Poetic.
German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews
281–290 of 587 posts
Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nearly the entire American tech industry has been super heavily selected for people who undervalue the legal language with crazy implications buried everywhere. Otherwise most of it would not even exist. Everyone would have continued paying out the nose to the IBM’s of the world year after year (who had unusual willingness to sign short ambiguously worded custom contracts to their own disadvantage, if paid vast amoun…
> Nearly the entire American tech industry has been super heavily selected for people who undervalue the legal language with crazy implications buried everywhere. A lot of people in IT seem to think law and contracts are in a sense mathematical. They aren't; they're more like a high school book report - to be interpreted, as objectively as possible, but definitely also establishing the intent behind the letters. Part…
I sometimes wonder how much blame should be placed at the feet of cartoons which teach viewers that invisibly-small print is legally binding, and that any term is enforceable.
I mean, it's not like most people have any kind of curriculum to fix those early assumptions.
Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews
#283Earlier 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…
> 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 lawsuits. I doubt that will be the case, because of the long tail problem. (same with self driving cars and other ML related problems). In fact, we have counter-examples today. Newspapers (even reputable ones) can't get it right every time, despite the fact that they have…
You don't realize how this works do you? One incredible power (executive) governments have is to let people get away with crimes. People don't realize they have this power, but they control the public prosecutor who can legally choose to do something ... or not.
You will find references to this in stories where the government lets people get away with murder, because of course, that's dramatic for a story.
But when "bigger interests" (ie. the Chancellor's bank accounts) are at play, just to name one example, China gets to distribute lead-painted children's toys in Germany and doesn't have to accept liability. Russia gets to import sanctioned natural gas over illegally constructed pipelines. Etc.
As to how this goes within the EU, in the worst (but common) case, is as follows: the government chooses a company, and refuse to sue them. They have a tendency to choose the worst possible company, like using Palantir for policing Germans [1]. Then you find out most of the Chancellor's grandchildren are working there.
[1] https://www.dw.com/en/german-police-expands-use-of-palantir-...
Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with "the user" argument is the spectrum of users. There are different skills, capabilities, and intelligence. Frequently we wave our hands and say exactly this, critical thinking. But, not everyone is capable of that, nor is everyone capable to the same degree. As a society we decide. Are we embracing all users, are there basic rights and assunptions? Do we only enable some? As a free (as in cost to end…
> Frequently we wave our hands and say exactly this, critical thinking. But, not everyone is capable of that, nor is everyone capable to the same degree. It doesn't help that there have been active efforts for decades to prevent people from learning and developing critical thinking skills. We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar progra…
> It doesn't help that there have been active efforts for decades to prevent people from learning and developing critical thinking skills.
This very much depends on where you live between state (US), and countries. Where I live, it's the complete reverse, critical thinking is baked into the population, into learning, into nigh everything. Our challenge is the complete lack of privacy, sadly.
Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews
#285If I get it correctly I like the ruling. So Google has established a product called Search. For that product rules have been established. Google has monopolized that product. Now Google is replacing that product with a new product. But they keep calling it the same thing. Because they want to keep their monopoly. That is what has been deemed illegal. Gemini is not illegal. Pretending the worst version of Gemini is Se…
It has nothing to do with monopolies. Google was protected from defamation law with search because the page title and snippets were direct quotes from the linked result page. Whereas with AI overviews, the copy is written by a Google-controlled LLM.
It should be noted that defamation law has a very low threshold in Germany, to the point that businesses routinely sue Google Maps users for less-than-5-stars reviews. Google had to change their display of reviews because of this.
Three stars review is taken down for "libel": https://support.google.com/maps/thread/367778263/google-maps...
HNer gets a legal threat after saying that he didn't like a doctor: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44734895
Google maps german policy: https://support.google.com/contributionpolicy/answer/1699727...
Meanwhile, service in Germany is still rather poor (especially if you have children), but at least no one can complain!
Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 t…
"A journalist could not make up a harmful statement about someone and get away by saying the readers should have all read the sources." Journalists do that all the time. We even have a whole collection of words to describe it. Muckraking for instance is probably about 100 years old. Its even in the Google auto-complete in the browser I am posting from.
Notice the “get away with” part. Journalists can be held liable for making things up. And so should Google.
Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews
#287Good. 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…
I think they should just have to properly explain how AI tends to make things up when it doesn’t know, and that it’s good for coming up with ideas or suggesting directions for research but that you shouldn’t rely on it, because currently their advertising makes you think you can rely on it
The “AI can make mistakes” kind of disclaimers they hide in the corner don’t really cut it
Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews
#288Good. This should be taken as the precedent for all economies: If you promulgate demonstrably false information to somebody's detriment then the owner and operator of the machine has to carry the liability. I very much hope we don't see attempts to re-write T&C to avoid this liability.
> I very much hope we don't see attempts to re-write T&C to avoid this liability.
We really should have triple fines or worse for people who try to push the boundaries of the law.
Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
There is a disclaimer, yes, but you have to admit that it's pretty shit, innit? I mean for one, it's about the size of a human hair, and at least when I tried it, the disclaimer came up only when I clicked the "Show More" button. It might admittedly show up earlier if the response is shorter, admittedly I don't know. Also personally I'm a bit uneasy with the idea that just with a simple disclaimer they could avoid an…
> As for not wanting to force companies to release only "safe-for-children products", I do actually agree
That would be nice, but as every effort to restrict kids from using software which are not safe-for-children keeps getting condemned for being invasive surveilence, and every effort to stop kids getting the hardware instead gets condemned because of how much of society is now built on assumption everyone has a phone…
Something has to give.
Dunno what, but something.
Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews
#290If companies can be held liable (in spite of very visible disclaimers, ToS, and usage policies) for the output of non-deterministic software, isn't this just a soft ban on the deployment of non-deterministic software?
If you read those AI overview, it is not non-deterministic, it is conclusions, claims, statements.