this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
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You know how Google's new feature called AI Overviews is prone to spitting out wildly incorrect answers to search queries? In one instance, AI Overviews told a user to use glue on pizza to make sure the cheese won't slide off (pssst...please don't do this.)

Well, according to an interview at The Vergewith Google CEO Sundar Pichai published earlier this week, just before criticism of the outputs really took off, these "hallucinations" are an "inherent feature" of  AI large language models (LLM), which is what drives AI Overviews, and this feature "is still an unsolved problem."

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 5 months ago

I mean yeah... if he had a solution they would be actually have the revolutionary AI tool the tech writers write about.

It's kinda written like a "gotcha" but it's really the fundamental problem with AI. We call it hallucinations now but a few years ago we just called it being wrong or returning bad results.

It's like saying we have teleportation working in that we can vaporize you on the spot but are just struggling to reconstruct you elsewhere. "It's halfway there!"

Until the AI is trustworthy enough to not require fact checking it afterwards it's just a toy.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 months ago

Let's turn that frown upside down! Instead of saying "Google failed to generate a useful LLM to bolster its search feature," say "Google successfully replicated the output of an average Reddit troll!"

[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 months ago (2 children)

God I'm fucking sick of this loss leading speculative investment bullshit. It's hit some bizarre zenith that has infected everybody in the tech world, but nobody has any actual intention of being practical in the making of money, or the functionality of the product. I feel like we should just can the whole damned thing and start again.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 months ago

Then fucking turn it off

[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

This is what competition is now.

Putting out worthless things simply because everyone else is doing it.

Hey, Google: if your big tech friends jumped off a cliff, would you join 'em?

(Also why is the AI assistant on my phone opening up just by typing "hey Google?" 😡)

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Google really thinks they have no competition. Like, fuck, even Bing improved a lot with time.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago

All I know when a publicly offered company slaps "AI" on their products, then its most likely a money launderi..i mean liquidation strat.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago

Well, according to an interview at The Vergewith Google CEO Sundar Pichai published earlier this week, just before criticism of the outputs really took off, these "hallucinations" are an "inherent feature" of  AI large language models (LLM), which is what drives AI Overviews, and this feature "is still an unsolved problem."

That's a lot of """quotation marks""" for something that is a very well established fact, and absolutely should not be a shock to anyone.

Yes, it's an unsolved problem. It always will be, because there is no algorithm for truth. All we can do is get incrementally better.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago (1 children)

obviously not.
this isn't some innovation of theirs. it's a slapped together duct taped copy of other people's work, trained on other people's work.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Neither does ChatGPT... they over-hyped this tech so hard, I am afraid they are makers of their own demise...

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago

"Are we making progress? Yes, we are," he added. "We have definitely made progress when we look at metrics on factuality year on year. We are all making it better, but it’s not solved."

Let’s be fair with our headlines!

CEO of Google Says It Is Still Solving for Its AI Providing Wildly Incorrect Information [and is okay with people dying from rattlesnake bite misinformation in the meantime]

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago

Google is on a tear. First Bard, then Gemini, now snippets injected into search results. All spectacular failures.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (1 children)

So is google going to initiate a reverse class action law suit and sue the internet for creating flawed trading data?

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (3 children)

How about turn it the fuck off since it sucks and eventually will kill someone.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (6 children)

What y'all are forgetting is that when it comes to dominating a technology space, historically, it's not proving the better product, is providing the cheapest/widest available product. With the goal being to capture enough of the market to get and retain that dominant position. Nobody knows what the threshold is for that until years later when the dust has settled.

So from Google's perspective if a new or current rival is going to get there first, then just push it out and fix it live. What are people going to do? Switch to Bing?

So is you want Google to stop doing this dumb broken LLM shite, use the network effect against them. Switch to a different search provider and browser and encourage all of your friends and family to do so as well.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Maybe Google should put a disclaimer... warning people it's not 100% accurate. Or.. just take down the technology because clearly their AI is chit tier.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

We fucked up and we fired the people who could probably solve it and now they won't talk to us.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (2 children)

You mean that "AI" isn't actually intelligent at all? It just averages over stolen content whether it's correct or a joke? Wow I'm shocked.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago

It remembered me about the conch shell of Spongebob lol

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago

He's such a damn clown.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago

So the next captcha will be a list of AI-generated statements and you have to decide which are bat shit crazy?

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