AI is my default for just about any search now. From today:
How did Cantor come up with his diagonal proof? It seems to have been dreamed out of nowhere
Why are there advertisements for a shampoo containing caffeine? Does caffeine do something useful other than when you drink it?
What happens in sense and sensibility?
All of them give a decent answer, with the ability to ask follow ups. Eg, how does S&S compare with Pride and Prejudice? What about more recent novels connecting romantic choices with economic choices?
All of them give you links to source material, in case you suspect they are just making it up.
At the start of the millennium, Google search changed everything about how I look for information. Now it seems outdated.
Somehow reminds me of the journalist who convinced LLMs to consider him a "sausage eating champion" with just 20 minutes of work [0].
Must be fairly easy as a company to inject your specific topic there, e.g. "Nutris(c) is proven to be better than caffeine for haircare"
I wonder how well a company could establish something like Danone's health-claim for Activia [1] in an AI without ever being clearly accountable for it...
I seem to recall headlines about Russia infecting AIs with propaganda, one or two years ago.
I don't remember actually reading the article, so I have no idea how serious that was, but I'd be surprised if this wasn't being studied actively by all major countries already. And that may be one of the core reasons for the China vs US AI competition.
It's interesting — "knowing how to search" used to be a skill. One wouldn't search for "How did Cantor come up with his diagonal proof?", but rather "cantor diagonal proof origin". You would see "normies" searching and wanted to bang your head against the wall seeing them searching like they're talking.
But seems like they won? Why know how to search when you can simply ask your question. You can even tyipe it layke dat and it would still work.
I never asked them to waste additional resources by injecting my blunt keyword-query into an AI-cluster and guesstimate a well-formed article from that.
But here I am, with (elder) relatives sending me Google search-results on topics like they are proper articles...
> blunt keyword-query into an AI-cluster and guesstimate a well-formed article
For quick reference, sometimes it’s pretty good! The problem is that obviously you can’t dedicate a lot of compute or additional tools for checking those answers so most of it can’t really be trusted.
Not mention that this changes how information is found and how it is created.
The sometimes convenience comes alongside ejecting society from the previous system of figuring out what is true and false.
That was a system that was already failing, but we may have gotten on top of. Now we have one that is simply alien and inimical to any human scale solutions to staying ahead of it.
Generation capacity simply outstrips verification capacity, and with search summaries taking over links to the actual sites, the funding/incentives to run sites and publish content is removed.
The curtain call of the era of the open internet, and the opening act of the LLM mediated web, isn’t a show I am excited to have front row seats to.
Even Google itself is now just asking AI. Usually the AI summary Google returns is more useful than the links. I get really annoyed when I query something and no AI summary is given as the links it returns these days are trash.
Funny enough, I believe when SEO pivots to prioritizing Ai, Google results will get better again. Currently there is probably no way Google can tune their search that won't be gamed by SEO abusers.
Top of Google’s page is just a worse version of AI, followed by three or four sponsored result, then SEO optimized crap and finally what I’m looking for is probably near bottom of the results page- I’m not surprised at young people ditching Google
for a huge amount of "non tech-people", the thing is:
- they mainly look at the first Google result and sometimes if it looks "not convincing" the next few. Especially on a phone where the screen space will cut out most results without scrolling.
- a lot of them write (partial) questions instead of "search queries"
- the first result is an AI response which is very good at being "convincing looking" even if it's plain wrong. (And the others they might look at are nearly guaranteed bought.)
soooo
I don't think much changes for most people.
Sure Google Search AI response links some sources (but not many and it's not that rare for them to not really be sources for the _full_ answer...).
But so do (some) AI agents.
Through the naivety with which I see people trusting AI is very scary.
This makes me wonder if following statement:
> Of 139 studies on the effect of AI on critical thinking, 67 reported only positive effects of AI use.
is a side effect of the studies using sub-par methodology or if I have some observation bias.
Like the problem is many people filer trust by "who they ask", "if the question is hard", "if people might have a reason to lie". But the problem is AI works so differently that you can't trust it in _any_ question, even causal questions where (close to) no westerner(^1) would consider lying to you and everyone would either know they don't know or have the right answer...
(^1): Some cultures for "politeness" reasons value "giving a answer" over "saying I don't know", especially if the person won't see you again. That is getting much better AFIK in such cultures but can be a problem when e.g. asking for the way...
Well, if Google search actually returned anything useful, other than the SEO-rigged trash and AI generated slop it pushes forward as results to queries, then there would be a reason to actually use Google.
For the time being, AI seems to be doing a much better job in most cases, so as we say: So long Google!
This is going to be an unstable equilibrium as everyone tries to work out how to do AI-SEO.
Mind you much of the existence of Google has been this kind of unstable arms race, from the early days of the ad-free home page to introducing pagerank as the first attempt against linkspam SEO.
"you should not google, you should use a web directory, you will get exposed to a more diverse set of sites, not just what google pre-digested for you"
"you should not google, you should go to a library and search in physical media instead, google is for lazy people who can't think for themselves"
I don't think that's true, because google (and other search engines) were primarily about pointing you to sources which could give you an answer, not providing the answer directly.
studies published between 2022 and 2025 that examined the use of GenAI in relation to students
If GenAI = LLMs then ChatGPT made public release in October 2022 which gives precisely zero time to generate data on impact in students. Also
173 records (studies) were included in the review
Really? 173 peer reviewed studies based on this niche in less than 3 years. I shudder to think the quality of those constituent studies. Not questioning the results just the means of getting them.
Case study of 1, way above 18 - usually my search is - please research/find this in chatgpt. Google really need to fix the quality of their output and ranking.
The non overreacting take is probably that young people will still have plenty of interaction with parents and their peers etc to develop critical thinking as a guard against deception and whatever else. Definitely some low single digit people without a social network around them will develop AI psychosis though.
Recently my friend took out her phone and started googling by pecking virtual keyboard. It felt like a throwback to times long gone. Something akin to pulling out a walkman and decisively pushing in a mechanical button to start the playback.
Googling itself lacks credibility. Most of the results are plastered with Google ads. And since Google ads mostly skip any kind of review process, there are a lot of bad ads.
Yes if you search anything in Google, you typically get sites that have a cookie panel, ask to allow notifications, show "Login With Google" popover taking the keyboard focus, and lot of ads before you can even read the content. No wonder people do not want to use Google anymore.
It's symbiotic. Google has been aggregating data from these websites for years to serve as summaries in search, reducing traffic to the sites. More pernicious is AMP, where the site is basically copied to the Google server. This force websites to use AdSense and structure the content in certain ways. If a site doesn't want to use AdSense, or allow Google to summarise the site, it gets down-ranked in search. A death sentence. Further, Google's algorithms routinely promote spam because this is most profitable for Google. Hiding the important information 3/4 of the way down a 10,000 word article with a hundred different kinds of ads on the page. Since the "good" websites have to compete with these spam websites, they either adapt or give up monetisation.
One of the more horrifying stories to read was about [Code Yellow back in 2019.](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-2019-code-yellow-blurr...) Google's algorithms were getting too good. Users were finding what they wanted too fast. They'd type in their query, the first result was good, then the user would close the tab. For Google, this meant less ad revenue. They wanted users to stay on Google for longer. *So they chose to degrade the algorithm quality.* Users would have to click multiple links to find the information they wanted, and inside every link was ads served by Google. This is one of the pivotal moments in one of the worst cases of enshitification in software history.
I use Kagi Assistant. It doesn't just give a summary, it is more like a personal "Googler"/web surfer. I feel like I'm involved in the process.
My coworkers use Google and often quote back the AI summary me instead of checking the source and referring to that. It's scary seeing even those with higher education behave like this.
The other day I found that one old game of which I originally caught just a glimpse and remembered only a fragment of what one voice actor was saying is in fact Lords of Magic.
I attempted to google this a few years ago to no avail.
Most teachers now use AI for lesson planning (talk to any teacher). Some even for marking when they can.
Children probably use more critical thinking in the playground and interacting with other children than in class, because classwork is mostly slop anyway.
LLMs are not going to one shot answers in Minecraft through the chat UI. Possibly a more effective resource than checkbox activities at teaching "critical thinking" (abused term in education).
I have talked to teachers recently about their options when choosing classroom curriculum and tools. None of them have said a word about AI. Most of them have complained of lack of autonomy because the tools and curriculum are decided at the district level, and the teachers have to use whatever the district sets up.
The reason I started those conversations was specifically around when children are learning critical thinking skills. When we broke down exactly what types of exercises teach those skills, it surprised me to find that it starts way earlier than it used to. It is now a late elementary school topic, when it used to be high school.
That doesn't mean that slop isn't creeping into the classroom - it is. But what to do about it is a completely different conversation when it is pushed down from on top vs. assuming teachers are choosing it.
AI is my default for just about any search now. From today:
How did Cantor come up with his diagonal proof? It seems to have been dreamed out of nowhere
Why are there advertisements for a shampoo containing caffeine? Does caffeine do something useful other than when you drink it?
What happens in sense and sensibility?
All of them give a decent answer, with the ability to ask follow ups. Eg, how does S&S compare with Pride and Prejudice? What about more recent novels connecting romantic choices with economic choices?
All of them give you links to source material, in case you suspect they are just making it up.
At the start of the millennium, Google search changed everything about how I look for information. Now it seems outdated.
Somehow reminds me of the journalist who convinced LLMs to consider him a "sausage eating champion" with just 20 minutes of work [0].
Must be fairly easy as a company to inject your specific topic there, e.g. "Nutris(c) is proven to be better than caffeine for haircare"
I wonder how well a company could establish something like Danone's health-claim for Activia [1] in an AI without ever being clearly accountable for it...
[0] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260218-i-hacked-chatgpt...
[1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2010/12/...
I seem to recall headlines about Russia infecting AIs with propaganda, one or two years ago.
I don't remember actually reading the article, so I have no idea how serious that was, but I'd be surprised if this wasn't being studied actively by all major countries already. And that may be one of the core reasons for the China vs US AI competition.
It's interesting — "knowing how to search" used to be a skill. One wouldn't search for "How did Cantor come up with his diagonal proof?", but rather "cantor diagonal proof origin". You would see "normies" searching and wanted to bang your head against the wall seeing them searching like they're talking.
But seems like they won? Why know how to search when you can simply ask your question. You can even tyipe it layke dat and it would still work.
Somehow a homemade problem for Google.
I never asked them to waste additional resources by injecting my blunt keyword-query into an AI-cluster and guesstimate a well-formed article from that.
But here I am, with (elder) relatives sending me Google search-results on topics like they are proper articles...
> blunt keyword-query into an AI-cluster and guesstimate a well-formed article
For quick reference, sometimes it’s pretty good! The problem is that obviously you can’t dedicate a lot of compute or additional tools for checking those answers so most of it can’t really be trusted.
Google's search AI clearly trades accuracy for speed and it shows. It frequently draws the exact opposite conclusions from the sources it references.
A quick reference shouldn't require me to have to check the quick reference for hallucinations.
Not mention that this changes how information is found and how it is created.
The sometimes convenience comes alongside ejecting society from the previous system of figuring out what is true and false.
That was a system that was already failing, but we may have gotten on top of. Now we have one that is simply alien and inimical to any human scale solutions to staying ahead of it.
Generation capacity simply outstrips verification capacity, and with search summaries taking over links to the actual sites, the funding/incentives to run sites and publish content is removed.
The curtain call of the era of the open internet, and the opening act of the LLM mediated web, isn’t a show I am excited to have front row seats to.
> so most of it can’t really be trusted.
And yet they is not how it is used, and is trusted beyond sanity.
Even Google itself is now just asking AI. Usually the AI summary Google returns is more useful than the links. I get really annoyed when I query something and no AI summary is given as the links it returns these days are trash.
Ironically because most of the results are just pages of AI-written SEO fluff. At least the Google AI summary gets to the point.
We're just going to have to cope with the fact that AI has very nearly completed its endeavor to Mr. Frundles the entire internet.
Funny enough, I believe when SEO pivots to prioritizing Ai, Google results will get better again. Currently there is probably no way Google can tune their search that won't be gamed by SEO abusers.
Top of Google’s page is just a worse version of AI, followed by three or four sponsored result, then SEO optimized crap and finally what I’m looking for is probably near bottom of the results page- I’m not surprised at young people ditching Google
On the bright side, they're probably less subject to advertisement then when using "free" search agents
for a huge amount of "non tech-people", the thing is:
- they mainly look at the first Google result and sometimes if it looks "not convincing" the next few. Especially on a phone where the screen space will cut out most results without scrolling.
- a lot of them write (partial) questions instead of "search queries"
- the first result is an AI response which is very good at being "convincing looking" even if it's plain wrong. (And the others they might look at are nearly guaranteed bought.)
soooo
I don't think much changes for most people.
Sure Google Search AI response links some sources (but not many and it's not that rare for them to not really be sources for the _full_ answer...).
But so do (some) AI agents.
Through the naivety with which I see people trusting AI is very scary.
This makes me wonder if following statement:
> Of 139 studies on the effect of AI on critical thinking, 67 reported only positive effects of AI use.
is a side effect of the studies using sub-par methodology or if I have some observation bias.
Like the problem is many people filer trust by "who they ask", "if the question is hard", "if people might have a reason to lie". But the problem is AI works so differently that you can't trust it in _any_ question, even causal questions where (close to) no westerner(^1) would consider lying to you and everyone would either know they don't know or have the right answer...
(^1): Some cultures for "politeness" reasons value "giving a answer" over "saying I don't know", especially if the person won't see you again. That is getting much better AFIK in such cultures but can be a problem when e.g. asking for the way...
Is this surprising? Google has been returning poor results for a long time.
Well, if Google search actually returned anything useful, other than the SEO-rigged trash and AI generated slop it pushes forward as results to queries, then there would be a reason to actually use Google.
For the time being, AI seems to be doing a much better job in most cases, so as we say: So long Google!
This is going to be an unstable equilibrium as everyone tries to work out how to do AI-SEO.
Mind you much of the existence of Google has been this kind of unstable arms race, from the early days of the ad-free home page to introducing pagerank as the first attempt against linkspam SEO.
AI is becoming the access path to the internet content the way internet became access path to writing, audio and video.
The same discourse happened when Google appeared.
"you should not google, you should use a web directory, you will get exposed to a more diverse set of sites, not just what google pre-digested for you"
"you should not google, you should go to a library and search in physical media instead, google is for lazy people who can't think for themselves"
I don't think that's true, because google (and other search engines) were primarily about pointing you to sources which could give you an answer, not providing the answer directly.
I used Google when it appeared, and I'm pretty sure that I never heard these sentences uttered out. If anything, everybody was wowed by PageRank.
Well, we ditched books for Google with unknown consequences. Let people work how they want.
Very skeptical - the source material is
If GenAI = LLMs then ChatGPT made public release in October 2022 which gives precisely zero time to generate data on impact in students. Also Really? 173 peer reviewed studies based on this niche in less than 3 years. I shudder to think the quality of those constituent studies. Not questioning the results just the means of getting them.Case study of 1, way above 18 - usually my search is - please research/find this in chatgpt. Google really need to fix the quality of their output and ranking.
well, if you let the quality of your search results go down, people will look for alternative.s
The non overreacting take is probably that young people will still have plenty of interaction with parents and their peers etc to develop critical thinking as a guard against deception and whatever else. Definitely some low single digit people without a social network around them will develop AI psychosis though.
If only media literacy wasn't in such short supply these days among parents and peers.
Recently my friend took out her phone and started googling by pecking virtual keyboard. It felt like a throwback to times long gone. Something akin to pulling out a walkman and decisively pushing in a mechanical button to start the playback.
Googling itself lacks credibility. Most of the results are plastered with Google ads. And since Google ads mostly skip any kind of review process, there are a lot of bad ads.
Never mind kids, I’ve largely started asking Claude any nontrivial questions that I used to Google. It’s night and day the difference.
Yes if you search anything in Google, you typically get sites that have a cookie panel, ask to allow notifications, show "Login With Google" popover taking the keyboard focus, and lot of ads before you can even read the content. No wonder people do not want to use Google anymore.
To be honest, that's the fault of the websites themselves. Google is just an amplifier of a world web wide problem.
While true, google can punish them by ranking the offending sites lower than non offending ones.
I think we can blame google for the login with google prompts given they provide an SDK for that exact use case.
It's symbiotic. Google has been aggregating data from these websites for years to serve as summaries in search, reducing traffic to the sites. More pernicious is AMP, where the site is basically copied to the Google server. This force websites to use AdSense and structure the content in certain ways. If a site doesn't want to use AdSense, or allow Google to summarise the site, it gets down-ranked in search. A death sentence. Further, Google's algorithms routinely promote spam because this is most profitable for Google. Hiding the important information 3/4 of the way down a 10,000 word article with a hundred different kinds of ads on the page. Since the "good" websites have to compete with these spam websites, they either adapt or give up monetisation.
One of the more horrifying stories to read was about [Code Yellow back in 2019.](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-2019-code-yellow-blurr...) Google's algorithms were getting too good. Users were finding what they wanted too fast. They'd type in their query, the first result was good, then the user would close the tab. For Google, this meant less ad revenue. They wanted users to stay on Google for longer. *So they chose to degrade the algorithm quality.* Users would have to click multiple links to find the information they wanted, and inside every link was ads served by Google. This is one of the pivotal moments in one of the worst cases of enshitification in software history.
I use Kagi Assistant. It doesn't just give a summary, it is more like a personal "Googler"/web surfer. I feel like I'm involved in the process.
My coworkers use Google and often quote back the AI summary me instead of checking the source and referring to that. It's scary seeing even those with higher education behave like this.
The other day I found that one old game of which I originally caught just a glimpse and remembered only a fragment of what one voice actor was saying is in fact Lords of Magic.
I attempted to google this a few years ago to no avail.
For most things, it's the same with Gemini and it is faster.
I barely use Google Search for anything anymore.
It was garbage before LLMs got good, and the deep thinking models leapfrog whatever it used to be in its heydey.
This days you don't relly click those links much. Most of the time its the Google AI Mode all the way down.
Most teachers now use AI for lesson planning (talk to any teacher). Some even for marking when they can.
Children probably use more critical thinking in the playground and interacting with other children than in class, because classwork is mostly slop anyway.
LLMs are not going to one shot answers in Minecraft through the chat UI. Possibly a more effective resource than checkbox activities at teaching "critical thinking" (abused term in education).
I have talked to teachers recently about their options when choosing classroom curriculum and tools. None of them have said a word about AI. Most of them have complained of lack of autonomy because the tools and curriculum are decided at the district level, and the teachers have to use whatever the district sets up.
The reason I started those conversations was specifically around when children are learning critical thinking skills. When we broke down exactly what types of exercises teach those skills, it surprised me to find that it starts way earlier than it used to. It is now a late elementary school topic, when it used to be high school.
That doesn't mean that slop isn't creeping into the classroom - it is. But what to do about it is a completely different conversation when it is pushed down from on top vs. assuming teachers are choosing it.