Google scrambles to manually remove weird AI answers in search • Hacker News Board

Re: Google scrambles to manually remove weird AI answers in search

#111

Post by elwell » Sat, May 25, 2024, 5:30 PM UTC

greg_V wrote: post #99

dgellow wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a trick to sound sophisticated. Hallucinations are more like a subcategory of bugs. The system is technically correctly generating, structuring, and presenting false information as fact.

Technically everything an LLM does is hallucination that happens to be on a scale between correct and non-correct. But only humans with knowledge can tell the difference, math alone can't. It's not even a bug: it's the defining feature of the technology!

> But only humans with knowledge can tell the difference

Who says the humans (all of them) aren't hallucinating too?

Re: Google scrambles to manually remove weird AI answers in search

#112

Post by seydor » Sat, May 25, 2024, 5:31 PM UTC

tymscar wrote: post #109

seydor wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really that bad. I use gemini often and it's great. I prefer their UI

What do you like more about their ui?

faster, it has options like 'modify'. I also feel it follows my commands better, esp. when i ask to rephrase

Re: Google scrambles to manually remove weird AI answers in search

#113

Post by tymscar » Sat, May 25, 2024, 5:31 PM UTC

rvnx wrote: post #26

rchaud wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...for our shareholders

I hope AI will bring back the "Sort by date" button on Google Reviews, and add somewhere a Google Maps link. Who knows, maybe AI can bring back exact keyword matches, or correct basic math calculations on Google Search too.

Maybe AI could bring back the pre gen AI tech scene

Re: Google scrambles to manually remove weird AI answers in search

#114

Post by rm_-rf_slash » Sat, May 25, 2024, 5:33 PM UTC

greg_V wrote: post #95

PreInternet01 wrote: post #63

It's debatable whether Google has truly lost the plot because of the "AI wars", but the moment the statement "Bing returns more sensible results than you" becomes verifiably true, it's... cause for concern? The approach that Google appears to have taken, which is to assume that the top-ranked part of its current search index is a sensible knowledge base, may have been true some years ago, but definitely isn't now: fo…

Oh it gets even better. The public has been hearing about AI this and AI that for over a year, but the existing use cases and deployment was confined to some super special niches like writing or the creative industries and programming. This is the first nation-scale deployment of the technology, running on Google's biggest and most profitable market in one of the most widely used internet services, and it's a shitsho…

Plenty of people have been using ChatGPT for daily tasks for almost two years now. GPT-4 isn’t perfect but is otherwise really really good, and deftly handling use cases in my industry that would be impossible without it or however many billion dollars it would take to make GPT-4.

From the black Nazis to the suggestion to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge b/c depression, it’s pretty clear that this fiasco isn’t an LLM problem, it’s a Google problem.

Re: Google scrambles to manually remove weird AI answers in search

#115

Post by lukev » Sat, May 25, 2024, 5:34 PM UTC

jononor wrote: post #107

lukev wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like there's some semantic slippage around the meaning of the word "accuracy" here. I grant you, my print Encyclopedia Britannica is not 100% accurate. But the difference between it and a LLM is not just a matter of degree: there's a "chain of custody" to information that just isn't there with a LLM. Philosophers have a working definition of knowledge as being (at least†) "justified true belief." Even if a LLM…

Encyclopedia Britannica is also wrong in a reproducible and fixable way. And the input queries a finite set. It's output does not change due to random or arbitrary things. It is actually possible to verify. LLMs so far seem to be entirely unverifiable.

They don’t just seem it. They are by design.

We talk about models “hallucinating” but that’s us bringing an external value judgement after the fact.

The actual process of token generation works precisely the same. It’d be more accurate to say that models always hallucinate.

Re: Google scrambles to manually remove weird AI answers in search

#116

Post by itronitron » Sat, May 25, 2024, 5:35 PM UTC

greg_V wrote: post #95

PreInternet01 wrote: post #63

It's debatable whether Google has truly lost the plot because of the "AI wars", but the moment the statement "Bing returns more sensible results than you" becomes verifiably true, it's... cause for concern? The approach that Google appears to have taken, which is to assume that the top-ranked part of its current search index is a sensible knowledge base, may have been true some years ago, but definitely isn't now: fo…

Oh it gets even better. The public has been hearing about AI this and AI that for over a year, but the existing use cases and deployment was confined to some super special niches like writing or the creative industries and programming. This is the first nation-scale deployment of the technology, running on Google's biggest and most profitable market in one of the most widely used internet services, and it's a shitsho…

It's especially embarrassing for Google considering they have indexed virtually all of the world's information for the last 25 years.

Re: Google scrambles to manually remove weird AI answers in search

#117

Post by itronitron » Sat, May 25, 2024, 5:37 PM UTC

bithive123 wrote: post #62

Why do people act like LLMs only hallucinate some of the time?

it's only AI if you believe it

Re: Google scrambles to manually remove weird AI answers in search

#118

Post by ben_jones » Sat, May 25, 2024, 5:38 PM UTC

nialv7 wrote: post #106

I am not surprised that AI results are bad. I know they are bad. But that doesn't concern me because I expect it to get better. What concerns me is that Google would push this trash to the front page. What are they even thinking? Who gave go ahead on this?

Institutional investors panic > board panics > executives panic > evps panic and dictates incentives to ship AI > directors, ems, and below, who actually know how shit works, take a submissive role because they have mortgages in Mountain View to pay.

That’s how it happens.

Re: Google scrambles to manually remove weird AI answers in search

#119

Post by oldgradstudent » Sat, May 25, 2024, 5:38 PM UTC

dgellow wrote: post #74

krapp wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't an idea, though. It was a joke someone made on Reddit. If an AI can't tell the difference, it shouldn't be responsible for posting answers as authoritative.

Insane people at Google thought it would be a good idea to let Reddit of all places drive their AI search responses

Reddit is a magnificent source of useful knowledge.

r/AskHistorians r/bikewrench

To name just two. There is nothing even remotely comparable.

But you need to be able to detect sarcasm and irony.

Re: Google scrambles to manually remove weird AI answers in search

#120

Post by candiddevmike » Sat, May 25, 2024, 5:38 PM UTC

dgellow wrote: post #74

krapp wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't an idea, though. It was a joke someone made on Reddit. If an AI can't tell the difference, it shouldn't be responsible for posting answers as authoritative.

Insane people at Google thought it would be a good idea to let Reddit of all places drive their AI search responses

I wonder what the impact all of those erase tools are having on LLM training. The ones that replaced all of these highly upvoted comments with nonsense.