I know some companies that at a high level want to "organize the world's information" or "build the future of human connection", yet have done innumerable cruel and harmful things to society (at least in my opinion).
And that is the huge problem here; it's not "search on steroids", it's "Ministry of Truth" on steroids.
Did you look at usa.gov at all?
It is less effort and requires less time than america.gov's:
Type "find affordable housing near me", wait praying for relevant results, recieve irrelevant results due to my rural isp having flaky geoip, told to click on the same link I already got grom usa.gov or one of three other irrelevant links or call this irrelevant phone number.
So my tax dollars are now funding a worse way to get worse results to people who can't use a well formatted site that they won't benefit from because they'll trust it implicitly despite it being demonstrably less reliable.
Brilliant.
A few queries that I couldn’t find answers to through that site:
* How can you get a permit for a group event in a national forest?
* How can I become a federal contractor as a small business?
* Where do I go to get an amateur radio license and what are the steps involved?
* What are the requirements for purchasing tribal land?
Basically usa.gov seems to mainly exist for people following the “happy path”—go to school, get a job or run a simple business, get health insurance, buy a house, retire. It’s got a few exceptions for large minority groups. But the issue is that the total number of people deviating from that path is huge, even if they only need to find one thing that’s not on the path. Right now they rely on commercial search to get answers, which often leads them to scam sites or intermediaries who take a cut for filing paperwork.
It's rijksoverheid.nl in my country- good luck to any poor expat trying to pronounce that lol.
Neither the UK or CA versions have "here's an LLM you can make general inquiries to" though; at least for now that appears to be unique to america.gov. Unclear to me why this required a separate domain with all this branding on it vs just being one of those "let our chatbot help you out!!!" popup widgets on the existing usa.gov.
There is a big difference between "these ads have flashing lights and take up half the screen and are annoying" and "this ad is attempting to defraud you".
As long as your law allows it, it's not Google's liability. Just change the law. But you call regulations "communism".
https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/israelop...
Google turned android into a personal data harvester and advertising machine
A terrorist finds it much easier to execute on insidious plans if the world's information on vulnerabilities and weapons are organized at their fingertips, for example.
But you've sort of hit the nail on the head: there are consequences to building these things, and consequences to not doing that.
Up-thread is, I think, making the fine point that the bad can certainly outweigh the good (you'll note a distinct lack of "Google but for CSAM," at least outside the dark web, and that's I think because the good/harm tradeoff there is self-evident). My intent was just to put down a reminder counterweight that the good without the harm is likely also impossible.
Google makes errors of judgment. They also make straight-up unforced errors (breaking their 10-year commitment to the Chromebook platform, at their scale, is just burning credibility at a quantity that I cannot imagine is going to save them enough money to justify it unless their intent is to exit the educational space completely; 10 years isn't a random number, it's the kind of number that gives educational institutions the confidence that an investment in platform is long-term, and breaking that commitment factors into the calculus of those institutions trusting Google for any and all future purchases).
I never understood this argument and I think it doesn't make sense. It can be argued that, as such, individuals and animals also cause harm and damage to society (whatever this is) by their interest and convenience-seeking behavior.
Nature may cause innumerable cruel and harmful things to society.
Being born causes cruelty and harm because it imposes suffering on life.
I wish I could understand or make sense of what you are saying there, although this is not even the right place, so never mind.
Sure. It's possible. But is your point that it's happening here? Or just that something wrong could happen?
I believe it could be used for good things, bad things, or a bit of both. I passionately believe this!