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Google’s AI is being manipulated. The search giant is quietly fighting back

bbc.com

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Re: Google’s AI is being manipulated. The search giant is quietly fighting back

#211

Post by tremon »

hunterpayne wrote: post #163
moparts wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article also said this: “ But our investigation also found the same trick being used to dismiss health concerns about medical supplements or influence financial information provided by Google's AI about retirement.” That’s a lot more alarming than just hotdogs.

Here is a brief selection of topics which foreign intelligence agencies have at some point tried to boost or manipulate: - Global Warming - AI Data Centers consume water - Various Covid treatments - Impact of AGW Now it doesn't mean these concerns aren't real. It does mean that when you read about such a topic, there is a significant probability the message have been manipulated for some government's interests. And o…

Why do you mention foreign intelligence agencies specifically without mentioning which intelligence agency is your domestic one? Do you believe "your people" don't do that kind of thing, or that yours is justified? Or do you explicitly leave it unsaid so that every reader can interpret foreign from their own perspective and feel good about themselves?

And I don't for a second believe that it's intelligence agencies that are doing most of the manipulating on three of the four topics that you mention as they are aligned with huge business interests.

Re: Google’s AI is being manipulated. The search giant is quietly fighting back

#212

Post by djeastm »

ulrashida wrote: post #51
simmerup wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate it. I was on a history subreddit yesterday, reading a submission that was an AI generated history piece —- but seemed to be sourced entirely from a fictional hollywood movie I only knew that because i saw the movie, but it’s a clear sign that the internet is going to shit for quality information

I wonder if this will mean a resurgence of encyclopedias or other authoritative digital records that are known to be verified.

As long as they're behind a wall that AI bots can't reach and suck all of the authoritative information out and then starve of visitors.

Re: Google’s AI is being manipulated. The search giant is quietly fighting back

#213

Post by throwthrowuknow »

The quality of responses has generally gotten worse the more that all the AI providers have leaned on search.

Now it’s default on for everything and annoying to turn off. The response you get back when search is off can be the complete opposite and is often more interesting.

Re: Google’s AI is being manipulated. The search giant is quietly fighting back

#215

Post by newsclues »

WarmWash wrote: post #25

My worry dropped significantly when I saw that the result they manipulated was a query for: >2026 South Dakota International Hot Dog Eating Champion If they had changed the overview for the Nathans Contest winner, that would be seriously concerning. Or if they provided more examples of manipulating queries for things people actually search for. But it looks more like they are doing the equivalent of creating a made u…

What one person can do with a phone may be concerning, but what a small group of well funded actors can do can be a real problem.

Re: Google’s AI is being manipulated. The search giant is quietly fighting back

#216

Post by roenxi »

coffeefirst wrote: post #58
WarmWash wrote: post #25

My worry dropped significantly when I saw that the result they manipulated was a query for: >2026 South Dakota International Hot Dog Eating Champion If they had changed the overview for the Nathans Contest winner, that would be seriously concerning. Or if they provided more examples of manipulating queries for things people actually search for. But it looks more like they are doing the equivalent of creating a made u…

Right. So that's what one guy can do. When you realize how much astroturf is going into Reddit, most social media platforms, and the efforts to manipulate wikipedia for political gain, this is a very real problem.

But to just inject a little optimism - the problem was substantially bigger before the internet. Previously it was possible to coordinate the astroturfing across the entire media landscape. Nowadays it is much harder because anyone can get information out to the world - at least in theory.

Re: Google’s AI is being manipulated. The search giant is quietly fighting back

#217

Post by manapause »

WarmWash wrote: post #25

My worry dropped significantly when I saw that the result they manipulated was a query for: >2026 South Dakota International Hot Dog Eating Champion If they had changed the overview for the Nathans Contest winner, that would be seriously concerning. Or if they provided more examples of manipulating queries for things people actually search for. But it looks more like they are doing the equivalent of creating a made u…

If your name is John Smith, and you prompt Gemini to act as a robust OSINT tool, you will experience the vicissitudes of Chaps firsthand as the tool normalizations of vector space yields an answer that will not only never get close to identifying you because it has lumped several John Smiths together like asking a dog to fetch your shoes and it comes back with a Footlocker in its mouth.

Re: Google’s AI is being manipulated. The search giant is quietly fighting back

#218

Post by bigfishrunning »

cess11 wrote: post #89
keeda wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it is another good example that "AI" is just glorified search and there is not reasoning or thinking going on behind the covers. I don't think that follows. This is just LLMs being, for a lack of a better word, "gullible." How is it different from a person believing whatever they read on the Internet? People fall for spam and scams all the time, doesn't mean they are just glorified searches ;-) It does highligh…

"How is it different from a person believing whatever they read on the Internet?" Because a person is alive while the LLM is a floating point number database with a questionable degree of determinism.

It's worse then that. The neural network itself is completely deterministic, but the software around it adds some RNG to make it seem more intelligent. It would be much more useful if you could get repeatability, but that wouldn't support the illusion that it's "thinking".

Re: Google’s AI is being manipulated. The search giant is quietly fighting back

#220

Post by StilesCrisis »

Aldipower wrote: post #208
electr1cBugaloo wrote: post #161

Google AI Overview cannot be trusted at all. They will take a sample size of 1 (!!!) and present it in the AI overview. How I found out: I made a comment on reddit on a very niche topic for which no google hit or and thus no AI overview existed. To my surprise the next day when searching for my own reddit post, google would happily copy my reddit reply almost verbatim into the AI "overview" box, linking no other post…

Guys. Google tracks you. It deliberately shows your own content in the results. Try from an anonymous vpn account.

That's not how AI Overviews work.
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