In When did Google get so f-ing weird?, Sancho Panza experiences the very same phenomenon I wrote about last December, and called “Bicameral Google”. This being that, for many Google search queries, you still do indeed get the results you wanted—but only after Google’s AI butts in and interprets your search query as if you had addressed it to a chat bot, which you did not. (Except, clearly, you did.)

In Sancho’s case, a perfectly reasonable string of keywords seeking a specific 2010s sports meme resulted in the Search AI assuming that Sancho was voicing distress over a deteriorating personal relationship. The Google Search results page invited him to sit with it and discuss his feelings. And then the first real search result was the meme Sancho was looking for, but only after he scrolled past the robot-therapy offers. “I think this was the moment I, the frog, noticed the pot had been boiling for a while.”

Have we gotten to the point where we have to constantly be in a parasocial dialogue with our computers? Is it so hard to imagine that some parts of search were just fine before LLMs? I’m not sure how to feel about all of this. Maybe I should go talk to my friend Google, it’s always so nice to me.

(Via Daring Fireball)