7 ms·

Google scales back AI search answers after it told users to eat glue

45 points by ludovicianul 2y ago

lionkor 2y ago
https://archive.is/lcRob https://archive.is/lcRob
skilled 2y ago
Official post from Google, AI Overviews: About last week (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40530833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40530833) - (48 comments)
mjburgess 2y ago
> In February, the company blocked users from making images of people with its AI image tool after conservative commentators accused it of anti-White bias. > Gerrit De Vynck is a tech reporter for The Washington Post. He writes about Google, artificial intelligence and the algorithms that increasingly shape society. I would hope Washington Post's reporter on AI and Society would be more aware that the issue with generating black slavers, or asian Nazis isnt an "anti-White" bias, nor does it principally concern "conservatives". One would imagine certain right-wing extremists in this case being pretty delighted with such caricatures of history. More and more I despair at the very possibility of reading anything online which isn't largely propaganda.
- 123yawaworht456 2y ago
  besides, once they figure out how to avoid prompt injecting mandatory diversity into context with negative connotations, the system will be back, merrily generating black samurais, asian vikings and native american romans
  - seanhunter 2y ago
    Are you very sure there weren't any black samurais historically? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasuke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasuke
- mannykannot 2y ago
  Neither this article nor the linked one on this issue suggests that Gerrit De Vynck personally believes that the issue with generating black slavers or Asian Nazis is an "anti-White" bias. What De Vynck is actually claiming here is that Google blocked the ability to generate images of people on Gemini after some users accused it of anti-White bias, so it is a claim about the nature of the specific complaints which prompted Google's reversal of policy. I don't know if this is correct, but if it were not, that would be a different issue than the one you are claiming exists here.
  - mjburgess 2y ago
    When you say, "Google did X because of Y" you mean that it did X because of Y. Google did not prevent people from generating these images because anyone accused it of "Anti-White Bias". It did so because it was generating pictures of black nazis. The author's framing this issue as one born of a conservative grievance is just a piece of the author's propaganda. Namely, they clearly believe that since Google's policy was explicitly ideologically leftwing in its political aims, and since that policy failed, it must have been some Conservatives who did it. ie., it is an example of the author unable, or unwilling, to mention the failure of this project on its own terms. ie., that google's output was even more racist because of its aims, not inspite of them. The author would have readers believe "it was the Conservatives!" rather than engage with the real explanation which implicates his the failure of his own world view. It would be unworthy of remark for a generic journalist to be so poorly informed, but as a person respsonible for covering these issues, it comes across as incredibly childish and manipulative
    - mannykannot 2y ago
      You are claiming knowledge of Google's true motives for this change without evidence. More importantly, making allegations about Gerrit De Vynck's motives, mindset and competence without evidence, while De Vynck presents evidence in the articles - not enough evidence to remove all doubt (newspapers are not academic papers), but certainly more than you are presenting here. The style of your posts gives the impression that you think your allegations are either self-evident facts or follow from them, but whether or not that is how you feel about them, I'm not buying it without better evidence - and if anything, ending with "it comes across as incredibly childish and manipulative" makes it seem less likely that your conclusions can be supported by dispassionate reasoning from objective facts.
blinding-streak 2y ago
All of big tech is struggling with this: https://sherwood.news/tech/microsofts-copilot-ai-search-chat-gpt-is-making-up-fake-vladimir-putin-quotes/ https://sherwood.news/tech/microsofts-copilot-ai-search-chat...
- beretguy 2y ago
  Kagi is not struggling.
- gmerc 2y ago
  Perplexity managed to do it in a way that feels like it improves on Google search (not that it’s a high bar by now) Google managed to do the opposite.
faizshah 2y ago
Does anyone know if they were using RAG for it?
- PartiallyTyped 2y ago
  Seems like that or some variant because it is quoting, verbatim, answers (read: comments) from reddit.
  - faizshah 2y ago
    I guess what I’m trying to understand is if they were grounding the AI Overview with the snippets from the google search results then how would the AI overview generate a summary that was that semantically different from the source texts?
surfingdino 2y ago
I turned off the AI version of Google. It's quite snappy and useful now
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
estebarb 2y ago
In Spanish, we have a saying: "Perfect is the enemy of good." Personally, I didn't think the generative results were that bad. What I feel is that Google, in its quest for perfection, will never use LLMs in its products. Advisory services in health and law are out of reach for a significant percentage of the world's population. Here, the preference is to avoid benefiting the majority of the planet to prevent a small number of erroneous responses that any human with common sense should be able to avoid.
- gmerc 2y ago
  They were worse than the thing they replaced.
- justinclift 2y ago
  > in its quest for perfection It's hard to reconcile that phrase being applied to Google of all places. (!)
- tivert 2y ago
  > In Spanish, we have a saying: "Perfect is the enemy of good." It's a saying in English too, frequently formulated as advice: "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." > Here, the preference is to avoid benefiting the majority of the planet to prevent a small number of erroneous responses that any human with common sense should be able to avoid. The glue example isn't the problem, it's just an obvious expression of it. The real problem is when it does the same thing, but it's not so obvious. And I can think of at least one situation like that: mixing cleaning products. I could totally see an LLM, say, advising a user to mix bleach and vinegar to get out a stain, and the user actually doing it.
beretguy 2y ago
So “eating glue” was the final straw.
- tmaly 2y ago
  I was pretty sure PizzaHut used some form of plastic in their pizza at one point.
Havoc 2y ago
Where will I get my info on recommend daily stones eating allowance now?
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
[dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40530833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40530833

45 points by ludovicianul 2y ago

https://archive.is/lcRob https://archive.is/lcRob

Official post from Google, AI Overviews: About last week (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40530833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40530833) - (48 comments)

mjburgess 2y ago

> In February, the company blocked users from making images of people with its AI image tool after conservative commentators accused it of anti-White bias. > Gerrit De Vynck is a tech reporter for The Washington Post. He writes about Google, artificial intelligence and the algorithms that increasingly shape society. I would hope Washington Post's reporter on AI and Society would be more aware that the issue with generating black slavers, or asian Nazis isnt an "anti-White" bias, nor does it principally concern "conservatives". One would imagine certain right-wing extremists in this case being pretty delighted with such caricatures of history. More and more I despair at the very possibility of reading anything online which isn't largely propaganda.

123yawaworht456 2y ago
besides, once they figure out how to avoid prompt injecting mandatory diversity into context with negative connotations, the system will be back, merrily generating black samurais, asian vikings and native american romans
- seanhunter 2y ago
  Are you very sure there weren't any black samurais historically? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasuke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasuke
mannykannot 2y ago
Neither this article nor the linked one on this issue suggests that Gerrit De Vynck personally believes that the issue with generating black slavers or Asian Nazis is an "anti-White" bias. What De Vynck is actually claiming here is that Google blocked the ability to generate images of people on Gemini after some users accused it of anti-White bias, so it is a claim about the nature of the specific complaints which prompted Google's reversal of policy. I don't know if this is correct, but if it were not, that would be a different issue than the one you are claiming exists here.
- mjburgess 2y ago
  When you say, "Google did X because of Y" you mean that it did X because of Y. Google did not prevent people from generating these images because anyone accused it of "Anti-White Bias". It did so because it was generating pictures of black nazis. The author's framing this issue as one born of a conservative grievance is just a piece of the author's propaganda. Namely, they clearly believe that since Google's policy was explicitly ideologically leftwing in its political aims, and since that policy failed, it must have been some Conservatives who did it. ie., it is an example of the author unable, or unwilling, to mention the failure of this project on its own terms. ie., that google's output was even more racist because of its aims, not inspite of them. The author would have readers believe "it was the Conservatives!" rather than engage with the real explanation which implicates his the failure of his own world view. It would be unworthy of remark for a generic journalist to be so poorly informed, but as a person respsonible for covering these issues, it comes across as incredibly childish and manipulative
  - mannykannot 2y ago
    You are claiming knowledge of Google's true motives for this change without evidence. More importantly, making allegations about Gerrit De Vynck's motives, mindset and competence without evidence, while De Vynck presents evidence in the articles - not enough evidence to remove all doubt (newspapers are not academic papers), but certainly more than you are presenting here. The style of your posts gives the impression that you think your allegations are either self-evident facts or follow from them, but whether or not that is how you feel about them, I'm not buying it without better evidence - and if anything, ending with "it comes across as incredibly childish and manipulative" makes it seem less likely that your conclusions can be supported by dispassionate reasoning from objective facts.

blinding-streak 2y ago

All of big tech is struggling with this: https://sherwood.news/tech/microsofts-copilot-ai-search-chat-gpt-is-making-up-fake-vladimir-putin-quotes/ https://sherwood.news/tech/microsofts-copilot-ai-search-chat...

beretguy 2y ago
Kagi is not struggling.
gmerc 2y ago
Perplexity managed to do it in a way that feels like it improves on Google search (not that it’s a high bar by now) Google managed to do the opposite.

faizshah 2y ago

Does anyone know if they were using RAG for it?

PartiallyTyped 2y ago
Seems like that or some variant because it is quoting, verbatim, answers (read: comments) from reddit.
- faizshah 2y ago
  I guess what I’m trying to understand is if they were grounding the AI Overview with the snippets from the google search results then how would the AI overview generate a summary that was that semantically different from the source texts?

surfingdino 2y ago

I turned off the AI version of Google. It's quite snappy and useful now

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

estebarb 2y ago

In Spanish, we have a saying: "Perfect is the enemy of good." Personally, I didn't think the generative results were that bad. What I feel is that Google, in its quest for perfection, will never use LLMs in its products. Advisory services in health and law are out of reach for a significant percentage of the world's population. Here, the preference is to avoid benefiting the majority of the planet to prevent a small number of erroneous responses that any human with common sense should be able to avoid.

gmerc 2y ago
They were worse than the thing they replaced.
justinclift 2y ago
> in its quest for perfection It's hard to reconcile that phrase being applied to Google of all places. (!)
tivert 2y ago
> In Spanish, we have a saying: "Perfect is the enemy of good." It's a saying in English too, frequently formulated as advice: "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." > Here, the preference is to avoid benefiting the majority of the planet to prevent a small number of erroneous responses that any human with common sense should be able to avoid. The glue example isn't the problem, it's just an obvious expression of it. The real problem is when it does the same thing, but it's not so obvious. And I can think of at least one situation like that: mixing cleaning products. I could totally see an LLM, say, advising a user to mix bleach and vinegar to get out a stain, and the user actually doing it.

beretguy 2y ago

So “eating glue” was the final straw.

tmaly 2y ago
I was pretty sure PizzaHut used some form of plastic in their pizza at one point.

Havoc 2y ago

Where will I get my info on recommend daily stones eating allowance now?

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

[dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40530833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40530833