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Whoops! Google's reached a new level of JAQing off and decided to answer the questions instead of just leading to them (arstechnica.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hermansson logged in to Google and began looking up results for the IQs of different nations. When he typed in “Pakistan IQ,” rather than getting a typical list of links, Hermansson was presented with Google’s AI-powered Overviews tool, which, confusingly to him, was on by default. It gave him a definitive answer of 80.

When he typed in “Sierra Leone IQ,” Google’s AI tool was even more specific: 45.07. The result for “Kenya IQ” was equally exact: 75.2.

Hmm, these numbers seem very low. I wonder how these scores were determined.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Problem it wasn't a hallucination - it was referencing a paper that has been debunked. These aren't made up numbers, they're VERY specific numbers that come from a VERY specific paper.

This one: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289610000450 -- If I'm not mistaken. Created by a Nazi Sympathizer Richard Lynn and the Pioneer Fund

The problem is that this also managed to get cited more than 22,000x creating a feedback effect that reinforced the AI's learning.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Okay, but it's still got nothing to do with the dishonest rhetorical technique called "JAQing off" (a.k.a. "Just Asking Questions," a.k.a. "sealioning").

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

It's kind of a ... symptom ... of the community we're in. I wouldn't read into it too deeply.