Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews

the-decoder.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 587 posts

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

#181

Post by zerobees »

csomar wrote: post #159
keithnz wrote: post #140

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…

How much does Germany follow case law? If this could set a precedent, it's worth noting that anyone can generate these AI overview responses and they're wrong like 9 times out of 10 only.

In common with most of Europe, German legal system is not based on case law. It's more firmly rooted in formal laws and regulations and judges are not required to follow precedent.

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

#182

Post by clort »

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…

If you re-read the article, you might see that it mentions that the citations do not necessarily cover the AI summary. The linked pages do not make the claims that the AI summary makes. That is the context of the ruling. Google made up the claims, and provided false citations. They are not, in fact, providing a summary, but a whole new narrative. Therefore they own it.

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

#183

Post by SllX »

broken-kebab wrote: post #161
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…

Important for whom exactly? If it's you who are called convicted pedo by Google AI summary, it's you who has vital interest in additional research but not me who reads it. There's intentions mismatch. Which probably would destroy your life, and you won't call it "entertainment" then, I think.

Strawmen are for scaring off the crows, not discussion fodder. Take it out to the farm where it belongs.

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

#184

Post by Gigachad »

SllX wrote: post #180
Gigachad wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google should not be publishing a statement that they haven't verified. This is different to listing search results links, they are the ones publishing the content here.

A journalist could not make up a harmful statement about someone and get away by saying the readers should have all read the sources. AI companies want to take all the benefits and profits, while holding none of the liability and responsibility for the harms they are causing.

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

#186

Post by autoexec »

andrewmutz wrote: post #101
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.

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…

> But if you hold that position, you also have to be fine with companies not offering products and services in your country.

What sounds like a win to me. I certainly hope my country makes it dangerous for companies to break the law and/or harm the public with shitty products that aren't ready to be released legally/safely.

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

#187

Post by SllX »

oaiey wrote: post #135
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…

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.

If those are things you legitimately care about before you spend one penny on a T-Shirt, then you are. Or you did your research before hand. Or you’re just not buying the T-Shirt.

Or you don’t care about those things at all, and you will buy the T-Shirt that’s in front of you right now rather than wait later and buy one that better reflects your supposed values when you’ve done an appropriate amount of research. Using AI may even reduce the amount of time you spend on that part.

Your T-Shirt buying patterns & values are not my concern though.

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

#188

Post by autoexec »

bergen wrote: post #174
gblargg wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

So a very small number of people can get very rich off of the suffering of a massive number of other people I guess

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

#189

Post by heisenbit »

necovek wrote: post #84
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?

Due to costs of running frontier models on every search request, Google simply does not: the failure rate is so high when you are just expecting an objective output. Imagine a search for your name resulted in an AI summary saying you are involved with child-trafficking because low capability model linked your first name and perhaps a couple articles on supporting children non-profits to it — and then offering that in…

And the more you protest the more your name will be associated with child trafficking. Streisand effect multiplied by LLMs being not good in dealing with negative information.

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

#190

Post by kuerbel »

zerobees wrote: post #181
csomar wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much does Germany follow case law? If this could set a precedent, it's worth noting that anyone can generate these AI overview responses and they're wrong like 9 times out of 10 only.

In common with most of Europe, German legal system is not based on case law. It's more firmly rooted in formal laws and regulations and judges are not required to follow precedent.

They don't have to follow it but leading decisions (Grundsatzentscheidungen) still influence how a lower court judge might interpret the same law. Based on providing legal certainty instead of stare decisis though. It's not a must, more of an... aid
Post reply on HN