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German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews

the-decoder.com

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Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews

#131

Post by wongarsu »

why_at wrote: post #58

I agree with the ruling, but this makes me wonder if it will be possible to have any AI agent at all if it's consistently applied. After all, if I can get ChatGPT or Claude to say something false that should count too, right?

If it's consistently applied, any AI agent provider has to comply with cease and desist letters that tell the company to make specific false claims

The arguments of the ruling should generally apply even when the AI agent makes false statements it wasn't notified about. But in that case the defendant might have a stronger claim about not being able to reasonably ensure the correctness of all statements, and having taken reasonable measures to ensure correctness. Google couldn't really claim any of that after ignoring cease and desist letters about the false claims

Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews

#132

Post by lynx97 »

heathrow83829 wrote: post #63
Swizec wrote: post #18

Good. The true mark of AGI is when a company accepts liability and doesn’t bury “for entertainment purposes only” deep in their TOS. Same as it works with employees. Same for self-driving. Your car is not self-driving until it accepts liability and you count as just a passenger. But watch as Germany soon loses AI Google results.

at the scale that google is at, it doesn't make an ounce of sense to hold a company liable for a potential mistruth. what if there's a 1/1000 chance of some error, then the company could be sued millions of times per day. down vote all you want, but I firmly believe this is an example where the user needs to use some judgement on the information they receive and have some critical thinking skills. google would be rig…

> google would be right to remove all AI results from germany.

As others already said, that would be a great outcome, and german citizens would benefit.

It is a search engine. It used to have decent excerpts. It doesn't need hallucinated generative AI summaries. I am about to click the link anyway.

Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews

#133

Post by CamperBob2 »

tadfisher wrote: post #88
CamperBob2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In sane countries, it's enough for them to post a disclaimer ("This is AI. AI can make mistakes. Check all results.") Which is what they do. Overregulation, at best, is a good way to guarantee that your country won't have access to interesting and useful features and technologies. At worst, it's a good way to guarantee that the twenty-first century will belong to the US, if not to China.

Okay then, CamperBob2 is a scammer. Many users report this person has stolen money. (+3 sources) I can make mistakes. It's on you to fact-check my claims. Do you think these are harmless statements? Does the disclaimer suffice? If I was Google's AI Overview, do you think 100% of people will check those sources? There is nuance here, and it's not going away because AI and innovation.

Do you think these are harmless statements?

Yes, I do. An assertion made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, whether it comes from Google or from you.

If you demand perfection, you will receive nothing. Why is that so hard for people to understand? The world simply cannot work the way you say it should.

Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews

#134

Post by dools »

keyle wrote: post #14

I'm surprised this is even a thing. After all, you go to Google not for the truth, but to search Google. Since when is truthiness the "guarantee of service"? You're not even paying for a google service, search is free... You might be the product, and your data, but you didn't directly pay for a service and they didn't sell you a fake service. I'm not taking Google's side, this isn't about whether it's right or wrong…

The question is whether Google is publishing false claims or relaying other people’s false claims. The court found it to be the former which makes sense to me.

Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews

#135

Post by oaiey »

SllX wrote: post #93
em-bee wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the user needs to use some judgement on the information they receive and have some critical thinking skills how? errors can be so subtle that it is not possible to recognize them unless you spend an hour researching every fact presented. at that point, what's the benefit of AI? nobody is going to do that. google would be right to remove all AI results from germany i'd consider that a win.

By checking the citations rather than taking what’s generated at face value. If it’s important, check it. If it’s not important, then it is pretty much just entertainment. LLMs can be very useful in a general web search and save some time, but if you don’t put those literacy & critical thinking skills to the test and actually confirm anything, then you might as well not even have bothered with the search at all unles…

But you are not doing a 2 hour rabbit hole search when you stand in front of a T-shirt and check whether it is fair traded or all-american produced.

Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews

#136

Post by michaellee8 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #42
Swizec wrote: post #18

Good. The true mark of AGI is when a company accepts liability and doesn’t bury “for entertainment purposes only” deep in their TOS. Same as it works with employees. Same for self-driving. Your car is not self-driving until it accepts liability and you count as just a passenger. But watch as Germany soon loses AI Google results.

> Same for self-driving. Your car is not self-driving until it accepts liability and you count as just a passenger Mercedes-Benz does this in limited cases. Waymo does it generally. (In China, Level 4 and 5 transfers risk to the manufacturer. This is the correct way to do it.)

That's not exactly the case in China, the current state of FSD is still pretty dumb, unless you consider transferring control back to the user at the very last minute before it crashes a proper way to handle risks.

Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews

#137

Post by mmmpetrichor »

This makes sense to me. AI is amazing tech, but it's being oversold to naive public, either on the back of hype, or cynically, knowing they can do it with inpunity, (I'm not sure which). HN users have a way better than average grasp of what AI is and we can be skeptical of results, the general public has no clue.

Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews

#138

Post by oaiey »

8note wrote: post #117
thfuran wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re seriously arguing that Google’s libel shouldn’t count as libel because they showed it to too many people? It’s absolutely insane to suggest that a company should be immune from liability for its actions if it operates on such scale that those actions harm millions of people every day on the basis that dealing with that many lawsuits would be too inconvenient.

its not inaccurate though. consider Purdue pharma - the Sacklers got off with all their wealth intact because they were too big to sue and properly collect money for their victims.

But we agree that this was also wrong, right?

Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews

#139

Post by ssttoo »

NegativeK wrote: post #124
clear-octopus wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not very typical in software. Especially software you don’t pay for (with money)

That's apparently already changing in the EU, where software vulnerabilities mean the company is liable for damages. The only way out is to straight up not make any money (not just from direct sales) from the software.

Is the burden of proof on me, the developer? Do I need to prove in perpetuity that I didn’t get a job or a free flight to talk at a conference because of my free software? (Which had a flaw that hurt someone)

Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews

#140

Post by keithnz »

The irony of an article that makes a false claim about what Google was found liable for.... and that very few are fact checking it :)

The law they broke was a law protecting personal and business reputation against false statements of fact. Essentially no one can say I might be wrong, check yourself, but X is Y if that claim is essentially defamatory.

This is pretty good, I hope googles approach is to make sure they don't end up making statements of fact like they did and use more appropriate wording like according to X.... with direct disclaimer that they can't verify it. Even better that they look court documents to find any legal ruling and point people to that too.

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