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Google AI Overview made up an elaborate story about me

(bsky.app)
693 points jsheard | 3 comments | 01 Sep 25 14:27 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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AnEro ◴[01 Sep 25 15:23 UTC] No.45093447[source]▶
I really hope this stays up, despite the politics involvement to a degree. I think this is a situation that is a perfect example of how AI hallucinations/lack of accuracy could significantly impact our lives going forward. A very nuanced and serious topic with lots of back and forth being distilled down to headlines by any source, it is a terrifying reality. Especially if we aren't able to communicate how these tools work to the public. (if they even will care to learn it) At least when humans did this they knew at some level at least they skimmed the information on the person/topic.
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geerlingguy ◴[01 Sep 25 16:01 UTC] No.45093831[source]▶
I've had multiple people copy and paste AI conversations and results in GitHub issues, emails, etc., and there are I think a growing number of people who blindly trust the results of any of these models... including the 'results summary' posted at the top of Google search results.

Almost every summary I have read through contains at least one glaring mistake, but if it's something I know nothing about, I could see how easy it would be to just trust it, since 95% of it seems true/accurate.

Trust, but verify is all the more relevant today. Except I would discount the trust, even.

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freeopinion ◴[01 Sep 25 16:32 UTC] No.45094155[source]▶
prompt> use javascript to convert a unix timestamp to a date in 'YYYY-MM-DD' format using Temporal

answer> Temporal.Instant.fromEpochSeconds(timestamp).toPlainDate()

Trust but verify?

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1. nielsbot ◴[01 Sep 25 16:51 UTC] No.45094353[source]▶
what does this mean in this convo?
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2. freeopinion ◴[01 Sep 25 17:06 UTC] No.45094514[source]▶
If you were considering purchasing a Biology text book, and spot read two chapters, what if you found the following?:

In the first chapter it claimed that most adult humans have 20 teeth.

In the second chapter you read that female humans have 22 chromosomes and male humans have 23.

You find these claims in the 24 pages you sample. Do you buy the book?

Companies are paying huge sums to AI companies with worse track records.

Would you put the book in your reference library if somebody gave it to you for free? Services like Google or DuckDuckGo put their AI-generated content at the top of search results with these inaccuracies.

[edit: replace paragraph that somehow got deleted, fix typo]

3. freeopinion ◴[01 Sep 25 17:40 UTC] No.45094851[source]▶
Google distinguished itself early with techniques like PageRank that put more relevant content at the top of their search results.

Is it too late for a rival to distinguish itself with techniques like "Don't put garbage AI at the top of search results"?