Bye Bye, Google AI

[Celerity]

search that exact name

(free Chrome extension that blocks Google AI overviews)

thank me later

[malaise]

1. Thank you

😀

[Celerity]

2. yw

we already have a problem with people posting AI shite here

it is only going to get worse

[anciano]

3. I have found Google AI Overview and ChatGPT

to be very useful time-saving tools to provide a summary of my inquiry that I can research more in depth if needed.

[Disaffected]

4. I use ChatGPT quite frequently.

It's like any other tool - use it properly, be aware of its limitations and it will usually provide useful results.

[highplainsdem]

8. It isn't at all like any other tool. It was trained illegally/unethically, it dumbs down users by discouraging

critical thinking and creativity, its output can change users' opinions with them hardly being aware of it (they've done studies on this), it gathers more and more data as you use it with that data often sold to third parties, and what it generates is simply fake. Fake thinking. Fake writing. Fake art.

[misanthrope]

9. You forgot about its resource-heavy usage

If you want to hasten our burning the planet to a cinder, indulge with AI to your heart's content.

[highplainsdem]

22. True. And I also forgot to mention the harm done when people use the bot as a friend, romantic

interest or therapist.

So many reasons why it isn't "like any other tool."

[highplainsdem]

12. No. I'm quite happy to write without getting paid for it when there's good reason to do so. I don't know

of anyone who's paid specifically to write about all the problems with generative AI. If they're writing about those problems, it's because of valid concerns.

There are a lot of paid shills for genAI, though - conscience-free corporate whores out there trying to convince people AI is wonderful. I've encountered some on Twitter and been blocked by some. I'm in good company there. I'd rather be reposted and thanked by people like Cory Doctorow and Gary Marcus (who also got blocked by some of those shills) than take money from companies peddling what's probably the most harmful non-weapon tech ever developed.

It's an unethical tool that causes a lot of harm. It isn't an "obsession" to point that out. People should care about that. Democrats and liberals usually do.

You've posted here about using genAI. It's your choice to use an unethical tool. And my choice to point out why people shouldn't.

[Disaffected]

13. Wow, that is one lofty equine you got there.

And I'm going to stop using electricity now because Thomas Edison ripped of George Westinghouse once or twice way back when (or was it Westinghouse ripping off Tesla or some such?).

Anyhow, I don't use ChatGPT for thinking, writing or art so I may be on safer ground than you may think yourself. As I said previously, "if used properly.....".

[highplainsdem]

19. We're not talking about way back when. ChatGPT was released only 2-12 years ago, and the theft of

intellectual property is ongoing.

And the AI companies' bots stealing from websites are doing an insane amount of scraping, putting some websites at risk of going out of business. See this thread

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219421175

about how often they scrape some sites. OpenAI scraping one site "hundreds of times a second.". Anthropic scraping another "almost a million times in a 24-hour period."

Of course these AI companies don't care if they put websites they steal data from out of business, as long as they can steal all that intellectual property first.

You wrote that you "don't use ChatGPT for thinking, writing or art."

I forgot to mention coding, another common use, though LLMs hallucinate while coding, too, and those errors aren't all caught.

But it really doesn't matter what you use ChatGPT or any other generative AI tool for. They are all trained unethically and illegally.

OpenAI has admitted in court filings that their AI tools won't work if training data is limited to what's in the public domain. Licensing is expensive, and although they've made token efforts at licensing some of the content they use, it's mostly for PR so they can try to claim they didn't steal everything. And they already stole as much of the world's intellectual property as they could get, which is why the AI companies are fighting all attempts to make them reveal what's in their training data. OpenAI even told one court that they oh-so-conveniently "lost" some of the info on training data.

They're crooks. Thieves. 21st century robber barons.

[Celerity]

5. I do not trust them, and if SOP here on DU becomes a bunch of AI posts, this board will not just be unreliable, but IF

those posts are not cited as AI, it will also become an industrial level fraud production line.

[highplainsdem]

7. +1,000,000. DU would also lose most if not all of its regulars.

[mucholderthandirt]

16. Use of "AI" here will make me go away (stop conspiring in the background!).

I hate it, and as a creative person I'm watching my outlets being taken over by this nonsense. I've had my work stolen to "train" a dumb computer program to take even more of my job options. Fuck this and fuck everyone who stands up for it, member here or not. Now send me a message that I'm being mean or something.

[RoseTrellis]

21. Already happening

AI posts are already here. You can recognize the obvious signs of a ChatGPT post if you are aware of the telltale signs. I noticed one particular poster was using it quite a bit, someone eventually asked him if he using ChatGPT and he even admitted it after the fact!

[highplainsdem]

6. Those AI summaries are hurting the websites those companies stole the data from. They don't always

properly identify which sites they took data from, and even if they do they might bury the more important links.

And of course genAI is illegally trained, period. Unethical to use.

And often wrong. Hallucinating. With some newer models hallucinating even more.

You'll learn more, often unexpectedly, if you use regular search and go to the websites. What AI summaries offer is like a teaspoon of pablum. Except it can be harmful for you if you don't check it (checking which cancels out the time-savind aspect) and will also be harmful for the websites and people that were ripped off.

But the AI bros now backing Trump just love it when people get hooked on their data-gathering tools.

[Hugin]

14. I'm genuinely curious about what or how others perceive generative AI searches to be superior...

To writing a query into a search dialog?

After having tried it, I see very little upside to the traditional methods. I have never walked away from the experience feeling like it has delivered “more” or “better”.

[JCMach1]

10. Frankly its better than the rubbish search engine normal Google has become

If you want to make a real statement, use Brave, or an Open Source browser and Duckduck go

[Renew Deal]

17. You should be careful with extensions like that

They are often Trojan horses that steal data or worse. They can see everything you do in the browser. And even if it’s OK today, it can be bad tomorrow because the things change hands or the owners change motives.

[Emile]

18. This +1

[highplainsdem]

20. This extension was written by Avram Piltch of Tom's Hardware, formerly with Toms Guide and Laptop Mag, and

it's been available for a year.

Article on it, and his author page:

https://www.tomshardware.com/software/google-chrome/bye-bye-ai-how-to-block-googles-annoying-ai-overviews-and-just-get-search-results

https://www.tomshardware.com/author/avram-piltch

Easy to find that info. The article was the second result on the page when I typed

"bye bye google ai"

into Google.

But you're right that it's a good idea to check out who created extensions.