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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

#171

Post by Gigachad »

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?

I think it should be relatively possible for an LLM to know when it's talking about something in the risk zone of libel. And when it identifies such a case it links direct to source material rather than trying to fabricate an answer itself. This is much how a journalist works, refusing to make claims that aren't provable.

Someone needs to hold the liability at the end of the day. People are experiencing real harm from false claims LLMs are spitting out.

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

#172

Post by jolmg »

hanwenn wrote: post #147

Curiously, if you look for "geramond verlag betrugsmasche", or "verlagshaus24 betrugsmasche", it will now tell you that there are no indications it is a scam, but "significant organizational problems and extremely bad customer support lead to (list of bad experiences)". Also, each purported fact now has a direct link to the source of the fact, that is more clearly visible than the previous chain icon.

Do the links actually support the statements? When I've followed such links, it's generally been a roll of the dice on whether they do support the AI's statements.

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

#173

Post by globular-toast »

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…

I'm seeing this sentiment more and more these days and it's worrying. Essentially people are starting to believe massive corporations should be able to get away with more than individuals. This is completely backwards considering the enormous impact a corporation can have, but that's what people are starting to think. I've heard people argue that corporations should be able to straight up lie and deceive to protect themselves, which is something you would not accept from a person.

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

#174

Post by bergen »

gblargg wrote: post #145
chias wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a win win to me

To remove the choice from responsible people who can understand that LLM answers are not to be trusted with anything important?

So we deploy a technology no one should trust to the general public, for what exact reason?

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

#175

Post by bergen »

gblargg wrote: post #167
sham1 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If our standard for laws would be that "well no reasonable person would do this/believe this" then nothing would be illegal, there'd be no need to label any product as potentiality harmful, etc. Do you really want to go there? That everything in the world would have a literal "caveat emptor" attached to it?

I thought Google labeled its AI summary with a disclaimer already. I don't want companies to be forced to only offer safe-for-children services.

And the european consumer doesn't want harmful products to be beta tested on the public.

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

#176

Post by f33d5173 »

globular-toast wrote: post #173
heathrow83829 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm seeing this sentiment more and more these days and it's worrying. Essentially people are starting to believe massive corporations should be able to get away with more than individuals. This is completely backwards considering the enormous impact a corporation can have, but that's what people are starting to think. I've heard people argue that corporations should be able to straight up lie and deceive to protect t…

Corporations are you. Corporations provide a service to individuals, often in exchange for money. Restricting corporations from doing something is the same as restricting people from receiving that as a service.

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

#177

Post by jameshart »

bloppe wrote: post #170
andrewmutz wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a completely reasonable position that companies making self-driving cars and question/answer systems are legally liable for any errors. But if you hold that position, you also have to be fine with companies not offering products and services in your country. AI systems will eventually be good enough (in 10-20 years) for companies to be able to deploy such systems with sufficient accuracy to afford the la…

Most of the time, human beings driving cars with their own hands and eyeballs are not "liable" for their errors (unless they can be proven negligent or drunk), unless you count their insurance going up. Most car accidents do not end with anybody getting arrested, or sued, or anything like that. Insurance pays out, premiums go up, case closed. If Waymo can be proven negligent or something, then sure, bleed em dry. But…

An at-fault driver’s insurance pays out because they are liable. Your insurance covers your liability. That’s why you need insurance.

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

#178

Post by snailmailman »

Gigachad wrote: post #168
gmerc wrote: post #99

Choosing the answer for you rather than leaving it to the user is a tremendous power and the court correctly diagnoses it comes with responsibly to minimize harm to others in society.

I've also observed that the AI summary on the google search page is incredibly stupid compared to the results in the actual Gemini. The Google search AI is like the dumbest lightest model simply rewording the search results. It will take a random reddit comment, strip it from it's context and present it as absolute fact.

I’ve seen it directly contradict the citation so many times that i disregard the text and just click the citation or scroll past every single time. Just today i caught it making up the date for an event, and the citation had accurate information when clicked through.

It’s super easy to catch on dates and numbers, but it gets other details wrong all the time too. But so many people won’t be double checking the results.

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

#179

Post by autoexec »

scottyah wrote: post #149
Swizec wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Until that time, such countries would just not have access to systems before they were bulletproof. Correct, most jurisdictions do not allow businesses which cannot be held liable for their actions. This is pretty core to a modern society. Imagine if a company selling Knicks tickets was not expected to then actually provide said tickets and there was simply nothing you could do about it. Oopsies our sales page is f…

Almost all jurisdictions allow businesses which cannot be held liable for all their actions. Imagine losing you house because someone decided to smother themselves in your infused cooking oil and light themselves on fire. Businesses are made to make it easier to share profits and responsibilities when trying to fulfill users wants. Laws are made to offer protections for consumers (because nobody has time for common s…

> Almost all jurisdictions allow businesses which cannot be held liable for all their actions. Imagine losing you house because someone decided to smother themselves in your infused cooking oil and light themselves on fire.

How would that be the company's action? The only way the business might be liable is if they advertised their product as safe to use when lighting yourself on fire or if there was already some law that required them to warn customers not to light themselves on fire while using the product and they ignored that law.

In this case, it's not about what somebody else did. It's what Google did. There were already laws against lying about companies by saying they did illegal things when they didn't, google broke the law, so that's what google got in trouble for.

Consumer protection laws aren't there to replace common sense, they're there to prevent things like outright fraud and poisonings/murder.

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

#180

Post by SllX »

Gigachad wrote: post #165
SllX wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If google didn't intend it's answers to be taken at face value it would just present the citations in a list of links rather than generating an answer. Obviously the marketing point of the AI tools is it just gives you an answer straight up so you don't have to bother reading normal sources.

The AI summary is still useful for narrowing down the results, even if you fully check the citations.

> Obviously the marketing point of the AI tools is it just gives you an answer straight up so you don't have to bother reading normal sources.

To lazy people yes. That would be a marketing point. It’s not that though, so you use it to save time, but you don’t get to skip the verification step.

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