As AI Destroys Search Results, Google Fires Workers in Charge of Improving It
Amid a giant wave of AI layoffs, Google is firing thousands of contractors tasked with making its search engine work better.
I don't know what search engine to use. I tried DDG not too long ago but it wasn't giving good results.
If you need something related to daily life/hobby then use "site:reddit.com [search here]" honestly reddit still contains decent results about niche topics.
If you are searching for news items you almost need to use "before:[date]" for better context otherwise its impossible to find useful information, every news article is filled with SEO mumbo jambo and makes every news about a topic today the same as it was years ago and that is not what you want.
Otherwise unless you end up searching for something with a reasonable wikipedia page that is your destination most of the time because every other alternative is as bad or worse.
This is the entire fix to Google. Nearly every complex question is better with site:reddit.com
If you think Reddit is bad, you haven't seen dozens of regurgitated blog articles stretched out by banner ads
"Good results" meaning relevant results? DDG has tools that help fine-tune your search, and if you use them, you'll probably have a better time. I'd suggest giving it another chance.
When it comes to location based services, certain integrations, and review systems, though, unfortunately I'd say Google is still the default, so there's no shame in using it for that sort of thing—just choose your engine based on what you're looking for. Firefox makes it easy.
The ddg exclamation point short cuts are great, you can search google with !g and Reddit with !r
Depends what you're after, there's also 4get.ca, yandex.ru, baidu.com (can get a browser addon to translate), mojeek.com, bing, wolfram alpha, qwant, and dogpile.com. Nerds on racist tech sites with money to burn swear by kagi but I couldn't say since aside from vpn I don't pay for online services. I'll probably think of more search engines in a moment.
As someone that does this as one of my jobs (pays way more than my main gig), somewhat concerning.
Thanks for mentioning us, here's a good quantity with information on sources: https://www.searchenginemap.com/ if it is of use
"This news should be a wake-up call for workers in the tech industry and anyone concerned about the impacts of AI on working people," Toni Allen, the union's executive board secretary, said in the statement. "As subcontractors for Google we have been a canary in the AI coal mine calling out the precarious labor conditions we face being the human workers standing between large language models and their end users."
"This is what AI work looks like when workers have no say in the process," Allen continued. "It is time that the world heard our voices before this situation repeats itself far and wide."
AI is neither artificial nor intelligent. In the end, we've just hidden the human cost from the users even further.
It's also hilarious how Google managed to become worse than DDG. Pretty sure DDG didn't have to lift a finger there in this competition.
I’ve said it from the beginning, truly the final boss of exploitation. Hmm maybe not “final boss” per se, but the big reveal. If these ghouls can do this shit in broad daylight without pushback, it’s fucking open season on us imo
What they're really doing is trying to slowly replace Google's current old-school AI functionality WITH more of the same LLM AI, same as every tech giant.
That's most of the layoffs: teams specialized around nom-LLM AI.