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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cursory look around before first hallucinating something completely false, and when corrected the first time giving me outdated information.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. jswelker · · focus · HN ↗
      I similarly noticed Gemini absolutely refuses to look at a url when I give it one and will instead just hallucinate based on what it thinks the url is. Here I am assuming Google will have the best web capabilities in its AI.
      1. tapoxi · · focus · HN ↗
        I searched for something, it told me that according to a YouTube video, the entire point of my search was wrong. I asked it for the source, I watched the video, it never made the claims Gemini hallucinated. I asked again and it claimed it scrubbed the video and found the point it made multiple times. I said those timecodes were wrong and it admitted it couldn't actually parse videos and just guessed.

        What the fuck?

        1. Hugsbox · · focus · HN ↗
          Same experience with the interaction I described in my comment... after I finally got the correct answer, I asked where it got the faulty information from. It said it had just simply fabricated it. That's actively worse than just saying "I don't know", for something that's sold to us as an easy way to look up information.
          1. MisterMunchkin · · focus · HN ↗
            These models are incapable of saying they don't know, because they have no concept of knowing. They simply predict the next word which is most likely.
            1. ryandrake · · focus · HN ↗
              Maybe it's because they are trained on Internet comments, and the most rare thing to find on the Internet is someone admitting they don't know something.
              1. mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
                But if they had been trained on comments saying "I don't know", they'd probably act the same as they do now but they'd treat "I don't know" as the answer.
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