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Google restricts Gemini chatbot election answers

bbc.co.uk

41–50 of 59 posts

Re: Google restricts Gemini chatbot election answers

#41
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like just some gentle nudging sure. But do that at scale and it's certainly more effective than campaigning for a politician. If they did that in the open, then sure. But they don't.

There's no way for any person or organisation to address the entire voting population at once. So according to this guy, any time anyone encourages people to vote via any medium, they're engaging in election manipulation. This is exactly the sort of duff reasoning that finds non-existent conspiracies in every corner.

>This is exactly the sort of duff reasoning that finds non-existent conspiracies in every corner.

Have you been living under a rock? The tech companies taking sides in politics is not a conspiracy theory.

Re: Google restricts Gemini chatbot election answers

#42
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont understand the downvotes. The guy is right.

He might be. Or he might not be. He did not provide any justification or even argument, so his post reads like a simple flamebait. We should keep those on reddit. My 2c.

You can't expect people to back up everything with sources in every comment. If anyone is curious they can just ask for an elaboration, as someone did and they got one. Downvotes are for lazy people afraid of discussion, if it violates any rules there's the flag.

Re: Google restricts Gemini chatbot election answers

#43

AI is Google's cryptonite. A lot of their products become obsolete with local or cloud AI. Search for one becomes a better experience without the ads and better more elaborate answers to the search question.

Why won’t people put ads in AI powered search? even if an AI-powered search tool could be developed open source it would need access to Google or Microsoft indexes of the internet to give good up to date results and they will have an opportunity to insert ads or deny access

I don’t think AI progress is posed to really upset the status quo on this I picture the same companies we’ve had the last 20 years continuing to hold market share on productivity apps and search engines with their own bespoke AI cobbled in and they’ll probably continue showing ads

For a long time google has pulled 100s of billions in revenue from ad-word auctions they could use an identical business model for an AI summarizing search product and even if people complain about that the bulk of consumers will still use a google/Microsoft ai-search product over whatever other options for the same reasons most people don’t use duckduckgo

Re: Google restricts Gemini chatbot election answers

#45
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He might be. Or he might not be. He did not provide any justification or even argument, so his post reads like a simple flamebait. We should keep those on reddit. My 2c.

You can't expect people to back up everything with sources in every comment. If anyone is curious they can just ask for an elaboration, as someone did and they got one. Downvotes are for lazy people afraid of discussion, if it violates any rules there's the flag.

How could it violate the rules? The article is directly about how Google handles voting. Maybe the article is inappropriate.

Re: Google restricts Gemini chatbot election answers

#46
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He might be. Or he might not be. He did not provide any justification or even argument, so his post reads like a simple flamebait. We should keep those on reddit. My 2c.

You can't expect people to back up everything with sources in every comment. If anyone is curious they can just ask for an elaboration, as someone did and they got one. Downvotes are for lazy people afraid of discussion, if it violates any rules there's the flag.

Downvoted are for comments that do not appear to add value. That's not a rigorous definition, but in practice it works reasonably well.

The original comment made a pretty explosive claim without any rationalization. Without some substantion that comment just inflames folks without fostering an interesting discussion. My 2c.

Re: Google restricts Gemini chatbot election answers

#47
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He might be. Or he might not be. He did not provide any justification or even argument, so his post reads like a simple flamebait. We should keep those on reddit. My 2c.

You can't expect people to back up everything with sources in every comment. If anyone is curious they can just ask for an elaboration, as someone did and they got one. Downvotes are for lazy people afraid of discussion, if it violates any rules there's the flag.

It cuts both ways.

You also can't expect people to write long rebuttals to every inane conspiracy theory. That just allows people like the OP to commit what are effectively denial of service attacks on the community, by posting low effort ramblings with the expectation that they deserve a discussion, which the other people would need to put way more effort into than the OP would. Downvotes are for hiding this crap at the bottom of the page, so that it at least doesn't take away the oxygen from discussions grounded in reality.

Re: Google restricts Gemini chatbot election answers

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't expect people to back up everything with sources in every comment. If anyone is curious they can just ask for an elaboration, as someone did and they got one. Downvotes are for lazy people afraid of discussion, if it violates any rules there's the flag.

How could it violate the rules? The article is directly about how Google handles voting. Maybe the article is inappropriate.

I wasn't referring to your comment, I agree with you.

Re: Google restricts Gemini chatbot election answers

#49
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't expect people to back up everything with sources in every comment. If anyone is curious they can just ask for an elaboration, as someone did and they got one. Downvotes are for lazy people afraid of discussion, if it violates any rules there's the flag.

It cuts both ways. You also can't expect people to write long rebuttals to every inane conspiracy theory. That just allows people like the OP to commit what are effectively denial of service attacks on the community, by posting low effort ramblings with the expectation that they deserve a discussion, which the other people would need to put way more effort into than the OP would. Downvotes are for hiding this crap at…

Someones conspiracy theory is someone else's truth. And often they become everyone's truth after some time, see the lab leak theory for a recent example. This is the internet, you don't get to control what others say and still get to speak your own mind. I assume you don't need to back your claims up, am I right? Just dropping the magic words is enough.

I hate that word with a passion, it's used as the one and only argument to shut down discussion. Did you know that Google recently changed their terms to allow to censor results during "special events" or some bullshit like that? Big-tech trying to control the narrative is not a conspiracy theory, it's in the open.

If you don't have the attention span to argue your point or ask for an elaboration just move on. We are in the comment section for the discussion not for validation from the hive mind, right? Am I expecting too much from HN?

Re: Google restricts Gemini chatbot election answers

#50
post #28

> "Elections are due to be held in countries around the world this year including the US, UK and South Africa. [...] However, when a series of follow-up questions about Indian politics was put to Gemini it did supply more detailed responses about the country's major parties" It's only guarding against questions about elections that have the attention of Google workers. I'm a bit surprised they can't do better than th…

I think you can see how ridiculous it is though. It’s like complaining that when you do a search for slave owners of antebellum USA it doesn’t show black slave owners and complaining that’s erasing history. Or, imagine if it only showed black slaveholders when you asked it to generate slaveholders of the south. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_slave_owner... .

Yes, Gemini's images were certainly absurd, no disputing that. So few black men fought for Germany that it probably doesn't warrant representation at all, at least certainly not at the rate Gemini was doing it. Still, it wasn't zero, and it makes me wonder if people in the future will write off historical oddities as AI fabrications.
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