What Google Should Really Be Worried About
We recorded 9 claims from this post. 1 was checked against evidence. 8 can’t be checked. 2 more are held. Read the post at its source.
Claims from this post (9)
In the order they appear in the post. Each quotation is the speaker’s words in this post. A label such as “Supported” or “Can’t be checked” is the claim’s current assessment; its page has the evidence and the reasons.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“But here’s the thing: the world’s latest and great tool for tricking search engines (hence playing games with SEO, aka Search Engine Optimization) may change everything.”
What we tested: Large language models, as a tool for tricking search engines, may fundamentally change search engine manipulation.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“Large Language Models (like GPT-3, ChatGPT, Galactica, etc) could be used to produce a enormous numbers of marginal blogs and fake reviews to pump each other up, and increase the search rankings of fraudulent garbage—with a minimal amount of human effort.”
What we tested: Large language models such as GPT-3, ChatGPT and Galactica could be used to produce enormous numbers of marginal blogs and fake reviews that pump each other up and increase the search rankings of fraudulent garbage, with a minimal amount of human effort.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“The Bialek hoax is probably just the tip of an iceberg.”
What we tested: The Bialek fake-website hoax is probably only a small visible part of a much larger problem.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“It would be irrational for scammers not to use these new tools to vastly expand their reach, and hence vastly expand their profits.”
What we tested: It would be irrational for scammers not to use these new tools (LLMs) to vastly expand their reach, and hence vastly expand their profits.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“When the only company that might have significant amounts of data on the question won’t even answer the question, we can guess that there very well may be a problem.”
What we tested: Because Meta, the only company that might have significant data on what fraction of the misinformation it removes is LLM-generated, won't answer the question, we can guess that there very well may be a problem.
Assessment: SupportedSaid
“As I have discussed in earlier essays, the jury is still out on how far Chat-style search can get, given its obvious current problems with truthiness.”
What we tested: Chat-style search currently has obvious truthfulness problems, and it is uncertain how far it can get.
What happened: The report reproduces Bard's erroneous attribution of the first exoplanet images to the James Webb Space Telescope and describes the correction. Reputable reporting is used because the original demonstration's answer is not present in the readable text of Google's announcement. (The Verge, )
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“But either way, search itself seems likely to face a major growing threat from circles of fake websites that are designed to sell ads and mutually reinforce each other’s positions in Search Engine Optimization.”
What we tested: Web search is likely to face a major, growing threat from rings of fake, mutually reinforcing ad-selling websites.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“Cesspools of automatically-generated fake websites, rather than ChatGPT search, may ultimately come to be the single biggest threat that Google ever faces.”
What we tested: Automatically generated fake websites, rather than ChatGPT-style search, may ultimately be the single biggest threat Google ever faces.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“After all, if users are left sifting through sewers full of useless misinformation, the value of search would go to zero—potentially killing the company.”
What we tested: If search results become flooded with useless misinformation, the value of search would go to zero, which could kill Google.
Held from this post (2)
These records did not pass every check, so nothing about them is published. Held is not a finding.
- The two reviews reached different assessments. Our reading, not assessed: LLMs aren't very good at writing error-free prose, but the people who run content farms won't care about the errors.
- The two reviews reached different assessments. Our reading, not assessed: LLMs make content-farm text that used to be laboriously human-written cheap and therefore more widespread.