3 ms·

Google prevents Gemini AI from answering questions about upcoming elections

24 points by gmays 3y ago

Zenul_Abidin 3y ago
It seems that Gemini is more heavily moderated/censored than other AIs such as ChatGPT.
- CSMastermind 3y ago
  The level of censorship going back to the Bard days has been impressive. For a company with a product solidly in 3rd maybe 4th place they're definitely choosing to handicap themselves quite a bit.
s3r3nity 3y ago
"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"...unless you need to learn about the facts and arguments for voting in important elections, lest you hear about inconvenient facts that aren't approved by the official government narrative.
- _8j50 3y ago
  Are you saying you want genai to influence elections using a blackbox model? Google search still exists.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- VWWHFSfQ 3y ago
  > unless you need to learn about the facts and arguments for voting in important elections Nobody should be trusting an ai chat bot at this stage in the technology to give them "facts" let alone political arguments in important elections.
  - nathanaldensr 3y ago
    That's the "genius" of the implicit marketing: label some "facts" as unfortunately inaccurate and whatever remains are perceived as accurate "facts."
- tintor 3y ago
  Cost and risk of providing inaccurate answers to election-related questions is high, so they are avoiding them.
- __loam 3y ago
  > lest you hear about inconvenient facts that aren't approved by the official government narrative. Bullshit like this is exactly why they're avoiding it.
Spivak 3y ago
I would probably make the same call, there is no universe where "Google's Gemini Beloved By All As Impartial Election Assistant" is the headline. It doesn't even matter what it says, having it at all is going to be a media shitstorm with accusations of alignment pushing narratives blah blah. The even smarter play would be to shut down the user-facing service for the 3 months leading to the election.
- Me1000 3y ago
  Exactly. This is a damned if you do damned if you don't situation. LLMs don't have predictable responses, elections can change very quickly, and it's important for Google's brand that Gemini doesn't just start making things up or speak with authority on outdated information. This is a completely reasonable safeguard against a completely foreseeable headline "Gemini agrees that [ELECTION CONSPIRACY THEORY] is true".
  - CrimsonCape 3y ago
    Wouldn't a better approach be to build AI that starts from a groundwork of intelligence? It's in the name. Build a system that can answer easy questions correctly, and be judged on % of correct completions before moving to difficult questions. Tiktok, modern food, LLMs... all sugary colorful substitutes for the real thing. We are supposed to be moving away from this empty stuff, except for major corporations that are just as guilty as the teenage perpetual Tiktok browser.
    - Me1000 3y ago
      I would argue that Google didn't want to build this product at all and that it was a market reaction to ChatGPT's success (which suffers from the exact same problem I described above). The folks at DeepMind seemed quite keen on keeping this stuff in their research labs. Whether or not you want to call an LLM an "AI" or not is really immaterial though, and more often than not just a distraction. Users have found conversational answer engine products like ChatGPT and Gemini valuable. They don't have to be perfect to provide value, but their imperfections are ripe for tarnishing the brands of long well established companies. But LLMs also have uses outside of a conversational answer engine; I for one am excited to watch them deployed in games, and also writing unit tests for code.
summerlight 3y ago
I don't care if they do some filtering or not, we can always go to the competitors. But they should make it clearly visible in the UI that it's an explicitly policy-filtered result so users won't waste their time on figuring out what's going on. Added: "I'm still learning how to answer this question." is very misleading and confusing. Instead of this, the response should be explicitly marked as policy-filtered and give the link to provide more contexts on the decision.
gnabgib 3y ago
Some discussion: [0](30 points, 2 days ago, 31 comments) [1](41 points, 1 day ago, 54 comments) [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39688590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39688590 [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39689167 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39689167
- Me1000 3y ago
  More from 34 days ago (when Gemini first launched and people noticed they were providing canned responses to election related prompts): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39313080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39313080
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ametrau 3y ago
Probably a good idea just to stay out of it.
spaceman_2020 3y ago
how long until Gemini is killed off and replaced by another AI tool with a new name? They did it with Bard. Why not again?
mindslight 3y ago
The root problem here is that technology is being sequestered and locked down to large centralized entities that can be blamed, and it doesn't help that they're intrinsically risk adverse. Information provided by web services is the company doing something, and said companies obviously don't want to be found responsible for illegal acts. So, can't say anything that might influence elections, can't say anything that might help or induce someone to kill themselves, can't say anything that might help someone avoid suffering the medical cartel or attorneys' guild, and so on. Whereas if this were software being sold/provided at an arms length, the creator would no longer be a party to its use and there would be very few theories of liability to hold its creator liable for illegal uses (without the creator explicitly warranting or encouraging it for those uses).
gmuslera 3y ago
Between a rock and a hard place. Good: Could a group create biased indexed web pages with SEO-like techniques so Gemini could had been used to affect the elections? That could put Google in hot water. Bad: Refusing to answer questions takes an active role, and that could be used by political actors to shape hoe misinformation or influencing campaigns are presented so trying to verify or ask for them will get refusals for some demographics and answers for others. Ugly: Announcing that they are doing this, so having this capability, doesn't tell what other things that can be seen as manipulation they might be doing but not announcing it, in this or another moment of time, or restricted to some people/sector/country.

24 points by gmays 3y ago

Zenul_Abidin 3y ago

It seems that Gemini is more heavily moderated/censored than other AIs such as ChatGPT.

CSMastermind 3y ago
The level of censorship going back to the Bard days has been impressive. For a company with a product solidly in 3rd maybe 4th place they're definitely choosing to handicap themselves quite a bit.

s3r3nity 3y ago

"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"...unless you need to learn about the facts and arguments for voting in important elections, lest you hear about inconvenient facts that aren't approved by the official government narrative.

_8j50 3y ago
Are you saying you want genai to influence elections using a blackbox model? Google search still exists.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
VWWHFSfQ 3y ago
> unless you need to learn about the facts and arguments for voting in important elections Nobody should be trusting an ai chat bot at this stage in the technology to give them "facts" let alone political arguments in important elections.
- nathanaldensr 3y ago
  That's the "genius" of the implicit marketing: label some "facts" as unfortunately inaccurate and whatever remains are perceived as accurate "facts."
tintor 3y ago
Cost and risk of providing inaccurate answers to election-related questions is high, so they are avoiding them.
__loam 3y ago
> lest you hear about inconvenient facts that aren't approved by the official government narrative. Bullshit like this is exactly why they're avoiding it.

Spivak 3y ago

I would probably make the same call, there is no universe where "Google's Gemini Beloved By All As Impartial Election Assistant" is the headline. It doesn't even matter what it says, having it at all is going to be a media shitstorm with accusations of alignment pushing narratives blah blah. The even smarter play would be to shut down the user-facing service for the 3 months leading to the election.

Me1000 3y ago
Exactly. This is a damned if you do damned if you don't situation. LLMs don't have predictable responses, elections can change very quickly, and it's important for Google's brand that Gemini doesn't just start making things up or speak with authority on outdated information. This is a completely reasonable safeguard against a completely foreseeable headline "Gemini agrees that [ELECTION CONSPIRACY THEORY] is true".
- CrimsonCape 3y ago
  Wouldn't a better approach be to build AI that starts from a groundwork of intelligence? It's in the name. Build a system that can answer easy questions correctly, and be judged on % of correct completions before moving to difficult questions. Tiktok, modern food, LLMs... all sugary colorful substitutes for the real thing. We are supposed to be moving away from this empty stuff, except for major corporations that are just as guilty as the teenage perpetual Tiktok browser.
  - Me1000 3y ago
    I would argue that Google didn't want to build this product at all and that it was a market reaction to ChatGPT's success (which suffers from the exact same problem I described above). The folks at DeepMind seemed quite keen on keeping this stuff in their research labs. Whether or not you want to call an LLM an "AI" or not is really immaterial though, and more often than not just a distraction. Users have found conversational answer engine products like ChatGPT and Gemini valuable. They don't have to be perfect to provide value, but their imperfections are ripe for tarnishing the brands of long well established companies. But LLMs also have uses outside of a conversational answer engine; I for one am excited to watch them deployed in games, and also writing unit tests for code.

summerlight 3y ago

I don't care if they do some filtering or not, we can always go to the competitors. But they should make it clearly visible in the UI that it's an explicitly policy-filtered result so users won't waste their time on figuring out what's going on. Added: "I'm still learning how to answer this question." is very misleading and confusing. Instead of this, the response should be explicitly marked as policy-filtered and give the link to provide more contexts on the decision.

gnabgib 3y ago

Some discussion: [0](30 points, 2 days ago, 31 comments) [1](41 points, 1 day ago, 54 comments) [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39688590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39688590 [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39689167 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39689167

Me1000 3y ago
More from 34 days ago (when Gemini first launched and people noticed they were providing canned responses to election related prompts): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39313080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39313080

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ametrau 3y ago

Probably a good idea just to stay out of it.

spaceman_2020 3y ago

how long until Gemini is killed off and replaced by another AI tool with a new name? They did it with Bard. Why not again?

mindslight 3y ago

The root problem here is that technology is being sequestered and locked down to large centralized entities that can be blamed, and it doesn't help that they're intrinsically risk adverse. Information provided by web services is the company doing something, and said companies obviously don't want to be found responsible for illegal acts. So, can't say anything that might influence elections, can't say anything that might help or induce someone to kill themselves, can't say anything that might help someone avoid suffering the medical cartel or attorneys' guild, and so on. Whereas if this were software being sold/provided at an arms length, the creator would no longer be a party to its use and there would be very few theories of liability to hold its creator liable for illegal uses (without the creator explicitly warranting or encouraging it for those uses).

gmuslera 3y ago

Between a rock and a hard place. Good: Could a group create biased indexed web pages with SEO-like techniques so Gemini could had been used to affect the elections? That could put Google in hot water. Bad: Refusing to answer questions takes an active role, and that could be used by political actors to shape hoe misinformation or influencing campaigns are presented so trying to verify or ask for them will get refusals for some demographics and answers for others. Ugly: Announcing that they are doing this, so having this capability, doesn't tell what other things that can be seen as manipulation they might be doing but not announcing it, in this or another moment of time, or restricted to some people/sector/country.