Comment on Google’s dominance on search is declining – for the first time ever!
taladar@sh.itjust.works 10 hours agoGemini is really good at confidently talking nonsense but other than that I don’t really see where you get the idea that it is good. Mind you, that isn’t much better with the other LLMs.
It can be grounded in facts. It’s great at RAG. But even alone, Gemini 2.5 is kinda shockingly smart.
…But the bigger point is how Google presents it. It shouldn’t be the top result of every search just thrown into your face, it should be a opt-in, conditional feature, and only if it can source a reliable website.
After just trying it again a few times today for a few practical problems that it not only misunderstood at first completely and then gave me a completely hallucinated answer to every single one I am sorry, but the only thing shocking about it is how stupid it is despite Google’s vast resources. Not that stupid/smart really apply to statistical analysis of language.
Gemini 2.5?
The one they use in search is awful, and not the same thing.
The one they use on gemini.google.com (which is 2.5 right now but was awful in earlier versions too).
flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz 10 hours ago
So it’s really good at the thing LLMs are good at. Don’t judge a fish by it’s ability to climb a tree etc…
taladar@sh.itjust.works 10 hours ago
No, it is mediocre at best compared to other models but LLMs in general have a very minimal usefulness.
FinnFooted@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
I get the desire to say this, but I find them extremely helpful in my line of work. Literally everything they say needs to be validated, but so does Wikipedia and we all know that Wikipedia is extremely useful. Its just another tool. But its a very useful tool if you know how to apply it.
taladar@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
But Wikipedia is basically correct 99% of the time on basic facts if you look at non-controversial topics where nobody has an incentive to manipulate it. LLMs meanwhile are lucky if 20% of what they see even has any relationship to reality. Not just complex facts either, if an LLM got wrong how many hands a human being has I wouldn’t be surprised.