Google scraps AI search feature that crowdsourced amateur medical advice

[highplainsdem]

Source: Guardian

Google has dropped a new artificial intelligence search feature that gave users crowdsourced health advice from amateurs around the world.

The company had said its launch of “What People Suggest”, which provided tips from strangers, showed “the potential of AI to transform health outcomes across the globe”.

But Google has since quietly removed the feature, according to three people familiar with the decision.

A Google spokesperson confirmed “What People Suggest” had been scrapped. The move came as part of a “broader simplification” of its search page and had nothing to do with the quality or safety of the new feature, the spokesperson said.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/16/google-scraps-ai-search-feature-that-crowdsourced-amateur-medical-advice

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Just when you think AI companies can't get stupider...

[reACTIONary]

1. I'm sure that the five star ratings....

.... were going to horse de-wormer and bleach enimas.

[Ford_Prefect]

2. Right up there with the X AI feature which cranked out porn pictures. AI is dangerously stupid, as arere many of

many of its wealthy and culturally illiterate advocates.

[eppur_se_muova]

3. AI. Crowdsource. Medical. Three words that never belonged in the same sentence, much less the same concept.

They go together about as well as "peanut butter thumbtack strychnine sandwich".


Seriously, why didn't ***SOMEONE***, at ***SOME*** point, ask, literally, "what could possibly go wrong ?".

Or did the answer come back as "we can't be sued for liability, we're disclaimered up the ass, so go with it" ?

[highplainsdem]

4. Google wants people gullible enough to trust AI to stop at its AI features and not go to websites. This

"crowdsourced" feature would snare the people dumb enough to think even their hallucinating AI Overview is offering advice that's too expert.

And if Google does continue with this and it gets a lot of traffic, imagine "crowdsourced" political issues and races and Google's ability to tell non-thinking users what their non-thinking peers feel is the truth. AI-enabled ignorance on steroids, manipulated by Google.

It would be similar to AI summaries of reviews, which might actually be representative summaries of people's reviews, but can probably be easily manipulated.

AI is empowering these companies' ability to control people's thoughts and actions. And the best way to limit their control is to avoid AI and encourage others to avoid it and not trust it.

[FakeNoose]

5. I'd like to know how to remove crowdsourcing from ANY Google search?

I used to believe that adding "/AI" at the end of a search term would do the trick. But now I've come to believe that every search Google performs includes AI (and crowdsourcing) in one way or another.