Public criticism has mounted over Google's AI Overview feature in Search, which has returned inaccurate or nonsensical results, according to screenshots.
On two occasions I have been asked, – “Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?” … I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question"
– Charles Babbage
This confusion would appear to continue to this day.
Why is it even remotely surprising or unexpected that an AI that’s summarizing web search results for you can sometimes give false, misleading, or dangerous answers? The search results contain false, misleading, and dangerous answers sometimes. The problem is not the AI. It’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing.
Love that quote - will say that, to my eyes, what’s happening here is worse than results being wrong and the summary passing that on - in at least a few examples I’ve seen, the summary has contained information that is related to but the opposite of what was requested, e.g. a list titled “things you should do if bitten by a snake” that contains a list of things you should not do.
Or in the example of pizza glue, that being a great tip… If you want to do product photography of pizza.
– Charles Babbage
This confusion would appear to continue to this day.
Why is it even remotely surprising or unexpected that an AI that’s summarizing web search results for you can sometimes give false, misleading, or dangerous answers? The search results contain false, misleading, and dangerous answers sometimes. The problem is not the AI. It’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing.
Love that quote - will say that, to my eyes, what’s happening here is worse than results being wrong and the summary passing that on - in at least a few examples I’ve seen, the summary has contained information that is related to but the opposite of what was requested, e.g. a list titled “things you should do if bitten by a snake” that contains a list of things you should not do.
Or in the example of pizza glue, that being a great tip… If you want to do product photography of pizza.