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When did Google get so weird?

2011 points · 1123 comments · sancho-panza

  1. Hugsbox · · focus · HN ↗
    Yesterday I tried to google "can the Halifax Wanderers still make the CPL playoffs?"

    So obviously what appears right at the top is the AI summary, which told me "they've already secured their #4 position and made the playoffs". I knew this wasn't true, and I guess I could have just scrolled down a bit further and found my answer but now I was curious.

    So I said "that's not true, they're still #5, what I want to know is _could they still make the playoffs_"

    It says they've got an upcoming game against Ottawa, and if they win their chances are good. That game has already taken place, so I correct it again and finally I get a reasonable answer.

    My question is: what's the point of the AI in the search engine if it itself isn't going to use the search engine first before answering? Like, I can't wrap my head around that. The answer is on the same page as its hallucination. It could have done a cursory look around before first hallucinating something completely false, and when corrected the first time giving me outdated information. It's meant to be A SEARCH ENGINE!

    1. beloch · · focus · HN ↗
      This is similar to how, not too long ago, LLM's had extreme difficulty counting the number of letters in some words. LLM's don't "think" or "reason" in the normal definition of those terms. They can do some pretty amazing things, but still screw up basic things like telling you something that is obviously wrong and contradicts the top search results.

      LLM's, in their present stage of development, are sort of like a crack-addled idiot savant. Sometimes they are obviously insane, and sometimes they seem quite cogent, but you must never trust them implicitly. This may be why they are so difficult to constrain. You could give them something equivalent to the laws of robotics, but following laws requires thought processes they simply don't have.

      I'm actually sort of amazed Google doesn't make people accept some kind of butt-covering EULA and post disclaimers about the inaccuracy of results before even showing you their AI's output. Are they not being sued over this kind of thing?

      1. VCFundedGenYer · · focus · HN ↗
        LLMs still can't do math nor count letters in words. Nothing has changed there.
        1. fasterik · · focus · HN ↗
          "LLMs can't do math" is a pretty hot take in September 2026.
          1. tjwebbnorfolk · · focus · HN ↗
            They can do math but not arithmetic
            1. fasterik · · focus · HN ↗
              I just asked ChatGPT 5.6 Sol (High) to multiply two 4-digit numbers, and two 7-digit numbers without external help. It got both right.

              <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chatgpt.com&#x2F;share&#x2F;6ab9a0da-fdd0-83e8-a62d-f0cdeb54db48" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chatgpt.com&#x2F;share&#x2F;6ab9a0da-fdd0-83e8-a62d-f0cdeb54db...

              I&#x27;m sure it still makes mistakes, but saying it can&#x27;t do arithmetic is just false.

              1. tremon · · focus · HN ↗
                Are you sure it honoured your stipulation of &quot;without external help&quot;? For all we know, it hacked its way into Wolfram Alpha and got the result from there.
                1. jmillikin · · focus · HN ↗
                  Arithmetic is well within the capabilities of even small local models: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;21tzGlN.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;21tzGlN.png
              2. guelo · · focus · HN ↗

                [dead]

              3. Xirdus · · focus · HN ↗
                I tried prompt &quot;6379 times 3875&quot; and it was off by exactly 1000 on first try, and correct on second. 0% success rate, sample size of 1.
                1. dcrazy · · focus · HN ↗
                  Isn’t that a 50% success rate with a sample size of 2?
                  1. Xirdus · · focus · HN ↗
                    AFAIK you can&#x27;t combine results from multiple studies this way? But I&#x27;m not an academic.
                  2. Xirdus · · focus · HN ↗
                    Not really, since it wasn&#x27;t a fresh context with a fresh question. I just told it it&#x27;s wrong in the same chat session and it corrected it there.
              4. amluto · · focus · HN ↗
                I would be nice to see what the (unencrypted) reasoning trace is like. Multiplication with scratch paper is not particularly difficult.
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