Coding, Data Science, A.I. catch-All | Grok update goes MechaHitler

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A good piece on how Google is destroying the web through AI. And a reminder wheneve ryou run a google search add "-ai" on to it to avoid getting poorly researched slop.

www.splinter.com

A Melancholy Splinter Update Amidst Google’s AI Summaries Destroying the Web As We Know It

Splinter is your home for news and opinions that challenge power in our political and economic system that's becoming more unhinged each and every day.
www.splinter.com www.splinter.com

"Our Google traffic is down roughly 65 percent the last 90 days, and financially, it has led us to an untenable spot. We had to let our Deputy Editor Dave Levitan go last week, a real gut punch to this iteration of Splinter. Dave was integral to rebuilding this site into something a sizeable group of people enjoy, and we would not have succeeded to the degree we have without his daily expertise. He has long done great work covering the climate crisis and politicians’ mangling of science, which became especially important once Trump came into office and did everything he could to accelerate the climate crisis and destroy American science for good. Dave Levitan is forever a part of what Splinter is because he helped make it what it is today."

Splinter is not going anywhere, but it is changing. There will be fewer stories as we adjust to this new smaller budget forced upon us by Google stealing our traffic, and while we will continue to cover the climate crisis, Dave is irreplaceable. When we launched, I wrote that I can only write like myself, as this project would fail miserably if I tried to do a discount Hamilton Nolan routine, and the same goes for Dave Levitan. There’s no sugarcoating it, we lost a huge part of Splinter.

To be clear, this is not a sinister situation that Splinter and other sites of its ilk have gone through before. We’re not trying to maximize profitability by cutting our labor force to the bone. We’re not adding some cynical trick to get you to click on stories with no substance that you’re not interested in. We’re not going to cover the site in sponsored content or pivot to video or any of the other greedy gambits other companies have tried that haven’t worked. This move is entirely driven by financial losses, fueled by Google’s theft of traffic upending the business model the web has depended on this entire century.
 
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altmin said:
A good piece on how Google is destroying the web through AI. And a reminder wheneve ryou run a google search add "-ai" on to it to avoid getting poorly researched slop.

www.splinter.com

A Melancholy Splinter Update Amidst Google’s AI Summaries Destroying the Web As We Know It

Splinter is your home for news and opinions that challenge power in our political and economic system that's becoming more unhinged each and every day.
www.splinter.com www.splinter.com

"Our Google traffic is down roughly 65 percent the last 90 days, and financially, it has led us to an untenable spot. We had to let our Deputy Editor Dave Levitan go last week, a real gut punch to this iteration of Splinter. Dave was integral to rebuilding this site into something a sizeable group of people enjoy, and we would not have succeeded to the degree we have without his daily expertise. He has long done great work covering the climate crisis and politicians’ mangling of science, which became especially important once Trump came into office and did everything he could to accelerate the climate crisis and destroy American science for good. Dave Levitan is forever a part of what Splinter is because he helped make it what it is today."

Splinter is not going anywhere, but it is changing. There will be fewer stories as we adjust to this new smaller budget forced upon us by Google stealing our traffic, and while we will continue to cover the climate crisis, Dave is irreplaceable. When we launched, I wrote that I can only write like myself, as this project would fail miserably if I tried to do a discount Hamilton Nolan routine, and the same goes for Dave Levitan. There’s no sugarcoating it, we lost a huge part of Splinter.

To be clear, this is not a sinister situation that Splinter and other sites of its ilk have gone through before. We’re not trying to maximize profitability by cutting our labor force to the bone. We’re not adding some cynical trick to get you to click on stories with no substance that you’re not interested in. We’re not going to cover the site in sponsored content or pivot to video or any of the other greedy gambits other companies have tried that haven’t worked. This move is entirely driven by financial losses, fueled by Google’s theft of traffic upending the business model the web has depended on this entire century.
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I don't remember the Exs-but I remember the last few weeks doing a couple of google searches that were just clear cut fact kind of stuff And the first two pages of results were just sponsored shit
 
Sort of an AI story. Sort of an Elon story. Tldr, Elon is suing Apple and ChatGPT because apple is artificially suppressing xAI'S offering in their app store. xAI's/Grok's most recent offering has been getting good reviews and a massive amount of downloads but still can't get prominent placement in the app store compared to chat GPT which has a relationship with Apple.

www.reuters.com

Elon Musk's xAI sues Apple and OpenAI over AI competition, App Store rankings

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI sued Apple and ChatGPT maker OpenAI in U.S. federal court in Texas on Monday, accusing them of illegally conspiring to thwart competition for artificial intelligence.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com

Can't speak to the antitrust ramifications and if he has a case, but my opinion is Elon is really trying to drum up interest for his admittedly very good model. He is a pretty good promoter.
 
altmin said:
A good piece on how Google is destroying the web through AI. And a reminder wheneve ryou run a google search add "-ai" on to it to avoid getting poorly researched slop.

www.splinter.com

A Melancholy Splinter Update Amidst Google’s AI Summaries Destroying the Web As We Know It

Splinter is your home for news and opinions that challenge power in our political and economic system that's becoming more unhinged each and every day.
www.splinter.com www.splinter.com

"Our Google traffic is down roughly 65 percent the last 90 days, and financially, it has led us to an untenable spot. We had to let our Deputy Editor Dave Levitan go last week, a real gut punch to this iteration of Splinter. Dave was integral to rebuilding this site into something a sizeable group of people enjoy, and we would not have succeeded to the degree we have without his daily expertise. He has long done great work covering the climate crisis and politicians’ mangling of science, which became especially important once Trump came into office and did everything he could to accelerate the climate crisis and destroy American science for good. Dave Levitan is forever a part of what Splinter is because he helped make it what it is today."

Splinter is not going anywhere, but it is changing. There will be fewer stories as we adjust to this new smaller budget forced upon us by Google stealing our traffic, and while we will continue to cover the climate crisis, Dave is irreplaceable. When we launched, I wrote that I can only write like myself, as this project would fail miserably if I tried to do a discount Hamilton Nolan routine, and the same goes for Dave Levitan. There’s no sugarcoating it, we lost a huge part of Splinter.

To be clear, this is not a sinister situation that Splinter and other sites of its ilk have gone through before. We’re not trying to maximize profitability by cutting our labor force to the bone. We’re not adding some cynical trick to get you to click on stories with no substance that you’re not interested in. We’re not going to cover the site in sponsored content or pivot to video or any of the other greedy gambits other companies have tried that haven’t worked. This move is entirely driven by financial losses, fueled by Google’s theft of traffic upending the business model the web has depended on this entire century.
Click to expand...
So the complaint from this company, that mirrors those from other companies, is that Google AI is providing summaries for questions that keep people from reading the longer form articles this site produces on the same topics?

They're basically mad that the summaries are popular and that folks aren't required to load an entire article on their site rather than getting the brief info they need from Google?
 
SnoopRob said:
So the complaint from this company, that mirrors those from other companies, is that Google AI is providing summaries for questions that keep people from reading the longer form articles this site produces on the same topics?

They're basically mad that the summaries are popular and that folks aren't required to load an entire article on their site rather than getting the brief info they need from Google?
Click to expand...
well the basic gist is if you take things further and the places that are summarized go out of business, there will be nothing to summarize and AI will just fill in the blanks with hallucinations.
 
altmin said:
well the basic gist is if you take things further and the places that are summarized go out of business, there will be nothing to summarize and AI will just fill in the blanks with hallucinations.
Click to expand...
I guess that would be a concern, but the issue is that AI is fulfilling a role the market likes...summarizing complex info into a much smaller, more digestible bite that are adequately answering the question that folks are searching.

I typically read the Google AI summary when it pops up after a search. Often there's not enough info there and I typically continue on to other sources. And rarely I find that there is either an error or an "oversummation" in which important nuance is lost.

But I often find that if I'm just trying to either remember a small piece of general information or if I need to get a very basic understanding of something, the AI summary works really well. And it saves me the time of finding and reading an entire article for just a bit of information. So it's hard for me to be upset at something that's useful.

I do have some concerns that the AI is owned by the same folks running the search engine and the market share Google holds on search, but I gave up a long time ago concerning monopolistic practices in the US.
 
SnoopRob said:
I guess that would be a concern, but the issue is that AI is fulfilling a role the market likes...summarizing complex info into a much smaller, more digestible bite that are adequately answering the question that folks are searching.

I typically read the Google AI summary when it pops up after a search. Often there's not enough info there and I typically continue on to other sources. And rarely I find that there is either an error or an "oversummation" in which important nuance is lost.

But I often find that if I'm just trying to either remember a small piece of general information or if I need to get a very basic understanding of something, the AI summary works really well. And it saves me the time of finding and reading an entire article for just a bit of information. So it's hard for me to be upset at something that's useful.

I do have some concerns that the AI is owned by the same folks running the search engine and the market share Google holds on search, but I gave up a long time ago concerning monopolistic practices in the US.
Click to expand...
Nah the google summary is only good for pointing you in a direction. The actual information is often straight wrong, because it doesn't know how to distinguish bullshit from good faith writing.
 
altmin said:
A good piece on how Google is destroying the web through AI. And a reminder wheneve ryou run a google search add "-ai" on to it to avoid getting poorly researched slop.

www.splinter.com

A Melancholy Splinter Update Amidst Google’s AI Summaries Destroying the Web As We Know It

Splinter is your home for news and opinions that challenge power in our political and economic system that's becoming more unhinged each and every day.
www.splinter.com www.splinter.com

"Our Google traffic is down roughly 65 percent the last 90 days, and financially, it has led us to an untenable spot. We had to let our Deputy Editor Dave Levitan go last week, a real gut punch to this iteration of Splinter. Dave was integral to rebuilding this site into something a sizeable group of people enjoy, and we would not have succeeded to the degree we have without his daily expertise. He has long done great work covering the climate crisis and politicians’ mangling of science, which became especially important once Trump came into office and did everything he could to accelerate the climate crisis and destroy American science for good. Dave Levitan is forever a part of what Splinter is because he helped make it what it is today."

Splinter is not going anywhere, but it is changing. There will be fewer stories as we adjust to this new smaller budget forced upon us by Google stealing our traffic, and while we will continue to cover the climate crisis, Dave is irreplaceable. When we launched, I wrote that I can only write like myself, as this project would fail miserably if I tried to do a discount Hamilton Nolan routine, and the same goes for Dave Levitan. There’s no sugarcoating it, we lost a huge part of Splinter.

To be clear, this is not a sinister situation that Splinter and other sites of its ilk have gone through before. We’re not trying to maximize profitability by cutting our labor force to the bone. We’re not adding some cynical trick to get you to click on stories with no substance that you’re not interested in. We’re not going to cover the site in sponsored content or pivot to video or any of the other greedy gambits other companies have tried that haven’t worked. This move is entirely driven by financial losses, fueled by Google’s theft of traffic upending the business model the web has depended on this entire century.
Click to expand...
It makes sense that summarization can reduce some web browsing, but how of much of "Google traffic" is actual consumption vs quick drive-bys where people look briefly then move on versus actually consuming the entire article?

I'm probably wrong, but i feel like a lot of web-browsing is one-time research of adhoc topics, like "my mom is sick with xyz", "my 401k needs xyz", "how do i fix my fridge's icemaker", etc. For media consumption that is more entertainment oriented or "news" or "commentary", don't most user-browsers already have their go-to resources? I've never heard of Splinter, I understand they're new, but i'm already in my own bubble and I don't use google search to route me to "entertainment/news/commentary" type of sites, I don't see how Summaries would or not impact me ever clicking on some link to their site. I never open google and type "give me random commentary or random but interesting nuances on climate change".
 
gregh1 said:
It makes sense that summarization can reduce some web browsing, but how of much of "Google traffic" is actual consumption vs quick drive-bys where people look briefly then move on versus actually consuming the entire article?
Click to expand...
I think this is likely the case. But from the website’s perspective, as long as all the ads load…who cares?

I think this shows a problem with how we consume content, but I’m not sure if a better way to do it.
 
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