Aylin Ahmed
Coach Pāṇini ®This is a real result in Google.
The term #googling is going to take on new connotations, and they don’t care.
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.
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
@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.
@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"
@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 🤷🏻♂️
@paninid @WhyNotZoidberg @abrokenjester I was thinking of this post
https://mastodon.social/@WhyNotZoidber[email protected]/113062021359578409
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.
@jonoleth @paninid @abrokenjester Heh. Definitely.
AI is NFTs on steroids, but it infects everything, not just techbro wallets.
René ☀️ Hoffmann 
@abrokenjester @paninid I don't see the problem either. Context is provided, that the information is from a fandom wiki of some steampunk world. People have been bad at "googling" all the time, but now they get even worse, as they always should check the source anyway but don't. It's a search engine, not an answer machine.
PeterMan, 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?!?
D. G. Marshall
earthling
Tor Iver Wilhelmsen@paninid Wait, they are presenting the world of the Space: 1889 tabletop RPG as if it was real?
Martijn Vos
Yora
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.
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.
@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.
@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.
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.
@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.
Alexander Shendi@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?
If you don't know what you are looking for, how should a search engine know?
Bjørnar (he/him)@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.
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.
@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?
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?
MackajIf 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.
rooftopjaxx@paninid <googly eyes emoji>
xs4me2The problem is everything is just data, fiction and lies are too…
Paul H 🏴🇪🇺"No one would have believed, in the last years of the 19th Century..."
Niels Nielsen, geographer@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.
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.
J.H.Noyes@paninid
Seems legit. And harmless. It's not harmless.
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 I think that platypus has bolted.
@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
Theriac@paninid that or someone is going to retroactively try to claim territory on Mars
Latte macchiato 
@paninid 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.
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.
@paninid That result is honestly worse because it isn't even returning what you're asking for.
If you want info about the Austrian space program, then search for that.
If you want info about the Austrian space program, then search for that.
Pratik Patel@paninid What was the search term that yielded that result?
Austria Hungary in space
C.@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