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Sampath Pāṇini ®

This is a real result in Google.

The term #googling is going to take on new connotations, and they don’t care.

117 comments
Jeen

@paninid I'm all for bashing Google, but in this case I'm not sure what you're complaining about to be honest. The result seems spot on given what you asked for.

INTENTIONALLY blank

@paninid @abrokenjester

I've been running a "catch the AI" contest at the library. The goal being to gameify learning about LLMs/generative AI. It's been hit and miss in terms of participants except for one boy who enthusiastically answers every new challenge and always gets it right.

I've never actually seen the kid, but those who have say he's really happy the library is "doing something so important". It's for adults and teens. Anyhow, I like doing it, if only for the one die hard fan that fills out the slip every week without fail.

And it's also gotten people to check out some books about critical thinking, machine learning, data science, and AI on the adjacent shelf.

I keep hoping one day I'll walk in and see the box filled with slips, but it's still nice to see my one fan hanging in there 😂

@paninid @abrokenjester

I've been running a "catch the AI" contest at the library. The goal being to gameify learning about LLMs/generative AI. It's been hit and miss in terms of participants except for one boy who enthusiastically answers every new challenge and always gets it right.

I've never actually seen the kid, but those who have say he's really happy the library is "doing something so important". It's for adults and teens. Anyhow, I like doing it, if only for the one die hard fan that fills...

Jordan Biserkov

@migmit @IntentionallyBLANK @paninid @abrokenjester
It takes one to spot one. And it helps them improve their detection evasion techniques. While reassuring humans there's nothing to worry about.

INTENTIONALLY blank

@migmit @paninid @abrokenjester
We'd have bigger problems, then, because that would mean the AI has taken human form, walking undetected among us, and has decent penmanship.

INTENTIONALLY blank

@migmit @paninid @abrokenjester
True, could be three monkeys in a trenchcoat for all I know. 😉

Mostly, it's that I just don't work on that side. I'm on the grown up side. Other people have seen and interacted with the kid, so I'm reasonably certain he's neither a bot nor three monkeys in a trenchcoat. Not that I have anything against monkeys or trenchcoats.

Ricardo Carvalho

@IntentionallyBLANK woah nice! Care to share more details about it? How is the dynamics, sources, prompts etc

INTENTIONALLY blank

@rabc

That might be a lot, even for my long-winded self, but basically this gist of it is to make an article or image (or image paired with an article) and have people try to sort out which one has mistakes or "tells" that it might be AI generated.

I put a disclaimer on it that I'm actively trying to get the bots to give bad information re: the articles. Although, sometimes I don't need to, the LLMs are either working with out of date material or tend to hallucinate on certain topics.

The real and not real items set out for a certain amount of time. There are slips for each one asking which image for each round was AI or real with an open question asking people "how they knew it was AI or knew it was real".

After that I post which AI was used, the original prompt, and information about how AI works (in simple terms) and remind people to always verify sources, ask questions about what they're reading based on logic. Rinse repeat. 👍🏼

@rabc

That might be a lot, even for my long-winded self, but basically this gist of it is to make an article or image (or image paired with an article) and have people try to sort out which one has mistakes or "tells" that it might be AI generated.

I put a disclaimer on it that I'm actively trying to get the bots to give bad information re: the articles. Although, sometimes I don't need to, the LLMs are either working with out of date material or tend to hallucinate on certain topics.

INTENTIONALLY blank

@rabc
I try to use a mix of generative AIs--not just ChatGPT--Llama/Meta, Claude/Anthropic, Gemini/Google, Adobe AI "generative shape fill", DALL-E, Mid journey, etc. I stay away from political (or hot button issues) and try to stick with science/technology topics, biographies, and the like. I also set out books on critical thinking, AI, and data science. Plus I try to provide links to reputable sources discussing AI and give people ideas for things they can do to test/evaluate AIs performance. For making pictures, I suggest they have AI make signs with lettering, images involving hands, the inner workings of machines or simple machines they may be familiar enough with to notice problems. For written content, I recommend they take a topic, person, or fandom they know a lot about and ask highly detailed questions that a moderately knowledgeable person would know if they were comfortable in the topic, etc.

@rabc
I try to use a mix of generative AIs--not just ChatGPT--Llama/Meta, Claude/Anthropic, Gemini/Google, Adobe AI "generative shape fill", DALL-E, Mid journey, etc. I stay away from political (or hot button issues) and try to stick with science/technology topics, biographies, and the like. I also set out books on critical thinking, AI, and data science. Plus I try to provide links to reputable sources discussing AI and give people ideas for things they can do to test/evaluate AIs performance....

Jeen

@tomjennings @paninid if you search for "austria hungary space" a result showing a fictional description of Austria-Hungary in space is arguably just as accurate as independent factual results about Austria in space and Hungary in spcace. Ymmv.

Andreas K

@abrokenjester @tomjennings @paninid

The problem is the AI summary on top.

The results below make it more or less clear that they are about a fictional game.

The AI summary is misleading by leaving out any hint that it summarizes fiction.

And that is basically the issue with "AI" summaries. They don't get the context. They are convincing sounding text manipulation without understanding.

(Irrelevant fun fact: we did have a "real" colony in Asia for less than a decade.)

Ash_Crow

@yacc143 @abrokenjester @tomjennings @paninid it's a "featured snippet", an excerpt from a relevant page. Google has had that for years, it's not the same as the new "AI Overview" bullshit.

Andreas K

@abrokenjester

Plesse note that humans get these clues often from subtle things like in which website we find a certain text, potentially even the URL. Or what other links are offered on the page.

So in a way the summary might be a perfect example of LLM AI art its best, being used totally wrong.

It's a bit like my personal position on computer translations: they are generally not good enough to translate something and hand it out to unsuspecting victims.

@tomjennings @paninid

:blahaj: Why Not Zoidberg? 🦑

@abrokenjester @paninid The problem is that Google AI has repteatedly shown an inability to NOT post nonsense (or in this case from a game wiki) posts wholesale as search results.

Yes, the result on top is from a Steampunk wiki. The problem is that it is on top, and from a steampunk wiki.

jonoleth

@WhyNotZoidberg @abrokenjester @paninid if you search for a fictional concept, why wouldn't said fictional concept be the top result? Showing anything about modern Austria OR Hungary in space would be less accurate

:blahaj: Why Not Zoidberg? 🦑

@jonoleth @abrokenjester @paninid

Because

1. Not clearly marking it ON TOP as Fiction automatically spreads disinformation and anti-facts

2. I disagree. Even if the top post would just be a once sentence "The Empire of Austra-Hungary ceased to exist before space travel was made possible"

3. The search is without the "-" and without the word "empire" meaning it might as well be "Austria, Hungary In Space".

In short, facts should always be on top, ads should be obliterated, and AI sucks.

Old Man in the Shoe

@WhyNotZoidberg @jonoleth @abrokenjester @paninid

How do you wish, without AI, that Google classifies the internet into fiction and non-fiction?

The screenshot isn't even of AI. It's of the knowledge graph. Noticed it doesn't say AI anywhere on it? Google has done this for years.

:blahaj: Why Not Zoidberg? 🦑

@jenzi @jonoleth @abrokenjester @paninid

The way desktop Google does it is better at least, it shows the source on top, which is the most important thing.

As for classifying... Seeing the track record of public not exceptionally specialized AI (like in search for cancer cells) I wouldn't trust an AI classifying anything, to be honest. It would be worse than having it non-classified.

Old Man in the Shoe

@WhyNotZoidberg @jonoleth @abrokenjester @paninid Sorry you wanted the world's information to be classified into what's true and what's not true. It seemed simple when you suggested it.

:blahaj: Why Not Zoidberg? 🦑

@jenzi

Disinformation is the biggest threat to humanity as we speak.

Even if this particular search result wasn't a result of Googles abysmal AI, Google has admitted publicly that there is no way of making it stop making things up and present it as fact... and they are FINE with that.

Old Man in the Shoe

@WhyNotZoidberg Thanks for repeating that to me instead of backing your original position that Google should be the arbiter of truth.

María Arias de Reyna

@jenzi @WhyNotZoidberg No one said that in this thread except you .

What everyone here claims is that without a clear source, there is no way a user can distinguish between truth and fiction. Google now presents results as paragraphs that looks like they are valid answers but there's no way of knowing if they are true or not.

It is not Google who has to be the arbiter of truth. It is the user. Google is removing that possibility.

María Arias de Reyna

@jenzi @WhyNotZoidberg @jonoleth @abrokenjester @paninid
How to classify between fiction and non fiction? The same way all searching engines do: showing the source and allowing the user to research the source.

And no, Google hasn't done this for years. The fact that you are confusing the summary some search engines do taking information from reliable sources like Wikipedia with this kind of output only proves further the point that this kind of AI is not suitable/well trained for this use case

jonoleth

@WhyNotZoidberg @abrokenjester @paninid this is less "Google's new AI initiatives suck" and more "Google should do way more than they ever have or even could do reliably"

Sampath Pāṇini ®

@jonoleth @WhyNotZoidberg @abrokenjester

I find it interesting that the original post didn’t mention or reference “AI” at all…that was just y’all being irritated by something that was implied 🤷🏻‍♂️

jonoleth

@paninid @WhyNotZoidberg @abrokenjester I was thinking of this post

mastodon.social/@WhyNotZoidber

but that's a fair point. Guess AI is just hot on everyone's mind when it comes to Google's many screwups right now.

:blahaj: Why Not Zoidberg? 🦑

@jonoleth @paninid @abrokenjester Heh. Definitely.

AI is NFTs on steroids, but it infects everything, not just techbro wallets.

Peter

@paninid

Man, they've been playing that one close to their collective chest! I had no idea! 🚀

Johannes Ernst

@paninid I had to try this myself, and indeed! Who needs political serial liars if you have Google?!?

David Marshall

@paninid

#googling : To seek out new lies, and new disinformation.

earthling

@paninid

Same prompt in Duckduckgo, top 3 results:

Tor Iver Wilhelmsen

@paninid Wait, they are presenting the world of the Space: 1889 tabletop RPG as if it was real?

Martijn Vos

@toriver @paninid

LLMs have no concept of reality, only of text. So they can't really distinguish between reality, satire and fiction.

Martin Christopher

@toriver @paninid I don't know how machine learning would be able to distinguish a history source from a historical fiction source.
Or political news from political satire.

Milan Zimmermann

@paninid This is a great find.

I get a better result from Perplexity AI - better in the sense it does not mention the steampunk fiction - but it also mixes things in a bit weird way.

I suppose the problem with both 'engines' do not have ability to realize the human context (theory of mind?). They are mostly dumb search results combinators.

Peter Jakobs ⛵

@paninid the Austrians will certainly not dispute this story but point to it, whenever anybody asks.

Gilgamesch

@paninid I think the results are accurate, since austria-hungary existed from 1867 to 1918.
AI may hallucinate, but people still have to
a) ask the right questions and most important
b) check the sources (which are very obviously displayed under the top answer).
The last one does apply for every internet search and people couldn't do it before AI. It just made things a bit worse.

Tor Iver Wilhelmsen

@Gilgamesch @paninid so the user has to adapt to the technology in order for it not to lie? Sound like something that is pretty useless.

Gilgamesch

@toriver @paninid But the technology doesn't lie in this particular case. Austria-Hungary obviously never went to space, so it gives you a search result from a very popular, thus very "SEO-friendly", steampunk fantasy site.
I'll never forget what a friend of mine said to me in Elementary School (!) almost 30 years ago:
"A computer is only as intelligent as the person sitting in front of it."
We as a species need more media competence and thus source checking.

Gilgamesch

@toriver @paninid For example this is the answer google gives me, but I'm not logged into my google account. Plus I'm using privacy tools like ublock, cookie destroyers and noscript. A search result can be influenced by a lot of things. But these are the parameters one has to know, if using a technology.

Gilgamesch

@alexshendi @toriver @paninid Well maybe, but in this case no. Look what I get when I just use a conjunction.
If you don't know what you are looking for, how should a search engine know?

Bjørnar 🇧🇻

@Gilgamesch @toriver
Search engines aren't marketed for and used only by people who already know what they're searching for though. One major use for your average Joe is to check if a thing you just read or was told is true. Sure, the number of people who can't spot this one is low, but this is now a risk for any search, and it's getting worse, not better.

Gilgamesch

@btuftin @toriver Of course they aren't. That's why you have to educate people. And I'm not saying that it's not getting worse with "AI". It is, because you don't have access to the source of the "knowledge".
I'm just saying, that this particular example isn't what it means, when someone says "google's getting worse". Plus, the source is right there. Who says he didn't look exactly for this steampunk setting?

zecma

@paninid Austria-Hungary was an empire two centuries ago. Were you looking for its space program? If you were looking for actual space programs of Austria and Hungary, wouldn’t it be better to search separately for each country?

m3t00🌎

@paninid
my 8a keeps sneaking in links to AI in places likely to be touched by accident. It opens and begs me to ask it some bs and I have to close it. Not since MS used to beg people to use IE and Bing, have I been so annoyed by a monopoly trying desperately to be defacto relevant. Many will fall for their ruse and be laughed at until finally they give in and try to assimilate the popular open-source alternative. Are we there yet? Are we there yet? not yet. not yet. keep sucking G. force it on the gullible masses. they'll come around

@paninid
my 8a keeps sneaking in links to AI in places likely to be touched by accident. It opens and begs me to ask it some bs and I have to close it. Not since MS used to beg people to use IE and Bing, have I been so annoyed by a monopoly trying desperately to be defacto relevant. Many will fall for their ruse and be laughed at until finally they give in and try to assimilate the popular open-source alternative. Are we there yet? Are we there yet? not yet. not yet. keep sucking G. force it on...

Mackaj

@paninid

If you were a member of that Steampunk fandom you'd be super happy with that search result. 😄

Seriously though, that's just a page snippet from the highest ranking match for that query. It's not from their AI engine.

xs4me2

@paninid

The problem is everything is just data, fiction and lies are too…

Paul H

@paninid

"No one would have believed, in the last years of the 19th Century..."

Niels Chr. Nielsen

@paninid IMHO Google should be used as a keyword search engine, not a fact checker. If fantasy is written, fantasy is what will be found.

Gary Houston

@paninid search for "2001 in space" and you mostly get stuff about some old movie ... regardless of the search engine.

patter

@paninid Google: we can invent it for you, wholesale

Ash_Crow

@patterfloof @paninid but Google is not inventing anything here? It's giving results from a fictional work that features Austria-Hungary in space, which seems to me the most logical kind of results for that query.

Stéphane Bortzmeyer

@Ash_Crow @patterfloof @paninid Indeed. There are many things to criticize in Google but, here, there is nothing wrong.

Prufrax

@paninid looks to me like a totally normal result of a query about anything fictional. Its not trying to pass it off as reality as the nature of the quoted sources makes quite clear. A problematic result would be if their 'AI' results tried to list this as the first mission into space without context.

adaddinsane (Steve Turnbull)

@paninid

This is not an AI response, this is a match to your query.

Austria-Hungary never had an actual space program, but there is a steampunk fiction match.

It gave you exactly the right response - you can literally see the source. It's right there.

Yes, Google AI overviews are generally utter shit, they do not supply the source. And this is not that.

*You* need to learn the difference.

Martin Gleadow

@adaddinsane @paninid the OP did not blame or mention AI. That Google's once lauded algorithm is presenting this as the highlighted result however is problematic, as it demonstrates the general case of automated knowledge curation being unable to tell fact from fiction.

If this is the top result then so be it, but the presentation of fact by a "trusted" source through the showing of the excerpt is problematic.

FWIW I don't get the same result. I get useful things like austria-in-space.at/

@adaddinsane @paninid the OP did not blame or mention AI. That Google's once lauded algorithm is presenting this as the highlighted result however is problematic, as it demonstrates the general case of automated knowledge curation being unable to tell fact from fiction.

If this is the top result then so be it, but the presentation of fact by a "trusted" source through the showing of the excerpt is problematic.

cd ~

@adaddinsane @paninid Fact and fiction used to be very different categories. The lines are getting blurry these days, but not in this case.
The search result itself is fine and exactly what you would expect. I can determine the context by looking at the source. If I can't: My problem.
Condensing this fictional concept via AI without context making it sound factual is a clear error.

GP

@paninid it is! Dammit the whole thing is going to shite

Martin Vogel

@paninid
That’s totally wrong. The rocket was steam-powered.
@trendytoots

#googling

Tom Pesch

@paninid Googling just got much more interesting

dstu

@paninid I used to work on this search feature at Google. I don't work at Google anymore.

There is a line between "information retrieval machine" and "wish fulfillment machine" that Google Search crossed some time ago. There were too many incentives (growth, more user eyeballs if you tell people what they want to hear or entertain them) for it not to.

Frank Bennett

@paninid For the many, many people responding that this is a good top match for the query, try entering it in DuckDuckGo and see what happens. The terms are broken out, and you get a string of matches for recent Austrian space initiatives and Hungarian astronauts. That's what I would expect from a search engine. If I want to peg it to the 19th century or the Austro-Hungarian Empire, there are syntax tweaks I can use to do that, but that should be on me.

bituur esztreym

@paninid
google ain't a search engine anymore, it's a growth engine.. #prplXprpgnd

Theriac

@paninid@mastodon.world that or someone is going to retroactively try to claim territory on Mars

Latte macchiato :blobcoffee: :ablobcat_longlong:

@paninid@mastodon.world This is really just a bad query. It returns a fitting result, though not to something you want.

I can't even really tell what you're asking for. Austria-Hungary stopped existing in 1918, before any space programs, and you can't just ask for two countries space programs at once.

"Space travel by country" would probably get you what you want.

jacmb

@paninid googling is becoming a dice roll on AI bamboozling

Pratik Patel

@paninid What was the search term that yielded that result?

C.

@paninid

@lauren (who has deep connections inside Google and has worked with them) has been lambasting these "AI" summaries in search results since Google first added them. I'm with him; they are utterly useless, because even if they were correct, you can't just trust them to be so - you need to go back to the original sources and validate it yourself.

In which case, why bother with the summaries in the first place? Just show the original sources as the search results.

Lauren Weinstein

@cazabon @paninid Well, in all fairness, that appears to be a traditional "featured snippet" with a quote from a specific "steampunk"-oriented page, not an AI Overview as far as I can tell from the screenshot.

Mab_813

@paninid

I'm shocked that my Austrian school education kept that secret!!

Especially since Austria-Hungary was portrayed quite positively. The vibe was "Due to evil nationalism, those other countries no longer wanted to be governed by us and destroyed our great Danube Monarchy diversity project :-( "

I didn't learn anything about the horrible poverty in Galicia, for instance...

Kaelef :welp:

@paninid @kimlockhartga Absolutely love the “you’re using it wrong” responses. You could certainly say the Google is using LLMs wrong by applying them to the entire internet and returning responses without context.

Cass (they/them)

@paninid Reminds me of the time GPT gave the population of Mars based on one of the Expanse books. This is probably going to really wind up some online conspiracy theorists. Some of that stuff ends up being mostly benign, or at least kind of contained, but there's no real predicting it, so it would definitely be better if google wasn't throwing this fuel on the fire.

Zoidberg For President

@paninid Google = bullshit some ridiculous explanation about any subject leaving near to no doubt about its inexactitude

Earl Novy

@paninid

It's actually pretty crazy that the USA only made it to the moon 50 years later and then made such a big deal about it. 😂

@FourQ ♿

@paninid I got the same result but it has a completely different context: Whatever AI looks like, it's not:

Paul Schoonhoven 🍉 🍋

@paninid @jwildeboer things like this and others have made that I want to get rit of Google and Android as soon as possible.

Paladina

@paninid as a galician, I am really proud of this :blobcatblep:

stage7 :windmillTrans:

@maestrapaladin Sorry to be That Person® here but I'm pretty sure the Galicia here refers to the Polish-Ukrainian one, which actually was part of Austria-Hungary.

:bun: Stellar 🇫🇷

@paninid@mastodon.world oh it took me a minute to catch what was wrong with the result

Aroop Roelofs :verified:

@paninid Well... Yes, it's a summary from the Steampunk Space Wiki... A *fictional* thing.

Do I think it's a bit confusing if you don't know what you're looking at? Yes.
Is it incorrect? No, not really.

feld
@paninid the fact that this has been a clearly documented problem for so long: I think you're right -- they don't care. It isn't affecting their profit when it's wrong
arceuthobium

@paninid Google AI told me that Google AI will solve this problem before the Hitler clones in Antarctica are released.

Twobiscuits

@paninid "steampunk" is a bit of a giveaway, is it not?

adaddinsane (Steve Turnbull)

@paninid

This is not AI, it is a correct response to a ludicrous query.

Strangely enough, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, roughly 1867-1918, like the *rest of the f-ing world*, did not have a space program.

But clearly there is a steampunk story that matches the search criteria, and that' what you got.

I'm all for bashing LLMs but *you (a human?)* need to be able to distinguish an AI response from a proper query match.

Hint: LLMs don't cite sources, this does.

Lotem

@paninid
Not to defend google, but given that Austria-Hungary has not existed as its own entity for over a hundred years, what results other than steampunk fiction would you expect to find?

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