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Google's Bard shows incorrect information in its launch ad

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Re: Google's Bard shows incorrect information in its launch ad

#141

Post by pphysch »

amatecha wrote: post #136
pphysch wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're slow-motion singing on to a future with a fundamental shift to receiving information in a completely opaque manner. There's nothing fundamentally new about this. The average person is blissfully unaware of the conversations being had between powerful individuals, PR experts, producers, and so on about how said person should be manipulated.

I pretty much have this ever-present aura of "citation needed" floating around in my head when I listen to people speak. Any kind of news/press thing, politician speaking (lol), or just anyone trying to claim/assert anything -- I can feel nothing but "citation needed" until they provide some kind of supporting evidence. I feel like people expend a shocking amount of energy proclaiming things they literally do not kno…

Even a citation is insufficient nowadays. They will cite a "reputable" source like NYT, which in turn cites "an anonymous intelligence official", and so on. Unverifiable.

Misinformation and manufactured narratives are omnipresent and all we can do is consume as diverse a media diet as possible and develop a good nose for bullsh*t.

Re: Google's Bard shows incorrect information in its launch ad

#142

Post by kodah »

partiallypro wrote: post #18

I think there is a genuine concern that Google could overreact and launch a half-baked product in pure panic of being left behind or one upped by Microsoft. There is also a fear, I think, that the ChatGPT integration with Bing/Edge could not go all that smoothly. I think it could be game changing in many ways, but I can also see both of these falling apart. Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri were thought to be g…

Neeva has an AI for search. It works sufficiently well enough on some searches that it's all I'll read. Others I can tell it's missing things.

Re: Google's Bard shows incorrect information in its launch ad

#143

Post by sebzim4500 »

partiallypro wrote: post #77
criddell wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the Echo devices were wildly profitable, earning $100+ billion per year, then I would say Alexa isn't losing money for Amazon.

Siri is not why people are buying iPhones, in fact well over 50% of users say they never or rarely use it. So, your point doesn't really hold up. Siri still loses money, just like Google Assistant and Alexa. The apps you listed to compare with OS bundles have not even close to the same overhead as a digital assistant and can be handled with relatively small programming teams.

>Siri is not why people are buying iPhones, in fact well over 50% of users say they never or rarely use it

So? A decent portion of users do use it, and for some of them its a vital feature.

I would be shocked if removing siri would save Apple more money than the lost revenue of fewer iphone sales.

Re: Google's Bard shows incorrect information in its launch ad

#144

Post by mort96 »

acdha wrote: post #30
mort96 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We fact check search engine results all the time. But most of the time, such fact checking is in the form of looking at a result, considering whether it seems like a credible source, seeing if multiple credible-seeming results have the same answer, etc. Getting a completely untrustworthy, unsourced response seems worse than useless. Google has been going this way for a while, with its instant answers or whatever, but…

Instant answers seem like a cautionary example since Google has gotten a fair amount of flack over the cases where it inaccurately summarized content. I think these services are going to be very interesting to study whether the average person thinks they're more authoritative because they're branded by a huge corporation and whether that'll decline over time as people realize the limitations.

It's weird. I've personally experienced cases where the highlighted instant answer is obviously incorrect and the full context actually claims the opposite of what the excerpt claims, and those kinds of examples circulate around the web pretty frequently, and everyone who has ever tried to ask ChatGPT or similar systems tricky questions should know how AIs just invent stuff when they don't know the real answers.

So why do companies like Microsoft and Google push in this direction? Why are they making the results more and more opaque? You'd hope that they would care enough to be good stewards of the power granted to them through their information monopoly, but barring that, you'd hope that they'd recognize that people want results they can verify, not just random answers.

Or maybe they're hoping that people don't care about verifying results, hoping that people just want an answer that's not necessarily the right answer? It seems like a dangerous gamble.

Re: Google's Bard shows incorrect information in its launch ad

#145

Post by sebzim4500 »

vineyardmike wrote: post #139
criddell wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lose these companies money How can you say Siri loses Apple money? Does GarageBand lose them money? Photo Booth? Contacts?

Because they pay for servers and engineers for a product that they don’t charge for. It also doesn’t help sell phones when only 15% of users use it at least daily: https://www.statista.com/statistics/696740/united-states-vir...

I find it incredibly hard to believe that a feature that 15% of users are using every day is not helping to sell phones.

Re: Google's Bard shows incorrect information in its launch ad

#146

Post by noonesays »

shkkmo wrote: post #113
denlekke wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm not a grammar expert but i think as a layperson there is a little bit of ambiguity in how a reader could interpret Bard's response. If i were writing i would probably specify "first ever picture". I think a lot of times words like "the first" are relative and context specific which the Bard answer lacks.

There is no ambiguity. We don't call Neil Armstrong "the first ever man on the moon". "The first" has a clear meaning and making any qualification of that implicit is either deceptive or bad writing.

> We don't call Neil Armstrong "the first ever man on the moon".

https://www.scout75.com/apollo-11.html#/

> On July 20, 1969 America landed the first ever man on the moon in Neil Armstrong.

Re: Google's Bard shows incorrect information in its launch ad

#147

Post by fortran77 »

nick__m wrote: post #126
Consultant32452 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'll have to invent a new form of busy work to justify head count.

Actually reading printed copies of those documents would be the penultimate busy works, so much that it would quickly become uberablingly alienating!

And what would be the ultimate busy works?

Re: Google's Bard shows incorrect information in its launch ad

#148

Post by fleddr »

jonas21 wrote: post #132
ren_engineer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I do think there is unique break here though, because I feel that SEO has so thoroughly ruined search in many regards that this -could- be the right moment for this. the problem here is monetization, will search even be profitable if LLMs are used for most queries? It might become a Uber/Lyft or food delivery situation where these companies aren't really able to profitably deliver the service. I don't see many peopl…

Why would LLMs be less monetizable than search? People are still going to want to buy goods and services, and being the place they go to find out about those goods and services will be just as valuable as it is today. Perhaps even more so, since LLMs are able to answer questions that are difficult to formulate as search queries.

Because most queries are not shopping queries. Yet ads are injected regardless to tempt you into buying something.

Re: Google's Bard shows incorrect information in its launch ad

#149

Post by int_19h »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #82
partiallypro wrote: post #18

I think there is a genuine concern that Google could overreact and launch a half-baked product in pure panic of being left behind or one upped by Microsoft. There is also a fear, I think, that the ChatGPT integration with Bing/Edge could not go all that smoothly. I think it could be game changing in many ways, but I can also see both of these falling apart. Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri were thought to be g…

They should be marketed as mascots, and given playful, childish personalities. You wouldn't blindly trust a child, why would you an AI in its infancy?

It will never happen because people will predictably abuse such bots in various gross ways, and the moment it leaks to the press, there will be a "think of the children" scandal.

Re: Google's Bard shows incorrect information in its launch ad

#150

Post by coffeebeqn »

partiallypro wrote: post #18

I think there is a genuine concern that Google could overreact and launch a half-baked product in pure panic of being left behind or one upped by Microsoft. There is also a fear, I think, that the ChatGPT integration with Bing/Edge could not go all that smoothly. I think it could be game changing in many ways, but I can also see both of these falling apart. Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri were thought to be g…

This does seem essentially like a Siri 2.0. I never found Siri useful but maybe this time it’ll be
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