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German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews

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

#201

Post by nixass »

l23k4 wrote: post #164
kg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who will adjudicate private disputes between citizens if not the state?

Not all disputes need to be adjudicated. It's undoubtedly a fact that the German concept of "defamation" primarily relates to situations that should never be adjudicated by any third party. Genuinely, by far the most common situation where claims of defamation arise in Germany is any less than 5 star review left to a business on google maps.

The good thing is that google in Germany now shows how many reviews were removed due to deflamation. That should be enough for people to make their judgement when checking how many stars a place has

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

#202

Post by sham1 »

gblargg wrote: post #167
sham1 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If our standard for laws would be that "well no reasonable person would do this/believe this" then nothing would be illegal, there'd be no need to label any product as potentiality harmful, etc. Do you really want to go there? That everything in the world would have a literal "caveat emptor" attached to it?

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 any and all liability. Not your argument, I know, but still.

As for not wanting to force companies to release only "safe-for-children products", I do actually agree. However I consider it to be a matter of degree, and in this case for example, I think that if nothing else, Google should say the very least make the disclaimer a bit more prominent and maybe tweak the model so that it's not quite as confident in its claims in the AI Overview.

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

#203

Post by incompatible »

riskd wrote: post #31
burpingtree wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What don’t you understand? Those websites that defame a company are liable for that defamation. In this case Google defamed a company in its AI summary and is this liable for that defamation.

So if I edit a Wikipedia article to share that consuming poison is safe and someone consumes poison after reading it… is Wikipedia legally liable?

Not for defamation, nobody was defamed in that scenario. But Wikipedia has been sued for defamation at least once:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_News_International_v._Wi...

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

#204

Post by intended »

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…

Uh, yeah of course ?

Let someone else sacrifice the safety of their populace.

Heck - self driving is the fastest way to authoritarian government in practice. I’m surprised more people on HN haven’t cottoned on to that fact.

A self driving system will naturally build networks to share road state.

This network will eventually shift over to the government having the ability to manage how traffic should move during emergencies.

And at that point the government can easily decide where your car should go.

The inevitability of this outcome is blindingly obvious.

It’s highly beneficial to let other nations experiment and simply be followers.

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

#205

Post by autoexec »

cik wrote: post #118
heathrow83829 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at the scale that google is at, it doesn't make an ounce of sense to hold a company liable for a potential mistruth. what if there's a 1/1000 chance of some error, then the company could be sued millions of times per day. down vote all you want, but I firmly believe this is an example where the user needs to use some judgement on the information they receive and have some critical thinking skills. google would be rig…

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 programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority. - The 2012 Texas Republican Party Platform (saying the quiet part out loud)

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

#206

Post by Phelinofist »

l23k4 wrote: post #163

Wow, you guys really think this is good? Because of the same rules, German restaurants also get to pick and choose which reviews stay up. They can literally take down any specific reviews they like. A restaurant that mostly gets 1 star reviews will still show up with 5 stars on Google maps, as they will simply delete the reviews with less than 5 stars as defamatory. Here's a couple of examples: https://www.reddit.com…

But it also shows the number of removed reviews (in a range like 0-50, 50-100 and so forth). If you encounter a restaurant with 5 starts but a lot of removed reviews you know whats up.

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

#207

Post by drstewart »

thfuran wrote: post #109
heathrow83829 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at the scale that google is at, it doesn't make an ounce of sense to hold a company liable for a potential mistruth. what if there's a 1/1000 chance of some error, then the company could be sued millions of times per day. down vote all you want, but I firmly believe this is an example where the user needs to use some judgement on the information they receive and have some critical thinking skills. google would be rig…

You’re seriously arguing that Google’s libel shouldn’t count as libel because they showed it to too many people? It’s absolutely insane to suggest that a company should be immune from liability for its actions if it operates on such scale that those actions harm millions of people every day on the basis that dealing with that many lawsuits would be too inconvenient.

Exactly, it's like saying Wikipedia shouldn't be liable and immediately shut down for any wrong information shown on it.

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

#208

Post by sham1 »

l23k4 wrote: post #163

Wow, you guys really think this is good? Because of the same rules, German restaurants also get to pick and choose which reviews stay up. They can literally take down any specific reviews they like. A restaurant that mostly gets 1 star reviews will still show up with 5 stars on Google maps, as they will simply delete the reviews with less than 5 stars as defamatory. Here's a couple of examples: https://www.reddit.com…

And the solution to this is to go through the German political system. The courts can't just decide to not follow the law just because it's a bit silly, and for as long as the laws are the way they are, this unfortunate loophole for removing negative reviews will continue to exist. But clearly the law can have both positive and negative consequences.

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

#209

Post by aaron695 »

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…

[dead]

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

#210

Post by hanwenn »

jolmg wrote: post #172
hanwenn wrote: post #147

Curiously, if you look for "geramond verlag betrugsmasche", or "verlagshaus24 betrugsmasche", it will now tell you that there are no indications it is a scam, but "significant organizational problems and extremely bad customer support lead to (list of bad experiences)". Also, each purported fact now has a direct link to the source of the fact, that is more clearly visible than the previous chain icon.

Do the links actually support the statements? When I've followed such links, it's generally been a roll of the dice on whether they do support the AI's statements.

Yes. The links are to isolated threads on a rail (model) forums (apparently, this publisher markets books/magazines related to railway models).

It's hard to see if the individual complaints really support a general problem, or if this simply the only result that talks about "scam + business-name". Probably, the latter.

The same problem happens on google search, if you look "", you'll get pages mentioning that false fact. If you fall into the trap of confirmation bias, it leads you to think the false fact is in true.

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