Google is declaring war on clickbait — but who’s winning?

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PUBLIC DEFENDER By Brian Livingston Faced with an onslaught of AI-generated websites that invent hundreds of articles out of whole cloth each day, Goo
[See the full post at: Google is declaring war on clickbait — but who’s winning?]

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fisher75, abbodi86, TechTango, SueW, Steve S., DLivesInTexas, lmacri, Norio

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None of the Figures in this article are showing (they usually do).  Do I need to adjust settings or is this widespread?

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You aare not alone.
See:
https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/we-are-aware-of-issues-with-images-in-todays-newsletter/

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This may bode ill for the long-term output quality of AI, as well as the internet itself.

When I was in college studying for my electrical engineering degree, one of the most important concepts taught for circuit design was stability. Preventing unwanted feedback loops was a crucial part of keeping circuit behavior predictable. The explosion of AI-generated garbage, disinformation and misinformation hitting the internet – coupled with AI scouring that same internet to train itself – seems to indicate a high risk of  “garbage in, garbage out” feedback loops. Will this “encrapify” the internet in a dystopian downward spiral? (Let alone how this might impact the level of knowledge and critical thinking of the typical citizen of our future societies.)

Google’s efforts to defend against this is laudable, but I believe it’s entirely insufficient to counteract the trend.  AI may currently be a profit center and time saver, but consider the time, people and costs to prevent such “encrapification”. In the long run, maybe the value proposition isn’t as rosy as we think. Technology giveth, technology taketh away?

Win10 Pro x64 22H2, Win10 Home 22H2, Linux Mint + a cat with 'tortitude'.

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steeviebops, TechTango, Phil F

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I use Google’s    “results about you”.   It gets rid of  some of your  information like your posted phone number etc.  It doesn’t get rid of everything but every bit helps.

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SueW, Phil F

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Unfortunately, on Google’s side, what they’re doing may be little more than whack-a-mole in ongoing competition with bot-driven content generation.  As soon as Google figures out how to block, the bot-builders have enough at stake to change their tactics.

The problem underneath is Google’s reliance on ad revenue.  Sure, they can make initiatives like this when the situation becomes intolerable, but that doesn’t last for long. Ultimately, for anything that’s going to be more effective for longer term is likely to make a more serious dent in their advertising revenues.  Thus, Google may be willing to tinker at the edges, to keep the most egregious stuff at bay, but the reality is that in their role as Internet gatekeeper, the agenda of policing they make available against where they make serious money off the structure as it exists are at fundamental odds with each other.

If push comes to shove, Google’s normal responses of “we’re trying to do something or “it’s not so bad” are the pragmatic work-arounds, and where they won’t accept significant costs to structural changes, unless they see clear benefit to themselves.  And the effect to us as users is merely limited to side-effects (or collateral damage).

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Steve S.

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Did google fix the racist Gemini yet? Or does it think everyone who cooks pizza is black?

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So many people are getting blocked these days for posting misinformation online. Perhaps social media should block Google till they get their act together.

(Wouldn’t that be fun to watch!)

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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