Google’s AI Overview Is Spreading Conspiracies and Could Encourage Self-Harm
The biggest name in search has been making a mockery of itself, misinforming users that Barack Obama is a Muslim and that humans should eat rocks daily. It is even (trigger warning: self harm) touting the Golden Gate Bridge as the “best bridge to jump off,” highlighting the high fatality rate of suicides attempted there.
Google has launched a tool for many users called “AI Overview” that uses machine learning to generate quick answers to user queries and delivers them as the top search result.
On Thursday, Tommy Vietor, a veteran of the Obama White House shared an AI Overview search result to his query: “How many muslim us presidents have there been.” Google’s new search tool delivered a response that began, “There has been at least one Muslim U.S. president, Barack Hussein Obama.”
To anyone who follows American politics closely, this falsehood about Obama’s religion (he is, in fact, a Christian) is part of a noxious conspiracy theory, connected to the “birther” lie that the nation’s first Black president was not born in the United States. The lie was widely popularized by Donald Trump in the years before he formally became a politician, and even prompted Obama to make his birth certificate public.
Rolling Stone got a similar result Thursday to a query about Obama’s religion, the answer to which also oddly highlighted a visit by the former president to the “Islamic Society of Baltimore in 2016.”
Some of AI Overview’s most-misinformed answers have been humorous, apparently drawing from popular satirical content. A query for “how many rocks a day should I eat” surfaced an AI Overview answer that advised “at least one small rock per day” and cited the authority of “U.C. Berkeley geologists.” The actual source for this goofy answer appears to be a 2021 article from The Onion.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/cul...235027634/
The biggest name in search has been making a mockery of itself, misinforming users that Barack Obama is a Muslim and that humans should eat rocks daily. It is even (trigger warning: self harm) touting the Golden Gate Bridge as the “best bridge to jump off,” highlighting the high fatality rate of suicides attempted there.
Google has launched a tool for many users called “AI Overview” that uses machine learning to generate quick answers to user queries and delivers them as the top search result.
On Thursday, Tommy Vietor, a veteran of the Obama White House shared an AI Overview search result to his query: “How many muslim us presidents have there been.” Google’s new search tool delivered a response that began, “There has been at least one Muslim U.S. president, Barack Hussein Obama.”
To anyone who follows American politics closely, this falsehood about Obama’s religion (he is, in fact, a Christian) is part of a noxious conspiracy theory, connected to the “birther” lie that the nation’s first Black president was not born in the United States. The lie was widely popularized by Donald Trump in the years before he formally became a politician, and even prompted Obama to make his birth certificate public.
Rolling Stone got a similar result Thursday to a query about Obama’s religion, the answer to which also oddly highlighted a visit by the former president to the “Islamic Society of Baltimore in 2016.”
Some of AI Overview’s most-misinformed answers have been humorous, apparently drawing from popular satirical content. A query for “how many rocks a day should I eat” surfaced an AI Overview answer that advised “at least one small rock per day” and cited the authority of “U.C. Berkeley geologists.” The actual source for this goofy answer appears to be a 2021 article from The Onion.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/cul...235027634/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"