[WarmWash]

The source of the accusation is arguably more impactful than the accusation itself.

No one with a straight face would compare an AI overview saying someone is an asshole to the New York Times running a story saying someone is an asshole.

[9dev]

If the New York Times wrote someone was allegedly an asshole, and Google Search condenses to presenting that as a fact, I’d bet you my left kidney that the general public would be quick to take that at face value.

[CamperBob2]

And your beef is with the NYT in that case. Not with the neutral aggregator who includes a specific disclaimer that its output may be incorrect due to unavoidable technological limitations.

[9dev]

It doesn’t matter who you’re angry with in that case, because you’re going to suffer the consequences regardless. No lawsuit is going to reimburse for that.

[CamperBob2]

No one is going to suffer consequences because of a Google AI summary. If they do, that's not Google's problem. It's someone else's fault, principally those who blindly acted on information they were told was potentially incorrect.

In the world according to you, AI couldn't exist. Or more likely, it would be accessible only to academic and corporate/financial/government/military elites. That's not OK, and I'm unwilling to join you in pretending that it is.

[NateEag]

What's not okay is a world where unreliable tools can destroy people's lives based on entirely false information, and the purveyors of those tools and false claims get away scot-free afterwards.

[CamperBob2]

So your position is that the general public should be given access to AI only when it is either capable of flawless accuracy, or when the AI provider is prepared to assume unbounded liability despite warning the user that perfect accuracy is not possible.

Correct? Or am I misinterpreting your post?

[9dev]

> No one is going to suffer consequences because of a Google AI summary.

No one is, until someone is. You could say the same about newspapers, TV, or the internet.

> If they do, that's not Google's problem.

Well yes, it is, at least in Germany for now, where at least one judge seems to see it that way. And that's correct, IMHO, because Google would (in that case) make something appear as factual information when it is not.

> It's someone else's fault, principally those who blindly acted on information they were told was potentially incorrect.

Those people are definitely at fault; history is full of examples of mobs acting horribly based on shallow, incomplete, misleading, flawed, or flat out wrong information. But you can't just put all blame on those mobs, when someone gave them this information - or do you think, for example, Donald Trump played no part in the January 6 riots and should not be held accountable for it?

> In the world according to you, AI couldn't exist. Or more likely, it would be accessible only to academic and corporate/financial/government/military elites. That's not OK, and I'm unwilling to join you in pretending that it is.

That isn't my stance at all. AI should exist, and it should be widely available in my opinion. I don't even think this is primarily about AI, but entities in a position of power acting responsibly, such as Google (which has worked hard to position itself as a gateway to information and steward of facts.)

I think we should not put the burden of verifying information entirely on consumers, we shouldn't allow big corporations to run the largest social experiment in history on their own terms, and we need to talk about responsibility and safety.

> So your position is that the general public should be given access to AI only when it is either capable of flawless accuracy, or when the AI provider is prepared to assume unbounded liability despite warning the user that perfect accuracy is not possible.

That is neither my, nor the sibling's, nor this ruling's position. The issue the court took was that Google presented AI-generated information in a shape that was indistinguishable to common users from the previously statistically sourced factoids in Google Search - a product that historically allowed to search the internet for things and get back search results, not AI-provided guesses and hopefully-correct information.

The entire point is that companies should not be allowed to use AI recklessly. This point is also one that the Pope made in his encyclical, and the EU posits in the AI act, by the way.

[CamperBob2]

But you can't just put all blame on those mobs, when someone gave them this information - or do you think, for example, Donald Trump played no part in the January 6 riots and should not be held accountable for it?

I'm missing the comparison here. Trump (in)famously did not post any disclaimers. He did not leave any room for doubt when he accused the Democrats of stealing the election. He spread feces and called it fact, so yes, he should certainly have been held accountable for the consequences. His voters, however, decided not to do so, and that was the end of it.

The issue the court took was that Google presented AI-generated information in a shape that was indistinguishable to common users from the previously statistically sourced factoids in Google Search - a product that historically allowed to search the internet for things and get back search results, not AI-provided guesses and hopefully-correct information.

Did they, or did they not, include a highly-visible disclaimer that the results might be incorrect?

I'm hammering on this, not just because I think it's what should have determined the outcome of the case, but also because the last few times I've seen Google AI summaries, they did not include such a disclaimer. Gemini itself still does, but the instant results on the search page don't appear to. Which is obviously not OK.

If they have stopped warning users, or if they didn't warn the users in the situation leading up to the lawsuit, then that more-or-less instantly flips me over to your side. We wouldn't actually have anything to argue about in that case.