We're told all the great things this new AI can do for us. I just spent over an hour and a half looking for something that I want (a consumer product if that matters). I have very specific wants, I type them in a search engine, and start from there.

Not a single one, NOT ONE, of the links on the first page had what I'm looking for.

Okay, I go into store fronts. Several. Again, I put in exactly what I want. I get results. Oooh boy I get results. Still haven't found one that meets the criteria I set out. After over an hour and a half of genuinely trying, I haven't found what I'm looking for.

Now I get that a lot, most, I dunno, maybe ALL of this is on me. I have always sucked at searches. Since the first search engines showed up on America Online about a thousand years ago. But isn't that where AI is supposed to kick in??? Isn't one of the purposes of AI to help morons like me navigate the digital world?

I think the problem is the same problem as ever. Greed for profit interferes with a clean way to do anything. Want a specific product? Yeah, we're gonna send you results of dozens because... greed.

What do guys think about regarding the future of AI, particular in the consumer world. I just can't see the profit motive ever allowing a real helpful AI get anywhere. The only ones that will materialize and last will be those that don't put the user needs first but the sellers needs only.

What say you?

EDIT: This is assuming, of course, that AI type algorithms are also being used in search engines, whether they be internet wide or store specific. If I'm wrong on that, then obviously the problem is still just search engines. But I just assumed lessons learned from AI were always being used to update things. For example, in those same stores there are now "chat agents" that I'm sure are all AI. I tried a couple of them as well. Still, though, I may be wrong in assuming that lessons learned in developing and using AI has also led to better searches. I may once again be guilty of that old saying about when you assume something it makes an... you know.

There is no "AI" just garbage in garbage out connect random words in a statistical "correct" order machines.

Google websearch was turned to shit some time ago by some "want to make more money on the cost of the search quality" manager, side 2 might do better.

Google search might use "AI" for search in USA, but that is more a "retelling you the site 1" thing or pure bullshit from reddit (the google search "AI" just inhaled it and is now telling us to eat stones or to use glue to stick cheese to pizza - until a google "engineer" manually blocks the BS the moment they take notice of it - so much about "AI" does create new jobs).

Bing is currently the only search platform that is using something that is sold to us for some time as AI (while it is not) by using OpenAI stuff.
That only inhaled "the internet" youtube and Co and some other stuff they actually would have to pay fees for (but where they tell you they don't got stuff from there) and is now turning to shit more and more, because AI is now inhaling AI generated Bullshit that is flooding the internet because it is seen new content to train the AI with.
Still, for the full experience talking to ChatGPT might be your best bet.

Don't expect it to be intelligent in any way and accept, that a lot of stuff it tells you might be simply a hallucination (aka made up bullshit). The more specific or obscure you go, the harder that thing will start to bullshit.


Don't expect the current "AI" development to make it somewhere as they already inhaled the whole englisch speaking free web and good parts of other languages by using "AI" translation and a lot of copyrighted stuff too (an they are already sued for it).
While they can't fix the problem of those "AI" simply making things up that looks like a statistical correct word order about a topic, because baseline design of those "AI"s is not to "know" stuff or decide if something is true or false, but to simply give you a nice looking sentence that might even contain a good information because they filled in enough sentences that got the right information so statistical word oder will give you back out something right.


It might be all artificial, but for sure there is no intelligence in this whole system of large language models (even if some can paint).
They just mix the stuff you filled in and repeat it.

It's really all AS, artificial stupidity

This made me laugh out loud literally. Thank you for that. I'm having a really bad day and that laugh helped.

Well in general, I'm mighty skeptical regarding all things AI. Most discussion revolves around how AI will replace humans in the different fields of work. And that's kinda depressing.

But since you mentioned your failing google-fu:
The most positive encounter I had with AI was actually ChatGPT. Using it as a search engine and asking it all kinds of complex questions is fun.

Recently, I watched the movie "Blade Runner 2049" for the first time. There was one scene that I didn't fully understand (where the industrial magnate and antagonist Niander Wallace suddenly kills one of this own newly born Replicant humanoids.)
So I asked ChatGPT literally this question: "Why does Niander Wallace kill the new-born replicant?"
I was quite astonished to receive a good explanation even though I didn't even provide the name of the movie!

If you want to try yourself:
(no registration required, just click on "Try ChatGPT")
https://talkai.info/

Much like cryptocurrency has only made scamming people easier and broadened the horizons of spam, do I think LLMs have helped society.

Scraping the trash barrels that are stack exchange, Reddit, and Tumblr, what's been accomplished is a parrot with the largest database of the dumbest shit possible to repeat.

Speaking of plagerism machines, the same of things like Dali, Crayon, and other automatic James Somerton machines for "art" creation. All they've done is scrape the most popular artists and frankly the black box part of the program is the bit where they filter out all the crude stick figures and fetish art.

Absolutely. It helped Nvidia get DISGUSTINGLY ENORMOUSLY RICHER that it was before.



Apart from that, it does dog shit nothing useful whatsoever. Oh, apart from stealing everything from everyone so that so-called "AI creators" can vomit their pre-chewed diarrhea out of their mouth-ass and call it "art".

Why that? A lot of very useful non-commercial products have materialized and lasted in the past (just think of FOSS software). I don't see why AI would be an exception.

I'm happy for good AI in games and that's where it should stay.

As for search engines, I find them all to be worse than ever. Yesterday I was trying to find an answer to an issue I was having with a certain electronic device and 90% or more of the results were just links to pages on the manufacturers website that provided no solutions at all. There were no links to any forums or tech website articles or even product reviews. According to google, I was apparently the only person who ever had this quite basic question.

Maybe it could have helped you with spelling the title of the thread correctly?

There isn't really any AI in searches (except now sometimes at the top in a little text box if you ask a directly answerable question). General search engines are unfortunately completely broken now, because of Search Engine Optimisation, that's a completely separate issue.

As far as searching the storefronts directly, that should have worked better, I don't know what the issue there is.

Not helpful. I am still waiting for true breath taking suggestions from the streaming services and online stores I use which perfectly know everything I do into their apps, plus the ratings I provide every time I can. Instead, I get the repetitive, uninspiring, predictable boring lists where I already watched at least half of the suggestions. AI algorithms are bad level technology.

Have you perhaps checked the open source alternatives? There's often less choices, but I find they tend to be less junk and more focused. Lacking for ads and "PAY ME" type stuff helps too.

(￣□￣」) The problem is the AI is not intelligent. A search should be one of the things AI excel at. The greed conflict shouldn't be a problem, considering a good service finding fast what we really want should make us frequent consumers. Frustrated people don't purchase and don't return~

I tried the exact same approach using both Google (I actually use Startpage but if I understand correctly Startpage does it's search through Google while hiding your identity) and in each store front. Maybe I'm doing it wrong?

I asked for a specific type of product, with a specific feature, within a specific price range. Is that not how to do it? Could anyone advise me on a better way? I thought it was about as specific as I could get. I got all sorts of the specific type of product, but also all sorts of other similar products. Within the specific type of product results I got, I got price ranges all over the place, I got results both with and without the specific feature, and after clicking through several dozens of responses (maybe hundreds, I dunno) I never once, NOT once, got the specific product, with the specific feature, within the specific price range.

Now if it doesn't exist, okay, then I would like a "No results found" please. But... given the results I did see, I'd almost be willing to bet dollars to air that what I'm looking for does exist.

And then today, I was on a chat with sfinity from 12:10 PM until a few minutes ago trying to solve multiple issues I'm having with both cable TV and my internet. And of course, a great deal of that time was spent with a very, very unintelligent Artificial Intelligent (AI) chat box, before finally being connected to a human being (at times seemingly just as unintelligent, seriously I had to repeat things several times as if they had some sort of short term memory issue).

And the frustrating thing is that this is the direction ALL customer service is moving in. I decided at first to leave sfinity and go to Verizon... where I was immediately met with... an AI chat agent.