> it appears it answers my question

"Appears" to me is the key word here, how do you know that what it said was true?

It will very confidently "answer" your question in a way that is convincing but if you actually try to click through you may find that the answer is straight up wrong.

I feel like most of the time that I am looking up something that is not niche but also not a major thing it does this and at best useless at worst actually harmful since people won't click through for the real information.

The biggest problem being that these systems can be right enough times that you gradually start trusting it and stop checking. Which is what google wants, if you have to check its work in the first place why does it even exist.

Edit:

Yesterday I tried using one of these research tools because I was curious and it was low priority so figured why not. I was looking for an open source solution to a problem. I specifically mentioned one that I had seen but I was cautious because it seemed to have been abandoned so was looking for others. It confidently told me how wrong I was about thinking it was abandoned despite the last commit being in early 2024 (it even said 2024 in the report) and even before that was clearly slowing down.

Now thankfully in that case it actually told me in the report the 2024 part which clearly told me how bad the report was going to be, but that is clearly bad and tainted the entire research.

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troupo 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> It will very confidently "answer" your question in a way that is convincing but if you actually try to click through you may find that the answer is straight up wrong.

It's the "it's wrong about the area I'm an expert in, but I feel it's correct in areas I'm not familiar with", but on Google's scale.

It's worse be cause it can be very subtly wrong.

	▲	scarface_74 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

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apwell23 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

you don't really need to be 100% sure of it being truth for a vast majority of cases.

edit for comment below: Its not about laziness for me. Its the displeasure of wading through junk that internet has become. I just don't have brain capacity or the smarts to outwit the scammers .

	▲	AIPedant 4 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I just don't understand being so cynical and lazy that you'll accept a meaningfully higher chance of being misinformed if it saves a few minutes of searching and reading[1]. Nobody is that busy. [1] If the search takes more than a few minutes then the AI overview is almost guaranteed to be wrong or useless.
	▲	nerdjon 4 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> you don't really need to be 100% sure of it being truth for a vast majority of cases. Except that these tools are being positioned as a source of reliable truth and the companies are incentivized to keep you on their system (google) instead of actually pushing you to the source (unless the source is an ad). Any disclaimer they try to put is hidden and often lighter/smaller text.

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simianwords 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

People have sniff tests to find out if an answer is correct or not.

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lucasban 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The phrasing was a bit ambiguous but I’m pretty sure that they meant: “when it appears, it answers my question 50% of the time”

	▲	nerdjon 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		I mean even if that was the intended phrasing that does not really change anything about the reply. Me latching onto the "appears" does not change anything since even with your interpretation it is wrong 50% of the time and that assumes that the 50% of the time you think it is right you actually know it is right and it is not actually wrong but you never check.