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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

#221

Post by caconym_ »

richardjam73 wrote: post #200
caconym_ wrote: post #130

This isn't incorrect, it's just ambiguous. The JWST did indeed "take the first pictures" of a planet outside our solar system ( https://www.npr.org/2023/01/12/1148626359/nasa-webb-telescop... ). However, we have previously directly imaged other exoplanets using different instruments—it's just that this exoplanet in particular (LHS 475 b) has never been directly imaged before Webb. It's the sort of question where you…

If JWST took a picture of LHS 475b then where is the picture? Isn't exoplanet HIP 65426b the first that JWST took a picture of?

HIP 65426b is the first exoplanet JWST imaged, but it was previously discovered by VLT-SPHERE, which I believe is also a direct imaging instrument. So it would not be correct to say that JWST took the first pictures of HIP 65426b.

However, JWST was the first instrument to directly observe LHS 475b, also confirming its existence for the first time. As to "where are the pictures?", IIUC these observations were made using a spectrograph instrument that does not produce a picture as such. The results are easy to find on the web with a search engine.

One might say Bard's result is wrong in the sense I have proposed because a spectrograph result isn't a picture. However, given that the prompt explicitly specified that the results should be tailored to a 9 year old, I think that would be pretty disingenuous.

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

#222

Post by sebk »

chermanowicz wrote: post #189
sebk wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, ChatGPT is also wrong: https://i.imgur.com/CsQyEc2.png . The correct answer is https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/resources/300/2m1207b-first-imag... as techsupporter posted in a sibling comment

For what it's worth, thats not accurate - a spectrograph was used in 1995 to discover the first exoplanet by Mayor and Queloz, and they received a Nobel prize for this. So GPT is right. One can be pedantic and say that not an "image" but most would disagree.

It's not a direct image, which is the specific question, and I don't know if you're including NASA in "most" but NASA disagrees as well, per their article. So do Wikipedia editors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_directly_imaged_exopla...

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

#223

Post by criddell »

partiallypro wrote: post #176
MatthiasPortzel wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is selling HomePods and iPhones for a profit. But Amazon is/was selling Echos for a loss, in the hope that they would drive additional Prime music subscriptions and lower friction to Amazon purchases. That didn’t happen, and so the product line all-devices-sold-with-Alexa has lost Amazon money. The equivalent comparison, all devices with Siri, has made Apple a ton of money.

Apple's HomePods have been a resounding failure though? I don't know where you're getting your data, but it's wrong. They literally discontinued the original model because sales were SO bad.

They've sold a billion dollars worth of HomePod minis. Even at Apple scale, that's not bad.

They've just launched a new HomePod that replaces the original. It's weird that there was such a big gap between the first one and the new one.

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

#224

Post by Yoric »

didgetmaster wrote: post #35
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…

I wonder if Microsoft's Bing/Edge/ChatGPT integration will go any better than its attempt to marry NTFS and SQL Server (i.e. WinFS)? Spoiler: that didn't go as planned!

Was there any technological issue? Or was it just that developers didn't want to use it?

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

#225

Post by didgetmaster »

Yoric wrote: post #224
didgetmaster wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if Microsoft's Bing/Edge/ChatGPT integration will go any better than its attempt to marry NTFS and SQL Server (i.e. WinFS)? Spoiler: that didn't go as planned!

Was there any technological issue? Or was it just that developers didn't want to use it?

Microsoft never really revealed the 'real reasons' why it was canceled; so most people are left to speculate. My personal take is they decided it would become a tech-support nightmare to talk regular users through fixing a problem if the underlying database had an issue.

Here is an article from 2006: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/jun/29/insideit....

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

#226

Post by hedora »

caconym_ wrote: post #130

This isn't incorrect, it's just ambiguous. The JWST did indeed "take the first pictures" of a planet outside our solar system ( https://www.npr.org/2023/01/12/1148626359/nasa-webb-telescop... ). However, we have previously directly imaged other exoplanets using different instruments—it's just that this exoplanet in particular (LHS 475 b) has never been directly imaged before Webb. It's the sort of question where you…

Yet, for some reason, people still get bent out of shape when I point out that I was the first person to implement a hashtable, host a web page, run an experiment to measure the force of gravity, stare out a telescope at the moon, post a comment on Hacker News, etc, etc...

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

#227

Post by caconym_ »

hedora wrote: post #226
caconym_ wrote: post #130

This isn't incorrect, it's just ambiguous. The JWST did indeed "take the first pictures" of a planet outside our solar system ( https://www.npr.org/2023/01/12/1148626359/nasa-webb-telescop... ). However, we have previously directly imaged other exoplanets using different instruments—it's just that this exoplanet in particular (LHS 475 b) has never been directly imaged before Webb. It's the sort of question where you…

Yet, for some reason, people still get bent out of shape when I point out that I was the first person to implement a hashtable, host a web page, run an experiment to measure the force of gravity, stare out a telescope at the moon, post a comment on Hacker News, etc, etc...

If you really think these are semantically comparable^[1] to the statement under examination then we are not speaking the same language, despite appearances to the contrary, and therefore have nothing to discuss.

I get it: hating on AI is very trendy today and it feels good to publicly agree with a righteous cause. I'm generally not a fan of this technology myself---most of these models incorporate stolen work of mine in their training sets, unattributed and uncompensated, and I think they are likely to be a disaster for the human species. I have not implemented any of them in my creative workflows or other aspects of my life, and I don't plan to.

However, I think it is important to see one's enemy clearly, and the vast majority of people participating in the anti-AI discourse are abjectly failing to do so as in this case. This can only hurt their cause, and by extension mine.

^[1] Exoplanets is a category of unique non-fungible objects which can be meaningfully discovered and measured on an individual basis. Hash tables are an abstract concept, as is hosting a web page (and creating a web page to host it fundamentally precludes discovering it, except in the sense of discovery within the creative process). Gravity, similarly, is a single 'thing' that, once discovered, cannot be discovered again.

One might easily and correctly say, however, that X person was the first to measure the force of gravity to a certain precision, or that Y person was the first to develop a particular implementation of the hash table concept, e.g. cuckoo hashing. These achievements are meaningfully distinct from the discovery of the broader concepts they extend. Discovery of a particular exoplanet is similar; however, it may surprise you to learn that the English language treats different kinds of 'things' differently, and in this case those varied, underspecified conventions of language have produced an ambiguity.

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

#228

Post by dougmwne »

somenameforme wrote: post #180
dougmwne wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But relevant to the topic at hand, do any of those sources regularly make it onto the search engine results page? Is the quality of Forbes, Cnet, Reddit, Wikipedia and Quora clearly better than these AI generated responses in some way? I know there are expert vetted information sources, but you generally have to pay for the quality and they do not get linked to from Bing and Google.

I don't know exactly what he was referencing but the easiest way to verify the authenticity of points on issues where there tend to be two sides saying mutually incompatible things is to look at the overlap of what they both say is true. That is going to usually be true. And all it takes to find that is to look at sources for both sides. Expert vetting doesn't even touch the underlying problem, because the pursuit is…

This is a great summary of this issues with trying to even determine objective reality. I would say that the simple popular consensus approach is not even that great because there are plenty of things in the past that have had consensus that were later determined to be objectively false.

My point was even a step before this, that even getting the consensus facts correct is a major challenge when the internet is written by children, bored volunteers, mechanical Turk contributors from across the world, adversarial actors, and content producers churning clickbait. Having a professional journalist investigate a topic, then have a separate professional fact-check, and yet another professional edit all for a publication that is trying hard to maintain a reputation and will publish retractions if necessary is all miles better as a starting point for determining truth, but sadly that cultural activity is nearly dead.

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

#229

Post by dwringer »

somenameforme wrote: post #188
dwringer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like that this thread points out even humans have difficulty with that construction sometimes. We're trying to hold Google's language model to a higher standard than humans in this case I think. I remember "learning" thousands of bits of trivia like that from people who had misinterpreted something they read and misstated it in such a way. Of course Google has already been putting often-incorrect summaries/factoids…

It's not a matter of "its vs it's" in this case, but the very existence of the word in the sentence: "NASA’s Webb Takes Its First-Ever Direct Image of Distant World" It doesn't matter if one misspells its. You know what it means and it largely defines this sentence. A failure to parse such a relatively simple construct doesn't bode well.

You're of course correct, but perhaps I should have focused more on the concept of skipping words when reading, misremembering, and "reading what you want to read" - those traits are extremely common if not universal at some level in human readers as well.

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

#230

Post by iosono88 »

abdulhaq wrote: post #209
unholythree wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if they nerfed their assistants because paths that are too autonomous too easily wander into PR nightmares. Carefully curated results and behavior isn't going to spontaneously generate content actual human beings would consider offensive or prejudiced. People are pretty eager to pull out their pitchforks, and "Big Tech Builds Vile Hate Bot" make a excellent click-bate headline every time.

The production of prejudiced content by "AI"s is a real issue and not just a problem of click-bait headlines

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