[HN Gopher] Google's AI is that stupid, feeds people answers fro...
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       Google's AI is that stupid, feeds people answers from The Onion
        
       Author : c420
       Score  : 38 points
       Date   : 2024-05-27 18:12 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.avclub.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.avclub.com)
        
       | jjgreen wrote:
       | 'No Way To Prevent This,' Says Only Search-Engine Where This
       | Regularly Happens
        
         | theturtletalks wrote:
         | Is it even in their best interest to make it work? I'm sure the
         | normal person would start to ignore the AI answer and scroll
         | down to see the first page of ads and then find the results.
        
           | CleanRoomClub wrote:
           | I think you're wrong. The normal person would almost
           | certainly take the quick summary answer so long as it doesn't
           | sound _too_ absurd.
           | 
           | Most people use google to answer a question. If that question
           | is answered immediately at the top of the page, mission
           | accomplished
        
         | ben_jones wrote:
         | Is there a way to turn it off other than an obscure query
         | parameter in the URL?
         | 
         | An honest release of this feature would have a "turn it off"
         | button right next to it and I'm not seeing one.
        
         | more_corn wrote:
         | We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!
        
         | fooblaster wrote:
         | conveniently the same problems are present in gpt4, but
         | conveniently ignored as that product is from a revolutionary
         | startup
        
           | prepend wrote:
           | Gpt4 doesn't show me these summaries and answers even though
           | I never asked and just searched.
           | 
           | This is just another example of google sucking and being kind
           | of stupid now.
        
       | Spivak wrote:
       | Ask an AI to answer a question based on the provided search
       | context when the top result is The Onion and you get...
       | information from The Onion.
       | 
       | This really is "you can't win when you're a big platform and have
       | a billion QA testers looking for something to spark Twitter
       | outrage." You can generate your own rage bait on your own pretty
       | easily if you craft a search where a satirical article is the
       | first result.
        
         | sandspar wrote:
         | Why is 2024 Google so widely despised that there's such an
         | appetite for seeing it humiliated?
        
           | pjmlp wrote:
           | Because we remember how Google was when Yahoo, Altavista, Ask
           | Jeeves! ruled.
        
             | gundmc wrote:
             | But do you remember how the Internet was when Yahoo,
             | Altavista, and Ask Jeeves! ruled? There's no going back to
             | that, no matter how good your search algorithm is.
        
               | pjmlp wrote:
               | Compared with Google in 2024, I could actually find what
               | I was looking for.
        
           | nrb wrote:
           | Because now there is a galaxy-sized gulf between what users
           | want and what Google wants.
           | 
           | Google's stated mission was "to organize the world's
           | information and make it universally accessible and useful"
           | but their actions over the last few years have served only to
           | make search _less_ accessible and useful.
        
           | beryilma wrote:
           | "Don't be evil" was it? We came a long way from that...
        
           | prepend wrote:
           | I don't want to humiliate google, I just want them to fix
           | their stuff.
           | 
           | I'm annoyed with them because they have poor, ad-infested
           | search results and kill many products I liked (code, reader,
           | froogle/shopping, blogger static sites, etc etc).
        
         | lupire wrote:
         | How hard is it for Google to figure out that The Onion is a
         | satire site? They've had over 20 years to figure it out.
         | 
         | The Onion aite also says "The Onion is not intended for readers
         | under 18 years of age." so Google shouldn't be showing it when
         | Safe Search is enabled.
        
         | mindcandy wrote:
         | Along with legit news and problems, there has been a ton of
         | outrage this past year that boils down to
         | 
         | User: Hey, AI. Act naughty.
         | 
         | AI: Hee hee heeeee... I am so naughty!
         | 
         | User on Twitter: Look! Look! The AI is naughty!
        
       | aprilthird2021 wrote:
       | Generative AIs are great at generating new, unique groups of
       | words and images, etc. that are pleasing to humans (this is what
       | they are trained to do after all).
       | 
       | They're not oracles or databases or encyclopedias. But they're
       | marketed to us as the latter, so people naturally get upset when
       | they have flaws all those other sources of info don't.
        
         | Rodeoclash wrote:
         | Agreed. I would extend this and say that we are so enamored by
         | the "humanness" that they exhibit that we're collectively
         | losing our minds over them.
         | 
         | I think this stems from the part of our brain that lights up
         | when an animal (or in this case a machine) exhibits humanlike
         | behaviour. Crows counting out loud, parrots that understand the
         | concept of 0 and chimpanzees that are using stone age tools all
         | give us the same reaction. LLMs have dialled this response up
         | to 11.
        
       | croes wrote:
       | BS in, BS out.
        
       | squarefoot wrote:
       | It seems the AI confuses literal and semantic searches, that is,
       | if I search for "what is America's finest news source?" it should
       | be clear that I'm not looking for a page containing that phrase
       | but rather one that satisfies its meaning not necessarily
       | respecting the phrase word for word. However, Google is a
       | advertising machine, so I wouldn't be that surprised if a search
       | for "what is the best pizza in the world" didn't return results
       | based on user reviews and opinions but rather a pointer to
       | someone that advertise themselves as the best pizza in the world.
        
         | pimlottc wrote:
         | It's more than just the literal text on theonion.com; that
         | tagline has been widely quoted on many reputable sites when
         | describing The Onion [0]. So I'm sure to Google that seems like
         | a really strong signal that there's a strong consensus that
         | they really are the finest news source out there.
         | 
         | 0:
         | https://www.google.com/search?q=%22America%27s+finest+news+s...
        
           | more_corn wrote:
           | And in every context onion is known to be a source of purely
           | satirical content. This isn't hard.
        
             | toast0 wrote:
             | The AV club isn't purely satirical content and was
             | integrated into the Onion for a long time (I'm not sure how
             | separate it is now, but it has its own domain anyway)
        
         | viraptor wrote:
         | > it should be clear that I'm not looking for a page containing
         | that phrase but rather one that satisfies its meaning
         | 
         | Why? If you hear "America's finest news source" a few times and
         | go to google to check what people mean, you really want it to
         | tell you about the onion. Or at least a Wikipedia-style
         | disambiguation page.
        
         | sdwr wrote:
         | There's a big difference between returning a list of results vs
         | a paragraph of information declaring an answer.
         | 
         | An incorrect or tenuously related result coming back as #5, or
         | even #1, is less "wrong" than "the answer" being wrong.
        
       | blackeyeblitzar wrote:
       | Isn't this criticism a bit early? This is all fixable, or at
       | least it can be improved upon.
        
         | yifanl wrote:
         | Anything can be anything else tomorrow, which is why we must
         | criticize what's in front of us today.
        
         | rchaud wrote:
         | Apple Maps' 2011 launch fiasco probably handed Google Maps a
         | 10-year lead, even if they fixed the bugs.
         | 
         | First impressions are important. Nobody remembers that Windows
         | Vista after Service Pack 2 was more or less indistinguishable
         | from Windows 7.
        
       | mbfg wrote:
       | I'd say this might be the best evidence so far that google's AI
       | has passed the Turing test, and is indistinguishable from humans.
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | [dupe]
       | 
       | More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40461580
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40448074
        
       | chucke1992 wrote:
       | I still don't think these search results are what users want to
       | use at all (even if they are correct). Google Search trained
       | users to search for far too long. Now it returns some crap even
       | in the search, but that's a separate matter.
       | 
       | I think the future is search being integrated into everything.
       | You are watching a tiktok video - "what is that song?", "what is
       | that flower?", "where to buy the same bag?".
        
       | vrinsd wrote:
       | Those who don't study history are bound to repeat it:
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(chatbot)
        
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       (page generated 2024-05-27 23:02 UTC)