Via @rodhilton@mastodon.social
Right now if you search for “country in Africa that starts with the letter K”:
-
DuckDuckGo will link to an alphabetical list of countries in Africa which includes Kenya.
-
Google, as the first hit, links to a ChatGPT transcript where it claims that there are none, and summarizes to say the same.
This is because ChatGPT at some point ingested this popular joke:
“There are no countries in Africa that start with K.” “What about Kenya?” “Kenya suck deez nuts?”
Google Search is over.
Chatgpt creating incorrect feedback loops like this is one of my main concerns about AI being used so prevalently. This and original thoughts disappearing because every new content in the web is generated by AI and not by a human.
I doubted this, so I tried it. I haven’t used google for ages, so I first had to search “google” in DDG, then I went to the main page. When I started typing it in, it suggested the full text of the search, so I thought it was even less likely that it would work like the OP said - that even if it had been the case that it previously did that, so many people have self-evidently done that search that the results would now be correct.
But no - there it was, right at the top - “While there are 54 recognized countries in Africa, none of them begin with the letter “K”. The closest is Kenya, which starts with a “K” sound, but is actually spelled with a “K” sound.”
And with that, I’ll contentedly go back to not using google.
it is not Artificial Intelligence. It is Average Intelligence. And they want it everywhere.
It’s not intelligence at all. It does not understand what you ask it or what it tells you. It can string words together in a plausible sounding order. It cannot think.
Same with brave search. Da fuq is going on anymore.
