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Google Is Paying Reddit $60 Million for Fucksmith to Tell Its Users to Eat Glue (www.404media.co)

submitted 5 months ago by ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Archive link: https://archive.ph/GtA4Q

The complete destruction of Google Search via forced AI adoption and the carnage it is wreaking on the internet is deeply depressing, but there are bright spots. For example, as the prophecy foretold, we are learning exactly what Google is paying Reddit $60 million annually for. And that is to confidently serve its customers ideas like, to make cheese stick on a pizza, “you can also add about 1/8 cup of non-toxic glue” to pizza sauce, which comes directly from the mind of a Reddit user who calls themselves “Fucksmith” and posted about putting glue on pizza 11 years ago.

A joke that people made when Google and Reddit announced their data sharing agreement was that Google’s AI would become dumber and/or “poisoned” by scraping various Reddit shitposts and would eventually regurgitate them to the internet. (This is the same joke people made about AI scraping Tumblr). Giving people the verbatim wisdom of Fucksmith as a legitimate answer to a basic cooking question shows that Google’s AI is actually being poisoned by random shit people say on the internet.

Because Google is one of the largest companies on Earth and operates with near impunity and because its stock continues to skyrocket behind the exciting news that AI will continue to be shoved into every aspect of all of its products until morale improves, it is looking like the user experience for the foreseeable future will be one where searches are random mishmashes of Reddit shitposts, actual information, and hallucinations. Sundar Pichai will continue to use his own product and say “this is good.”

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[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 21 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It's weird because it's not exactly misinformation... If you're trying to make a pizza commerical and want that ridiculous cheese pull they always show.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 19 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (4 children)

Some food discoveries have been made by doing what I would call some alarmingly questionable stuff.

I was pretty shocked when I discovered how artificial sweeteners were generally discovered. It frequently involved a laboratory where unknown chemicals accidentally wound up in some researcher's mouth.

Saccharin

Saccharin was produced first in 1879, by Constantin Fahlberg, a chemist working on coal tar derivatives in Ira Remsen's laboratory at Johns Hopkins University.[21] Fahlberg noticed a sweet taste on his hand one evening, and connected this with the compound benzoic sulfimide on which he had been working that day.[22][23]

Cyclamate

Cyclamate was discovered in 1937 at the University of Illinois by graduate student Michael Sveda. Sveda was working in the lab on the synthesis of an antipyretic drug. He put his cigarette down on the lab bench, and when he put it back in his mouth, he discovered the sweet taste of cyclamate.[3][4]

Aspartame

Aspartame was discovered in 1965 by James M. Schlatter, a chemist working for G.D. Searle & Company. Schlatter had synthesized aspartame as an intermediate step in generating a tetrapeptide of the hormone gastrin, for use in assessing an anti-ulcer drug candidate.[54] He discovered its sweet taste when he licked his finger, which had become contaminated with aspartame, to lift up a piece of paper.[10][55]

Acesulfame potassium

Acesulfame potassium was developed after the accidental discovery of a similar compound (5,6-dimethyl-1,2,3-oxathiazin-4(3H)-one 2,2-dioxide) in 1967 by Karl Clauss and Harald Jensen at Hoechst AG.[16][17] After accidentally dipping his fingers into the chemicals with which he was working, Clauss licked them to pick up a piece of paper.[18]

Sucralose

Sucralose was discovered in 1976 by scientists from Tate & Lyle, working with researchers Leslie Hough and Shashikant Phadnis at Queen Elizabeth College (now part of King's College London).[16] While researching novel uses of sucrose and its synthetic derivatives, Phadnis was told to "test" a chlorinated sugar compound. According to an anecdotal account, Phadnis thought Hough asked him to "taste" it, so he did and found the compound to be exceptionally sweet.[17]

Maybe we'll find that glue pizza works.

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 3 points 5 months ago

I really like reading about accidental discoveries. But the most fun one has to be Silly Putty. 😃

[–] Evotech@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

Haha, that happens way too often!

[–] BakerBagel@midwest.social 1 points 5 months ago

Those German chemists from the turn of the century were freaking bonkers. They were just synthesiIng random crap and finding all the properties they could. Common practice back then was to taste any compound you synthesized

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 1 points 5 months ago

Yeah, chemistry is so fucking complex and unpredictable that most of it happens by accident. Especially for really complex compounds like pharmaceuticals. We basically try a huge number of different things and find out what it does. (Hopefully only good things, a lot of drugs do some good and some bad.)