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cursory look around before first hallucinating something completely false, and when corrected the first time giving me outdated information.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!
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.
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.
I don't understand how this isn't considered as active malice. Like purposefully outputting random stuff. Any other sort of computer system would get lot more flak than these are getting.
Throughout my career, I've almost always been close enough to the user that I hear about it quickly when something is wrong. It's a tough problem that so many Google engineers are typically so far removed from end users. Or maybe it's just that a small part of the company has long subsidized the rest of the employees to the point that it doesn't matter how good their work is because they'll get paid anyway.
The engineers are pressured to significantly reduce "dependencies" for projects. Anything that could become risk or create friction is dramatically less appetizing.
Simply because of how many people that *must* agree with your proposal. Getting all the relevant tech leads, some you have never heard of or ever spoken with, to agree on a proposal for your team's project is a nightmare.
So you keep it as simple and agreeable as possible. Given the circumstances, it makes sense as one of the engineers. It's fairly fine advice in general wherever you work, but it just haunts all the work you do at Google in particular. Nothing gets done otherwise.
If you have a dependency that can be dropped from an engineering perspective, that's the route the 9 leads reviewing your design doc will take:
"Let's iterate and start with just the basics (no user testing)", "let's get this working and user test in a later phase", "I think this problem is obvious enough we don't need to consult with users about it."
I worked in Ads Integrity at the time, and for one of my projects I was concerned how it would impact the manual reviewers. Then I learned I couldn't talk with them, only by proxy through another person if we really had to. And that proxy takes time, so...
Very insightful. I've worked in only one company of Google's size, but it was a vastly different industry. I personally never got to speak with a user on a massive internal application my team worked on for years. :)
Right. In a global financial services organization, a strategic analysis app used by thousands of internal users was pretty high touch. SME business analysts would sit with the users to make sure they liked it and had no trouble. Every user generates significant revenue. Worldwide B2C is a different ball game, and Google barely makes money off of each individual user.
Hugsbox · · focus · HN ↗
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!
jswelker · · focus · HN ↗
tapoxi · · focus · HN ↗
What the fuck?
Ekaros · · focus · HN ↗
stephenhuey · · focus · HN ↗
lanyard-textile · · focus · HN ↗
The engineers are pressured to significantly reduce "dependencies" for projects. Anything that could become risk or create friction is dramatically less appetizing.
Simply because of how many people that *must* agree with your proposal. Getting all the relevant tech leads, some you have never heard of or ever spoken with, to agree on a proposal for your team's project is a nightmare.
So you keep it as simple and agreeable as possible. Given the circumstances, it makes sense as one of the engineers. It's fairly fine advice in general wherever you work, but it just haunts all the work you do at Google in particular. Nothing gets done otherwise.
If you have a dependency that can be dropped from an engineering perspective, that's the route the 9 leads reviewing your design doc will take:
"Let's iterate and start with just the basics (no user testing)", "let's get this working and user test in a later phase", "I think this problem is obvious enough we don't need to consult with users about it."
I worked in Ads Integrity at the time, and for one of my projects I was concerned how it would impact the manual reviewers. Then I learned I couldn't talk with them, only by proxy through another person if we really had to. And that proxy takes time, so...
stephenhuey · · focus · HN ↗
lanyard-textile · · focus · HN ↗
But without it... :)
stephenhuey · · focus · HN ↗