1,000
3.00alright i finally got around to testing this with a fresh account.
details and screenshots: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ASiP7QrZ6VNP2tLiAK27exE6zYf5kmSdhEGjFKWVN-U/edit?usp=sharing
tl;dr
you can enable it but you have to know it exists and look for it. google is not promoting it. it's not linked anywhere on google.com and it's not been actively advertised to me as i tried a couple queries. i had to google for how to enable it. once i knew it existed and followed the proper links, i did find it.
(but also, trying to enable it organically by just clicking buttons i had available, it also wasn't clear how; not that i knew where to click. this specific branch was a n=1 test of "if i'm a new user and am looking for it in settings, will i easily find it" and my n=1 answer is no.)
SGE has been moved to a new lab’s experiment Here is the updated description from today. I don’t see how this could possibly be interpreted as YES it’s limited only to Google products (Chrome and Google app) not all Google users, and you have to be enrolled in labs AND opt-in to the experiment. It IS NOT A NATIVE FEATURE of the google search experience in any reasonable sense yet.
hoo boy.
tl;dr
Google's generative SRP is the best candidate
the crucial criterion that I need to check is the "how easily available is it" one
current plan:
get access to a USA IP; worst-case up to Jan 10 when I'll be back in USA
create a new Google account
see how many hoops I need to jump through to get a generative SRP
if it's too many hoops, abort and resolve NO
if I get a popup going "hey try out this generative SRP lab" after my first search or two and then can easily enable it, that's "not too many hoops"
if I get nothing and in fact the best way to get this is to know it exists, find https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/13572151?hl=en and follow the steps, that's "too many hoops"
if there aren't too many hoops, do some checks that it's conversational and open-domain enough to make sure my memory isn't deceiving me
more details moved to https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ASiP7QrZ6VNP2tLiAK27exE6zYf5kmSdhEGjFKWVN-U/edit?usp=sharing because Manifold wouldn't let me comment with so much stuff
@agentydragon I wouldn't personally say being logged into Google, opening a new tab (which one does normally anyway), and making two clicks is "too many hoops." But you seem to clearly be saying that, so this is a NO.
@Joshua I think probably not, I don't see much benefit in it and worry it might annoy other people. and effectively having a market about "how will Rai decide to resolve these criteria talking about a past event" feels a bit weird.
@agentydragon If you're signed into Google on Chrome in the US, you can open a new tab, showing this:
Then click that beaker icon in the top right, showing this:
Then click the left toggle. Then search.
@Jacy thanks for the screenshots!
Has to be accessible from google.com homepage. Has to be open to general public, and easily accessible from Google search home page. Not something you have to get whitelisted for, be in a small experiment or meticulously look for in some settings dialog.
i'll need to think about this a bit. my first thought is "this is still too many hoops" because you aren't nudged to enable it. very few non-power-users will ever click the beaker icon (i don't think i ever did myself).
i was trying to write the criteria targeting something like "will John Q. Public who doesn't follow latest LLM news have it", and I think John Q. Public's first thought on opening Chrome would be to look for the available experimental settings. specifying this kind of thing mechanically/objectively-resolvably is hard. as far as possible I want to stick to the criteria as they're in the description of the markets, rather than my background intent.
for now, time to sleep, i'll probably provision a US based VM tomorrow to try stuff out myself and resolve.
@agentydragon thanks. I'd definitely agree that this does not meet the bar for "will John Q. Public who doesn't follow latest LLM news have it", but for what it's worth, that's not how I would have summarized the title/description of the market or your comments.
@agentydragon and in case you missed it earlier in the comments, there also was "a popup going "hey try out this generative SRP lab"" in search earlier in the year, at least for me and some other people I saw talking about it online, but I don't know how many users got it, and I don't think it's going on anymore. Here's an example I just found from September:
@Jacy yeah, I recall it was at some point promoted, but like other things, question is about point-in-time state, not any-time-before state.
@Jacy I think it’s interesting you and I are having the opposite reaction to @agentydragon New resolution criteria. I think I am screwed now despite nothing meaningful changing since the last time this question resolved NO.
@agentydragon could you clarify whether what exists now meets your resolution criteria? It seems like Google Search Generation Experience (SGE) meets all the criteria you have specified in market descriptions and comments. SGE is conversational, can do chatbot things like "write a Shakespearean sonnet about Bill Gates," is accessible from the google.com homepage (it's just search itself), has no whitelist, does not require meticulously looking in settings to activate, and is at least accessible to anyone who can get a US IP address [Edit: It might not work with VPNs from other countries, at least in some cases. See Chris' comment below.].
(Obviously, even though it seems to me to meet the criteria, @BTE strongly disagrees!)
@Jacy I love that you saved me the trouble of pointing that out!! But again it’s also not available to all users but only users in a very specific context, chrome browser enrolled in labs are the only users who get SGE always. This is contrasted with Bing Copilot which is available in all browsers and contexts.
@BTE I just wanted to provide a quick summary for Rai, but, as we discussed on that topic, the relevant criterion is merely:
"Random 1% of users get an invite" doesn't count. "All US users get access but it's not in other locales" does count.
It is accessible to all US users. Any US user can use Chrome [Edit: Just to be clear, it works in at least some browsers other than Chrome at least some of the time, but I have not rigorously tested that, and even if it were only Chrome, I think that would be sufficient.] and easily enroll in labs without any whitelist or meticulously looking through settings. Maybe you would argue for a case like that some people only have access to work computers that for some reason have blocked Chrome or that "access" tacitly requires "access within every person's normal workflow." That sort of corner case doesn't seem like what Rai has in mind, and every piece of software has corner cases of unavailability like that.
There is no criterion, to my knowledge, that requires it to be like Bing Copilot. Our disagreements here may come down to whether we are strictly focused on the criteria or also on the other considerations you keep bringing up (e.g., comparisons to Bing, how other people's markets on related topics have resolved, when exactly particular changes to SGE were made), which I don't see as relevant except insofar as they're evidence of whether SGE meets the resolution criteria.
@Jacy Google hasn’t even formally launched this product. It’s still in labs. They have even said they intend to launch it with Gemini soon but it’s clearly not officially launched at all. I have been using it in labs since June and it’s not even available to me all the time. The labs experiment doesn’t expire until the end of the month so I can’t understand how it could resolve before it expires. That makes zero sense based on many months of conversation here and the previous resolutions of copies of this market.
@BTE again, what does it being "formally launched" have to do with the resolution criteria? I don't see any criteria that requires it to be "formally" or "officially launched." It just needs to be accessible in the specific ways described.
And again, the "many months of conversation" and "previous resolutions of copies of this market" don't seem to have any bearing to me on how the market should be resolved except as part of an explicit argument for why it does or does not meet the actual criteria (e.g., you can quote a specific comment Rai made that I missed that says a formal launch is required).
I don't think we'll get anywhere with further discussion, but I at least appreciate you being so willing to discuss and share your reasoning!
@Jacy The resolution criteria from the original market say
Has to be accessible from google.com homepage. Has to be open to general public, and easily accessible from Google search home page. Not something you have to get whitelisted for, be in a small experiment or meticulously look for in some settings dialog.
How do you enable labs? I think you have to meticulously look for it in some settings dialog.
@chrisjbillington Good question. For a time, you got a pop-up on google.com suggesting you turn it on and just accepted the offer. You can also open a new tab in Chrome, click the Labs beaker icon in the top right, and check the first toggle that appears. You can do it in other ways too, but I wouldn't call that meticulous.
@Jacy I don't see the labs beaker icon, but maybe it's because I'm not in the US. It's not there if I VPN to the US either.
@chrisjbillington That's interesting. Maybe you're signed into a Google account that was created in Australia or is in some way tied to that location, even if you use a VPN. I don't know. It's hard to diagnose specific cases, and I should be clear that I haven't tested this comprehensively.
