A Google user took to Reddit to lay into the company's AI interface for providing no way to filter information.
Posting in the r/mildlyinfuriating subreddit, the poster showed they had searched for Magic Chef fridge temperature settings, and Google's AI overview showed that its settings are one to seven, with one being the "coldest" and seven also being the "coldest."
In case you didn't catch it, that's two different settings that Google AI believes are the coldest. According to Magic Chef's official manual, seven is actually the coldest setting its fridge has.
Google's AI overview has taken a pretty significant amount of criticism since it debuted earlier this year. From inaccurately describing the difference between a sauce and a dressing to using AI images as the first result when searching dog breeds, it has not done a great job of optimizing people's attempts to find accurate information. Even now, after being implemented on searches for months on end, misinformation is a common occurrence.
On top of that, AI has a profoundly negative impact on the environment. For one, as is the case for Google, it uses tremendous amounts of water to keep its systems cool and functioning. The predictive and generative models used to create art and words also use a massive amount of energy, which is very often pulled from dirty sources like coal, gas, or natural gas.
While progress is being made to try to reduce the energy used by these models, there's still a long way to go.
Commenters on this post were quick to pile on Google for this mistake.
"AI has no way to distinguish bad data from good data," one commenter said.
"Dude, that's perfect for when you want your food either really cold or really cold," joked another.
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🔘 I'm not sure 🤷
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"Artificial Imbecile," said a third.
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