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

Google turned me into a serial killer

hristo-georgiev.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 313 posts

Re: Google turned me into a serial killer

#141

Post by neartheplain »

judge2020 wrote: post #138
_etyf wrote: post #132

Google's Knowledge Graph info boxes are automatically-generated and littered with errors. I've been burned twice on operating hours, once for my local bank and once for a convenience store, driving over each time only to find the place closed. In both cases, the correct hours were posted on the business's website. I've also seen bad KG results for medical conditions, listing the wrong symptoms or describing easily-tr…

> . In both cases, the correct hours were posted on the business's website Google has started favoring info inputted into the Google My Business listing (the same one that dictates what appears in Google Maps for claimed businesses), so if the owners are updating their website but not updating that (or checking their email for emails from google that say '[business], are you open on 4th of July?') it'll show incorrec…

Even if 90% of businesses play along (doing Google's data entry work for them), the 10% chance of my wasting half an hour makes it worth ignoring the info box and double-checking each time.

Re: Google turned me into a serial killer

#142

Post by gumby »

If I knew the author this would be cool: AFAIK I've never met a serial killer!

Of course were I him it might be pretty bad. Serial killer is serious enough that people might consider there to have been a bug (as there was). But something less outlandish, like a misattributed fraud arrest, could have some pretty bad consequences.

Re: Google turned me into a serial killer

#143

Post by martyvis »

runawaybottle wrote: post #107
hpkuarg wrote: post #2

I'm glad this guy has a sense of humor about this, but I really hope that Google does right by him and that he doesn't get stuck in their Byzantine customer service process.

Lol what? They have customer service process? News to me, how to reach them?

I found a Google One subscription is helpful for that. It's only a few dollars a month, which in fact I fund for free using Google Rewards dollars. You then get to speak to a real live person that actually respond properly, even with handwritten emails.

Re: Google turned me into a serial killer

#144

Post by freedomben »

_etyf wrote: post #132

Google's Knowledge Graph info boxes are automatically-generated and littered with errors. I've been burned twice on operating hours, once for my local bank and once for a convenience store, driving over each time only to find the place closed. In both cases, the correct hours were posted on the business's website. I've also seen bad KG results for medical conditions, listing the wrong symptoms or describing easily-tr…

As far as I can tell the KG is also the source for Google Home when it answers questions. That's even more rough since it sounds authoritative and there are no visual cues to imply that it may be inferred.

Re: Google turned me into a serial killer

#145

Post by da_chicken »

judge2020 wrote: post #138
_etyf wrote: post #132

Google's Knowledge Graph info boxes are automatically-generated and littered with errors. I've been burned twice on operating hours, once for my local bank and once for a convenience store, driving over each time only to find the place closed. In both cases, the correct hours were posted on the business's website. I've also seen bad KG results for medical conditions, listing the wrong symptoms or describing easily-tr…

> . In both cases, the correct hours were posted on the business's website Google has started favoring info inputted into the Google My Business listing (the same one that dictates what appears in Google Maps for claimed businesses), so if the owners are updating their website but not updating that (or checking their email for emails from google that say '[business], are you open on 4th of July?') it'll show incorrec…

That's still Google's fault. If their service is providing out-of-date information, it's their fault. Making it sound like the business's fault for not using Google's other service is just reinforcing the idea that Google's information is the only information that's real.

This is the problem with the web search and scaping provider also trying to be a thousand other services at the same time. It's a constant conflict of interest.

Re: Google turned me into a serial killer

#146

Post by lostlogin »

Arnavion wrote: post #57
jetrink wrote: post #42

The info boxes sometimes contain surprising errors. I recently searched for Picasa and was informed that it was invented by Pablo Picasso in 2002! Google 'knows' Picasso died in the 1970s and it 'knows' he released a popular software program in 2002. That's an obvious contradiction requiring the simplest of rules to detect, but the system is just a dumb text extractor. (Interestingly, Google assistant gave the correc…

A few days ago, a person in an IRC channel I'm in was convinced AMD GPUs have CUDA cores, because they put "amd 5500rx cuda cores" into Google, saw the infobox entry that said "How many CUDA cores does a Rx 5700 have? 2,560 CUDA cores" and stubbornly refused to accept Google could be wrong. Amusingly that same infobox then has a table that states "2,560 stream processors" in the "Radeon RX 5700 XT" column. So one hal…

It starts to get pretty circular when you consider that GPUs can be used for ML.

Re: Google turned me into a serial killer

#147

Post by CountDrewku »

bartread wrote: post #67
walrus01 wrote: post #65

If you want to see a terrible example of Google automatically finding a "best" search result for the #1 entry of something, google the following: "how many raccoons can fit"

For anyone who's curious but not enough to actually run the search themselves, the top results (using the string without quotes) all relate to how many raccoons can fit into a human anus. No, I am not joking, and this is the result of 20+ years of web search development and decades of cutting edge AI research, right here. Honestly, it pisses me off how bad Google's search is these days. It has close to zero clue abou…

>all relate to how many raccoons can fit into a human anus.

Presumptuous of you to assume that's not exactly what I want to see when I search for that specific phrase.

Re: Google turned me into a serial killer

#148

Post by slipframe »

_etyf wrote: post #132

Google's Knowledge Graph info boxes are automatically-generated and littered with errors. I've been burned twice on operating hours, once for my local bank and once for a convenience store, driving over each time only to find the place closed. In both cases, the correct hours were posted on the business's website. I've also seen bad KG results for medical conditions, listing the wrong symptoms or describing easily-tr…

Technology Connections had a great observation about this in his video about touch lamps: the problem with Google's knowledge graph is that it takes everything it reads on the internet at face value.

https://youtu.be/TbHBHhZOglw?t=58 (0:58 through 4:20)

Re: Google turned me into a serial killer

#149

Post by philwelch »

_etyf wrote: post #132

Google's Knowledge Graph info boxes are automatically-generated and littered with errors. I've been burned twice on operating hours, once for my local bank and once for a convenience store, driving over each time only to find the place closed. In both cases, the correct hours were posted on the business's website. I've also seen bad KG results for medical conditions, listing the wrong symptoms or describing easily-tr…

If Google isn’t legally liable for this under defamation statutes, maybe they should be.
Post reply on HN