[brookst]

I feel like this is knee-jerk over-generalization.

Having Google summarize a too-long recipe (a problem they created, by the way) into just the simple ingredients and instructions is NOT "deciding your view of the world".

[what_ever]

Pretty sure the long recipes are due to others not being able to copy them if you have long essay describing it or something?

[dragonwriter]

The essay is more protectible by copyright than the recipe itself, but including it doesn’t protect the recipe itself.

I actually think the issue is that the long essay provides more space to put advertising alongside or interrupting the flow.

[doctorpangloss]

I'm not sure why this particular idiosyncratic thing attracts so much mystery, but the answer is that there are long essays about the recipes because people like them.

[Tarball10]

I assumed the long essays were for SEO (inflates the amount of cooking-related keywords). Which would make it kind of ironic that another Google product is now stripping the SEO content back out.

[marricks]

Ok, but people won't use it just for recipes. If it's successful and common place google will monetize it.

The beginning could just be "see this related product or service." Which won't mess with the content. Perhaps that's fine.

I'd argue though that any summarizing tool inherently has a bias. It must choose to ignore certain details and make decisions about what to highlight.

As we understand LLM's more and the stuff that summarizes folks controlling them will be able to make those decisions and the money and power behind that will absolutely abuse it.

That's not even considering the effects this would have on journalism and writing in general if most of it gets summarized.

[brookst]

Too tinfoil for me. Bicycles are bad because someone will try to use one like a helicopter.

And humans already summarize and (mis)characterize. I just don’t see blaming a tool that is used by people as they see fit.

[marricks]

I do if that tool is going to be more centralized then what it replaces.

Seems like a pretty facile argument. Bicycles and helicopters don't need to be trained on ridiculously largest datasets on ridiculously large super computers.

[Andrex]

Maybe Google decides certain ingredients aren't fit for public consumption and changes the recipe in their "summary." Or maybe the FDA tells Google it has to do this.

On a mass scale, maybe 0.2% of people would double check the source page. The rest would be unknowingly influenced to eat "healthier" by Google.

Yes, this seems unlikely. But so has much in the last 5 years.

Why are we deliberately charging head-first into social man-in-the-middle attacks? We already don't trust each other enough. LLMs lie, and lie often. Why should we trust them for anything?

Would you be OK asking a LLM what food is safe for an infant, or a pet dog? Without checking the source?

[brookst]

I think you’re saying that your concerns are moot because nobody would use LLMs the way you fear people will use LLMs?

[morkalork]

But it won't taste the same without knowing the authors childhood trauma!