claude Code. Just like back then with answers from Stack Overflow, I still do the sanity checks and verification using my own natural neural network. AI is pretty useful as an assistant for coding if you are able to properly review the generated code.
Stackoverflow he’s been collapsing way before the advent of GPTs.
Feel bad because I use this a lot. It really isn’t fair for the websites though.
I feel bad for you, though. The error rate on the AI searches is high, and you might go the rest of your life not knowing you were lied to, believing the garbage that showed up on your screen.
In my opinion, the question of quality is paramount. If you want the truth, don’t listen to GenAI, because GenAI doesn’t actually know anything.
Oh I completely agree. It can come up with some crazy stuff that isn’t remotely accurate. I guess I should preface it with, I use it when it isn’t anything important lol. Maybe something like “how do I delete X account” or something non critical.
My friend is an electrical engineer at John Deere HQ and he goes nuts with the AI stuff. He has it write basic code in VB, but then he has it compile it then run another request after to fix it when it subsequently doesn’t work. I keep telling him he’s asking for something bad to happen.
“But how about I just summarize it for you instead… poorly and with a few lies added in?”
My wife works at a library. People constantly come in asking to use the library fax machine, because Google’s AI says they have one.
They don’t have one. Their website says they don’t have one. But LLMs have determined it’s plausible for libraries to have a fax machine, so Google tells people that they have one.
You’d be surprised at the number of people who can’t accept that people working at the library know more about the library than Google.
They should get one! That’s a very normal thing for a library to have.
I’ve had this experience myself; I’m an American living in the Netherlands and sometimes just don’t know the name for the thing I need nor where to buy one. LLM bots are fine for the translation part, but they will make wild assumptions like telling me I can buy a kitchen strainer at the hardware store or food spices at a place called Kruidvat which translates to spice-bucket basically but is actually most like CVS without the pharmacy and does not sell any food besides some candy and chips.
It’s hilarious how quickly these bots can swing from super useful to actually harmful to trust.
She never told them to use AI to locate and operate the fax machine?
Lol I’m sure that would end badly. Remember that QAnon crazy guy that fired shots at that pizza restaurant demanding to see the basement where they kept the kids tied up?
Google is basically a conspiracy theorist peddler at the point.
You’re right. Some might end up typing phone numbers into the alarm system and cram papers into the heating vents.
Well of course. Telling me im wrong is an attack on me. Im good not bad so dont deserve to be attacked. So anyone attacking me is bad and a liar and erong.
_Oh wow, I was reading some other websites to summarize this one, and apparently their competitor (who happened to pay for ad placement on this websites name plus url) says this website throws puppies into volcanos!
Oh, and you need to eat 6 rocks a day for your nutrition.
Was this summary helpful, or do you also throw puppies into volcanos?_
while it’s not great, a ton of websites did this to themselves by turning every 1 paragraph piece of information into a 5 page listicle with ads splattered all over the place. I don’t think AI search stuff would be nearly as popular if websites didn’t make their content impossible to view.
Shotout to all those “When does season X of Y come out” sites that serve no purpose.
Those aren’t the valuable sites, though. They’re content/SEO farms whose main purpose is to serve ads to eyeballs for profit. Many of those ads are hosted by Google themselves.
And which tech giant threw up their hands and let those shit-tier websites take over search results… I’ll give you one guess.
Baeldung does this and I find them a useful site (with ad blockers).
It’s crazy to me how far we’ve gotten away from sanity. How long until Google starts fucking with summaries and inserting corporate opinions because a website contains content capitalism doesn’t align with? Like a website about anti-Zionism for example.
I’d be surprised if this isn’t already happening or at the very least being tested on a smaller scale.
Oh yeah, it is definitely heavily biased already. Just google anything controversial and you’ll see it to some degree.
“Is ICE doing illegal operations” -> “Allegations…” Anything about the strait of hormuz -> straight up no summary whatsoever lmao
Google, tell me about the Gulf of Mexico.
Did you mean Gulf of America?
This is common practice. If you look at Google Maps in any other country, the name will not have changed. In the U.S., it shows the legal name within the U.S., which was updated by H.R. 276.
Similarly, disputed borders are drawn differently depending on which country you’re accessing Google Maps in to satisfy local laws. https://www.the-independent.com/tech/the-man-who-s-making-google-maps-smarter-9544478.html
it shows the legal name within the U.S.
This is highly debatable. The wikipedia entry does not mention that name until halfway down:
Trump directed federal agencies to adopt the name “Gulf of America” for the waters bounded by the U.S. Some major online map platforms and several U.S.-based media outlets voluntarily adopted the change, but it also stoked controversy, with Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum and others objecting to the declaration
Comapring this bovine excrement to disputed borders leaves a very bad aftertaste for me.
I asked about the Strait of Hormuz, and it summarized information from Al Jazeera, the BBC, and Wikipedia. It added the following disclaimer:
Disclaimer: This information is based on reports from April 18–20, 2026, and the situation is highly volatile.
This seems reasonable.
When I asked about ICE illegal operations, it summarized and linked to the American Immigration Council.
This is not as good. If I’m asking about something done right now being illegal, I would like to see ongoing cases challenging the legality of the actions. I’d hesitate to call that bias instead of just bad results though.
I’m not sure where you are from, and perhaps it depends on the location!
I would definitely call it bias, because if it can summarize Al Jazeera for the Strait, it could certainly summarize Al Jazeera for ICE!
The American Immigration Council is a better source than Al Jazeera for describing what ICE might be doing that is wrong, so I don’t consider that a valid criticism of this summary.
It will be in the form of a “warning” or something.
How long? Brother, controlling the narrative is the entire point of why AIs are being shoved down your throat
Wow the masses with their Mechanical Turk, then pull the strings behind the scenes whenever you need to tip the scale in your favor. Drive engagement with your product? Sus out new innovations that could threaten your business model? Manufacture consent for your international apartheid resource extraction project? Stifle populist grassroots political movements at home?
You already know it’s true because you laugh about Grok every time it truth-dunks on Elon. We’re all collectively like “wow he can’t even control it enough to share his warped PR version of reality” which means we fucking know why these things exist: to gaslight the human race to the will of the capitalist ruling class
But finding and synthesizing information is so hard. Not all of us are nerds who like spending all day on this stuff you know whats next stop using facebook products?
Google has already patented a method to use AI to fully rewrite and redesign your website if its algorithms decide it’s not engaging enough.
Google Just Patented The End Of Your Website - https://www.forbes.com/sites/joetoscano1/2026/03/06/google-just-patented-the-end-of-your-website/
Maybe it could actually fix microslops crappy online documentation library, thats pro customer.
Relink all the broken links, fix outdated information from patches where they never bothered updating it.
And the next generation of AI gets trained on the AI summaries so it loses all contact with reality.
That is actually happening right now.
🤷
What really scares me are IT-illiterate politicians who swallowed the US generated narrative that AI is the next big thing, hook, line and sinker. And the waste of resources AI is adding to our already ravaged global ecosystem.
I see it as the last attempt and economical hail mary of the USA to stay on top of on the world stage. They know China is gaining if not surpassing the USA in more and more areas. It’s either dominate with AI or become second tier player, like the UK after they lost their empire, and USA doesn’t do second tier so they bet the farm on this. Not that different from how Trump is trying to control the world’s oil supply with his adventures in the gulf region and trade with his tariffs. Those too might not have been the best bets.
I see it as the last attempt and economical hail mary of the USA to stay on top of on the world stage.
💯. And with their lack of regulation they’re effectively forcing others to play their game. Fuck that shit.
Trump is trying to control the world’s oil supply with his adventures in the gulf region
And his waning popularity. I feel he’s just doing what a handful of presidents tried before him; this part feels almost traditional.
No thats this one.
Just inside that door is a Home Alone level of ad boobytraps you have to endure before the shop owner smashes you in the shins with an email newsletter appeal. Only then can you actually shop for a bit before a pop-up ad spider falls on you from the rafters.
“Hi we noticed you’re running an adblocker. You’ll have to turn that off to see our site”
I call that one the ol’ go fuck yourself.
The “This isn’t a ad-blocker complaint / paywall, but you have to sign up to continue” ones are somehow even worse to me.
Opens the door a crack
“WE ARE USING COOKIES TO TRACK YOU!”
And when you try to head for the door, it opens a few inches before slamming shut, forcing you to stay in the store. Even looking that direction? Yep, another newsletter pop up.
How about I summarise it? That way you don’t have to deal with a cookie popup, a news letter popup, a signin with google popup, a request to send notifications to your browser popup, a back button that doesnt take you back to your previous page, and ads between every other paragraph.
Browsing the modern internet without uBlock origin and maybe a cookie consent blocker is truly a horrible experience.
uBlock origin and NoScript are my EDC
This, and newspaper writing style which endlessly beats around the bush, actually are the reasons for the mainstream accepting AI summaries. AI summaries only work because the Internet is a hellscape of intentionally bad UX with site-owners being hostile towards their users.
Real newspaper writing style doesn’t beat around the bush.
SEO-optimization writing style does beat around the bush, because they have to try to “organically” mention all the keywords that might bring someone to the page. They also need to make it longer so there are more places to insert ads.
The waffling happens because otherwise google drops their ranking and won’t give them traffic .
Search engine optimisation is satan’s arsehole and has absolutely wrecked the internet…but it’s only happening because of google.
Don’t forget the requests for location access that the site totally definitely needs…
How the FUCK are people okay with the sign in with Google pop up?
If you have any sign up with Google it adds itself to your site. Then it hijacks the user session by showing a large dialogue over your content. No, you can’t disable that, and if you do they might block visitors from finding your site. They might not, but maybe they will.
Why deal with user accounts yourself when you can Oauth it to big tech?
I mean for most people it makes sense.
No one wants to make another account for the hundredth time.
I always do because I don’t trust Google et AI not to lock me out but the account creation friction of the modern web sucks.
We need to normalize password managers so we can take this power back.
I use my own accounts so I am in control with one less dependency to big tech.
There are some good arguments to be made that Google happily pushed this development along, maybe even created it. Never forget, they’re formost an ad broker. Everything else is just a means to that end.
Worst is when is uses phrases like “widely accepted” for questions I ask that are open-ended. Also Gemini completely makes up stuff when it comes to configuring settings in DAW and Davinci Resolve in my experience.
Reminds me of Trump saying “everybody’s saying…”
And AI was made by a lot of people operating on that lack of a level.
Not programmed, but bean counted.
Summarize it for youSummarize it for you incorrectly.There. Fixed it.
Also, not to toot my own horn here, but I made a video this week about alternatives to google search if anyone’s interested.
The number of times I’ve seen AI overviews directly contradict the source material…
“The ideal number of cigarettes to smoke while pregnant is 2-3 a day!”
“Yes, you should eat one small rock a day to stay healthy!”
- Paraphrased as i cbf looking up the exact quotes from AI.
The very first time I got one from google it was incorrect. That was an important lesson, haha.
Google doesn’t try to stop you from visiting a website. It tries to answer your query directly, which may mean it’s no longer necessary to visit the website.
A more realistic scenario is someone asking, “hey, what’s 20 ounces in grams?” Then there’s a “website” that wants to invite you in and tell you all about unit conversion, and show you tables for how many tonnes are in a ton, etc. Meanwhile “Google” just says “566.99”. It started doing that sort of thing back in 2012, long before the AI boom started. Many of those info cards (like unit conversions) don’t use LLMs and are actually really handy.
Having said that, yeah, it’s devastating to websites that were free to use and ad supported and depended on traffic to survive. And, because humans are thrifty, websites that weren’t free to use mostly disappeared a long time ago. I don’t know what the solution is. But, I don’t think it’s “prevent Google from answering your question if it is capable of doing so”.
Google actually just patented a system where an algorithm decides that your web page is boring and generates a new one on the fly.
In your example, many browsers will do simple math or conversions in the address bar without AI, and google gave that same answer prior to AI with a simple conversion menu box that showed up as you said. It still does sometimes depending on the question.
More realistically it would be “How long is a Boeing 747?” Now an AI will give you a length range and offer that there are different 747 models manufactured in different years, etc.
So instead of clicking on an ad-supported “aviation info” site like you say, odds are the asker will just take the provided summary and not proceed any further, or refine the question to a specific model that again an AI will probably answer, even possibly ironically scraping the content from the very same “aviation info” site that would have received your click 5 years ago, but now google gets the view and the site doesn’t.
The websites only obscure the answer because google would run the query and present the answer in the summary without giving them a click through.
Content theft has been going on much much longer than you realise.
It’s not good for Google either. They want you to click an ad.
What if the add is inserted into the AI summary?
They will soon
It’s sadly been like that since before they implemented AI
Can I recommend you an
eggAI-summary-free search engine in this trying time? https://www.ecosia.org/
