{"id":181692,"date":"2024-01-30T08:22:53","date_gmt":"2024-01-30T14:22:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/01\/as-ai-destroys-search-results-google-fires-workers-in-charge-of-improving-it"},"modified":"2024-01-30T08:22:53","modified_gmt":"2024-01-30T14:22:53","slug":"as-ai-destroys-search-results-google-fires-workers-in-charge-of-improving-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/01\/as-ai-destroys-search-results-google-fires-workers-in-charge-of-improving-it","title":{"rendered":"As AI Destroys Search Results, Google Fires Workers in Charge of Improving It"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/as-ai-destroys-search-results-google-fires-workers-in-charge-of-improving-it2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Amid a massive wave of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/tech-layoffs-artificial-intelligence-ai-chatgpt\/\" class=\"\">tech company layoffs<\/a> in favor of AI, Google is firing thousands of contractors tasked with making its namesake search engine work better.<\/p>\n<p>As <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vice.com\/en\/article\/g5ynvw\/google-cuts-search-results-algorithm-quality-rater-jobs-appen-contract\" class=\"\"><em>Vice<\/em> reports<\/a>, news of the company ending its contract with Appen \u2014 a data training firm that employs thousands of poorly paid gig workers in developing countries to maintain, among other things, Google\u2019s search algorithm \u2014 coincidentally comes a week after a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.404media.co\/google-search-really-has-gotten-worse-researchers-find\/\" class=\"\">new study found<\/a> that the quality of its search engine\u2019s results has indeed gotten much worse in recent years.<\/p>\n<p>Back in late 2022, journalist Cory Doctorow coined the term \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doctorow.medium.com\/social-quitting-1ce85b67b456\" class=\"\">enshittification<\/a>\u201d to refer to the demonstrable worsening of all manner of online tools, which he said was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/tech-companies-ruining-apps-websites-internet-worse-google-facebook-amazon-2023-3\" class=\"\">by design<\/a> as tech giants seek to extract more and more money out of their user bases. Google Search was chief among the writer\u2019s examples of the enshittification effect in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow\/\" class=\"\"><em>Wired<\/em> article<\/a> published last January, and as the new study out of Germany found, that effect can be measured.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Amid a massive wave of tech company layoffs in favor of AI, Google is firing thousands of contractors tasked with making its namesake search engine work better. As Vice reports, news of the company ending its contract with Appen \u2014 a data training firm that employs thousands of poorly paid gig workers in developing countries [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":556,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-information-science","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/556"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181692\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}