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Death by AI

(davebarry.substack.com)
583 points ano-ther | 2 comments | 19 Jul 25 14:35 UTC | HN request time: 0.423s | source
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jwr ◴[19 Jul 25 21:33 UTC] No.44619638[source]▶
I'd say this isn't just an AI overview thing. It's a Google thing. Google will sometimes show inaccurate information and there is usually no way to correct it. Various "feedback" forms are mostly ignored.

I had to fight a similar battle with Google Maps, which most people believe to be a source of truth, and it took years until incorrect information was changed. I'm not even sure if it was because of all the feedback I provided.

I see Google as a firehose of information that they spit at me ("feed"), they are too big to be concerned about any inconsistencies, as these don't hurt their business model.

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kjkjadksj ◴[20 Jul 25 01:10 UTC] No.44620991[source]▶
Google maps is so bad with its auto content. Ultra private country club? Lets mark the cartpaths as full bike paths. Cemetery? Also bike paths. Random spit of sidewalk and grass between an office building and its parking lot? Believe it or not also bike paths.
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1. xp84 ◴[20 Jul 25 02:43 UTC] No.44621522[source]▶
I mean, that last one sounds functionally useful, since it would indeed be better to take the random concrete paths inside an office property (that wasn’t a closed campus) than to ride on the expressway that fronts it, if the “paths” are going where you’re going.
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2. kjkjadksj ◴[22 Jul 25 17:44 UTC] No.44650619[source]▶
Yeah it doesn’t really play out like that. Just saw another example today of this gated condo complex where half the sidewalks are arbitrarily full blown bike trails. Clearly they are just trying to automagically get the trails from imagery of putative paths instead of, you know, pulling directly from the municipal bike path network maps. I guess scaling something more like that out was too hard for multibillion dollar google.

I have tried reporting these fake paths in the past but it didn’t get them removed.