You know how Google’s new feature called AI Overviews is prone to spitting out wildly incorrect answers to search queries? In one instance, AI Overviews told a user to use glue on pizza to make sure the cheese won’t slide off (pssst…please don’t do this.)
Well, according to an interview at The Vergewith Google CEO Sundar Pichai published earlier this week, just before criticism of the outputs really took off, these “hallucinations” are an “inherent feature” of AI large language models (LLM), which is what drives AI Overviews, and this feature “is still an unsolved problem.”
But it’s not an isolated R&D project. They’re rolling it out in general search. If I have a promising new braking technology, but which still only works well 48% of the time, I’d keep working on it but not put it in production vehicles.
I think @Microw@lemm.ee has the right idea on how to handle this type of issue. Hopefully they will improve the messaging around this, because I’m getting really tired of explaining to people how what we have is not true AI.
Honestly though this is nothing new for Google, they’ve been providing answers and web results with false information since their inception. You as a user will always need to do some vetting, Google is never going to be able to give you fully accurate information. They’re just sending you to places that may contain more information on the topic you’re searching for. Or at least, that’s how you should use them.