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Google's AI-generated search results keep citing The Onion

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Re: Google's AI-generated search results keep citing The Onion

#32
post #6

If you ask it how many Muslim presidents the US has had, it will confidently tell you that Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim. I'm beginning to think that treating statistically common sequences of words on the whole internet as a source of truth may not actually be a very good idea. edit: screenshots for posterity https://x.com/TVietor08/status/1793768913245020502

[flagged]

> Does anyone else find it incredible

Not even a little.

Re: Google's AI-generated search results keep citing The Onion

#33
post #19

Is Google losing significant web traffic to ChatGPT and others? I don't understand why else they'd test a product like this so widely.

If they had any sense at all (questionable) they would be absolutely pants-shittingly terrified that their prized product has been completely undercut by an upstart in a matter of months, and that Microsoft has a deep partnership with that competitor. I'd think even the leadership at Google can figure out that ChatGPT eats their lunch in terms of cutting through the SEO bullshit and giving actual information.

If they were even approaching baseline-clever, they'd realize that they've caused people to be so pissed at the declining quality of their search for years and that they'll happily jump ship.

Re: Google's AI-generated search results keep citing The Onion

#36
post #13
post #6

If you ask it how many Muslim presidents the US has had, it will confidently tell you that Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim. I'm beginning to think that treating statistically common sequences of words on the whole internet as a source of truth may not actually be a very good idea. edit: screenshots for posterity https://x.com/TVietor08/status/1793768913245020502

Uhh, not quite true. I just asked it, and it said... > The United States has not had any presidents who have publicly identified as Muslim. The vast majority of presidents have been Christian, with most belonging to Protestant denominations. The Constitution prohibits any religious test for holding office, so a Muslim (or person of any faith) can certainly become president in the future.

I'm curious what you think about the post that you replied to.

Are you assuming that the author is lying? Have you weighed the likelihood of that against the likelihood that the author actually saw what they said, and that the reason you don't see the same might be because Google fixed it in the meantime, or that it only happens when phrased a different exact way, or because the responses may be indeterministic even with the exact same query in the first place?

Re: Google's AI-generated search results keep citing The Onion

#37
post #6

If you ask it how many Muslim presidents the US has had, it will confidently tell you that Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim. I'm beginning to think that treating statistically common sequences of words on the whole internet as a source of truth may not actually be a very good idea. edit: screenshots for posterity https://x.com/TVietor08/status/1793768913245020502

[flagged]

I think it's just more a testament to how strong a candidate Obama the person was, as well as a good indicator of the value in looking to those who overcome oppositional factors for merits over those who had a paved path before them.

Re: Google's AI-generated search results keep citing The Onion

#39

Is there a way to turn the ai search result off in Google? It is not helpful.

At least it is marked (for now) as AI-generated. Google is and always has been a black-box. Surely only a matter of time before "AI" on "traditional" (probably using "AI" too?) are mixed and merged, etc.

Re: Google's AI-generated search results keep citing The Onion

#40
post #19

Is Google losing significant web traffic to ChatGPT and others? I don't understand why else they'd test a product like this so widely.

If they had any sense at all (questionable) they would be absolutely pants-shittingly terrified that their prized product has been completely undercut by an upstart in a matter of months, and that Microsoft has a deep partnership with that competitor. I'd think even the leadership at Google can figure out that ChatGPT eats their lunch in terms of cutting through the SEO bullshit and giving actual information. If they…

Google was always better than Yahoo/Bing at dealing with webspam (whether Google can continue to beat current webspam is a different debate). Bing is happily traning on the things they don't know are bad results. Garbage in garbage out.

The only competition Google needs to worry about is Google's leadership. Once Cloud brought in TK and they started actively recruiting from Microsoft and Oracle it was like an infection of stupid they haven't been able to fight.

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