5 ms·

Funny how google didn't caution us about hallucinating google info boxes.

by cwkoss 4y ago

BaseballPhysics 4y ago
Funny how every time this topic comes up someone trots out another false equivalence.
rtkwe 4y ago
At least there it links you to where it's pulling the information from so you can check for yourself. The AI chatbots can't link back because they're not built for it and aren't pulling from a database of links and documents to reference back to in a 1-1 way.
- cwkoss 4y ago
  Google will link you a source, but doesn't explain how the wrong source got linked to an infobox. I think this distinction is somewhat academic. Either system can present users with wrong information without explanation.
  - rtkwe 4y ago
    I've never seen an info box that didn't at least link to the point the data came from and if it's at all important I'll usually check to see where it's coming from to at least get a gut gauge on how correct the source seems. With the new chatbots if I'm not going to just trust them I have to do the same basic steps I would have to have found the data through a search engine to begin with.
jmathai 4y ago
This is a valid critique. Transparency for the source attribution of info boxes is lower than clicking to be redirected to the full web page with context. But chatbots take that a lot further...and generative AI specifically cannot really do that in a way that is easy for consumers to make use of - at least it's not possible at the moment.
- KRAKRISMOTT 4y ago
  It's important that consumers learn this the hard way. When they start losing money, then the flaws of ML become obvious. Otherwise if we gatekeep the technology to "professionals", you end up with companies like McKinsey recommending it to governments and civil service and allowing black box ML to insidiously creep into the societal infrastructure. People without a STEM background won't understand the implications when you say that a biased dataset makes consumer lending metrics like credit scores unfair. But they will understand when their "AI" assistant purchase the wrong airline ticket or generate garbage for a school assignment
  - jmathai 4y ago
    Agree. I'm not recommending gatekeeping to professionals. Ideally the product waits until it can be productively used by consumers before being launched. But the cat's out of the bag and I don't see anything slowing it down.
    - KRAKRISMOTT 4y ago
      The failure modes of ML won't go away easily. It is important that consumers are exposed to weaker versions of sophisticated LLMs, instead of being bamboozled with mostly bug-free shiny products that are the result of billion dollars worth of unpublished research. If you think current big tech customer service is bad, just imagine how much worse it can get. The constant failures of Bing and Google search with LLMs is a good thing for society, just like how the early versions of Siri struggled with getting basic speech recognition right. If lay people start treating these as omnipotent black boxes, then it would be very bad for the world.
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > It's important that consumers learn this the hard way. When they start losing money, then the flaws of ML become obvious. But they may not be harmed in ways that don't involve monetary loss, or involve monetary loss that they can quantify and attribute. > Otherwise if we gatekeep the technology to "professionals", you end up with companies like McKinsey recommending it to governments and civil service and allowing black box ML to insidiously creep into the societal infrastructure. Honestly, if it's gate-kept, it should be limited to academics and researchers. It's orders of magnitude worse for some institutional process to be built on the "judgements" of an unreliable "AI" than for some consumer to be mislead about something.
recuter 4y ago
That is regular flavored misinformation/spam, they don't hallucinate. Garbage in, garbage out. Whereas these new exciting AI flavored misinformation boxes are more like fortune tellers cold reading, inventing novel half truths whole cloth, telling you anything you want to hear, and actively assuring you that it is 100% true in a persuasive and chipper tone.
karmakaze 4y ago
Yeah I stopped reading the title at "Google cautions..." Pretty much anything they have to say is in self-interest. I don't personally use GCP but maybe that's separate enough to use. Everything else is for ads/search biz.

Funny how google didn't caution us about hallucinating google info boxes.

by cwkoss 4y ago

Funny how google didn't caution us about hallucinating google info boxes.

BaseballPhysics 4y ago

Funny how every time this topic comes up someone trots out another false equivalence.

rtkwe 4y ago

At least there it links you to where it's pulling the information from so you can check for yourself. The AI chatbots can't link back because they're not built for it and aren't pulling from a database of links and documents to reference back to in a 1-1 way.

cwkoss 4y ago
Google will link you a source, but doesn't explain how the wrong source got linked to an infobox. I think this distinction is somewhat academic. Either system can present users with wrong information without explanation.
- rtkwe 4y ago
  I've never seen an info box that didn't at least link to the point the data came from and if it's at all important I'll usually check to see where it's coming from to at least get a gut gauge on how correct the source seems. With the new chatbots if I'm not going to just trust them I have to do the same basic steps I would have to have found the data through a search engine to begin with.

jmathai 4y ago

This is a valid critique. Transparency for the source attribution of info boxes is lower than clicking to be redirected to the full web page with context. But chatbots take that a lot further...and generative AI specifically cannot really do that in a way that is easy for consumers to make use of - at least it's not possible at the moment.

KRAKRISMOTT 4y ago
It's important that consumers learn this the hard way. When they start losing money, then the flaws of ML become obvious. Otherwise if we gatekeep the technology to "professionals", you end up with companies like McKinsey recommending it to governments and civil service and allowing black box ML to insidiously creep into the societal infrastructure. People without a STEM background won't understand the implications when you say that a biased dataset makes consumer lending metrics like credit scores unfair. But they will understand when their "AI" assistant purchase the wrong airline ticket or generate garbage for a school assignment
- jmathai 4y ago
  Agree. I'm not recommending gatekeeping to professionals. Ideally the product waits until it can be productively used by consumers before being launched. But the cat's out of the bag and I don't see anything slowing it down.
  - KRAKRISMOTT 4y ago
    The failure modes of ML won't go away easily. It is important that consumers are exposed to weaker versions of sophisticated LLMs, instead of being bamboozled with mostly bug-free shiny products that are the result of billion dollars worth of unpublished research. If you think current big tech customer service is bad, just imagine how much worse it can get. The constant failures of Bing and Google search with LLMs is a good thing for society, just like how the early versions of Siri struggled with getting basic speech recognition right. If lay people start treating these as omnipotent black boxes, then it would be very bad for the world.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > It's important that consumers learn this the hard way. When they start losing money, then the flaws of ML become obvious. But they may not be harmed in ways that don't involve monetary loss, or involve monetary loss that they can quantify and attribute. > Otherwise if we gatekeep the technology to "professionals", you end up with companies like McKinsey recommending it to governments and civil service and allowing black box ML to insidiously creep into the societal infrastructure. Honestly, if it's gate-kept, it should be limited to academics and researchers. It's orders of magnitude worse for some institutional process to be built on the "judgements" of an unreliable "AI" than for some consumer to be mislead about something.

recuter 4y ago

That is regular flavored misinformation/spam, they don't hallucinate. Garbage in, garbage out. Whereas these new exciting AI flavored misinformation boxes are more like fortune tellers cold reading, inventing novel half truths whole cloth, telling you anything you want to hear, and actively assuring you that it is 100% true in a persuasive and chipper tone.

karmakaze 4y ago

Yeah I stopped reading the title at "Google cautions..." Pretty much anything they have to say is in self-interest. I don't personally use GCP but maybe that's separate enough to use. Everything else is for ads/search biz.