Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Google Search AI Mode Gets 'Expert Advice' From Reddit and Social Media
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I’m commenting in a public forum, therefore I must be an expert! LOL! Ugh.
JosephAW
macrumors 604
TVreporter
macrumors 68030
Relying on Reddit? Is this a Google jump the shark moment?
Think I’ll just go back to my parents massive Encyclopedia Britannica collection.
Think I’ll just go back to my parents massive Encyclopedia Britannica collection.
Last edited:
SkippyThorson
macrumors 68000
I get all my 'expert advice' from Reddit like I get all my medical advice from WebMD.
Based on this collective article, I now have Noisy Green Exposure disease...
Based on this collective article, I now have Noisy Green Exposure disease...
What??? You don't get all of your medical advice from Dr Google of Dr Youtube? 😱 🤣
Hajj.david
macrumors 6502a
While I think this is silly, the constant criticism and put down of AI is beyond laughable. Just this week I was able to do an extremely difficult code refactor and movement from one app to another by making it a package. Something I have done many times before and takes WEEKS of work... in under a few hours with Claude. I have easily 5x my productivity and greatly improved our app security and reliability by running local AI to run tests, checks, etc at night to find issues we may have missed.
Black_Mage
macrumors 6502
Social media is now considered a source for expert advice?
Arran
macrumors 603
I hear you, and I am familiar with the corporate pressure to "use AI" that devs are under right now, but I wouldn't call it "laughable" quite yet. If anything, I find the voluntary de-skilling of devs quite concerning.
Early in my career - decades ago - I contributed many months of unpaid overtime (late nights, weekends) refactoring buggy legacy code that nobody wanted to fix. I did it because the old codebase was so unpredictable and often created production/operational emergencies that needed the entire dev team (including me) to put their life on hold to fix. These sporadic, emergency production bug-fixes were characterized as doing the "right thing" for our customers but - to be brutally honest - it was forced on us because the customers were refusing to pay their bills. Money talks!
Anyway, I was tired of that stupid nonsense, so I gradually refactored and extensively hand-tested the entire application code base before it even went to QA. I probably spent 80% of my effort testing and trying to break my code because I wanted to refactor once and be done. After refactoring, I owned it. Anything wrong was mine to fix. I was good with that.
Fast forward to today: When all these labor-saving "AI refactors" start failing in unanticipated production edge cases, who owns fixing it? Or is everyone going to be pointing fingers at AI and job-hopping?
What about the customers and end-users caught up in this?
Arran
macrumors 603
TBH, I think there are already engagement bots on here farming us for content. Some recent posts seem a bit suss.
CATiNTHESTORE
macrumors 6502a
Let’s this sheeeat burns! It is showing how silly this bubble really is…
Next level of sloppiness
Next level of sloppiness
Google has been pulling things from Reddit for ages. And it’s nearly always wrong.
Sure… get your info reliability from a bunch of power hungry mods
uacd
macrumors 68000
There was a time when Reddit actually had people with expertise. Now it is all circleje**, unfortunately. But I believe AI can use valid comments to support different arguments, so this might find its use. AI was using Reddit and social networks as a “food” ever since it was created, so this was just a step up and that it actually shows you quotes. If one looks into sources it often adds Reddit as a source.
This meme is kinda relatable sometimes
This meme is kinda relatable sometimes
uacd
macrumors 68000
On the other hand, should we believe “experts” from TV or YouTube? They often do not have expertise either.
Being expert these days means knowing something in some particular area that the other person might not be proficient in. I.e. you can be expert in anything, if it relates to discussion topic.
But when I see someone labeled as “political expert” I think of it as “ah, right, professional political propaganda!”.
On the other hand, we can’t call those posts “opinions” because they lose more credibility, or call them “scientific discussion” (because it is obviously not). Thus “Expert” these days is just a word that suits it best. It is like all iPhones called “Pro” but not really being professional tools and just a “fancier version of a regular thing”
What a complete disaster. Note to self - NEVER trust Google searches with AI since they treat random comments from anonymous weirdos as FACT because they're EXPERTS? You've got to be kidding.
Tried to move to codex and cloude but chat-gpt in the browser allows me to highlight some text and ask about it. I can’t seem to do it in native apps.
I am still fighting with myself to decide if AI is good or not in my case.
I do learn to code and chat-gpt seems to be super helpful here. I don’t get stucked on finding syntax issues. I am learning to build things I would never build before. I don’t think I would be able to learn to code without AI. But also I realise that maybe I am not learning at all. I don’t let it do my entire source. Just rather asking it for concept, look up method and so on. I write code myself from what it suggests and I apply that to my case. I guess it’s cheating or how they call it vibe coding.
Canyonrider
macrumors newbie
No you didn't. Your company did. If you don't have a family/hobbies and have a strong desire to work for free, please do so, while others will rely on AI to achieve their goals faster so that they could call it a day earlier, not later.
