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A comment on 'Google says I'm a dead physicist': is the biggest search engine broken?. Parent comment

Re:'Google says I'm a dead physicist': is the biggest search... by scottlamb on Saturday July 20, 2024 @07:27PM (#41021027)
When I search for "Tom Faber", I expect to get results relating to a bunch of Tom Fabers.

When I see a knowledge panel result, I expect everything within it to relate to a single entity, regardless of name collisions. If it doesn't, that's incorrect. If it's too hard to disambiguate, it's better to not have the knowledge panel at all.

That said, I did this search just now. https://imgur.com/a/zEjrfte The top organic result is the author's X bio and has his profile pic in the search results page. To the right of it (across a gutter) is the knowledge panel about the physicist. I could see how one might get confused, but the X profile pic is just near the knowledge panel, not actually in it. So if this is what the author saw, I don't agree with the article. It'd be nice if he included an actual screenshot of what he's describing, instead of the cute "Why is Google..." thing.

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Re:'Google says I'm a dead physicist': is the biggest search... by bigstrat2003 on Saturday July 20, 2024 @07:33PM (#41021059)
> When I see a knowledge panel result, I expect everything within it to relate to a single entity, regardless of name collisions. If it doesn't, that's incorrect.

Sure, that's the goal. But it's not like this is an unreasonable thing to get wrong on Google's part. It's hard, this is not like they're failing at easy tasks here.

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Re:'Google says I'm a dead physicist': is the biggest search... by gerdesj on Saturday July 20, 2024 @08:08PM (#41021315)
"Sure, that's the goal. But it's not like this is an unreasonable thing to get wrong on Google's part. It's hard, this is not like they're failing at easy tasks here."

Should unreasonable trump acceptable? If you fail at something then should you do it?

An uncharitable interpretation seems to allow it is acceptable to imply someone is dead because an algorithmic process is hard ... lol ... l8ers.

At which point is disinformation acceptable?

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Re:'Google says I'm a dead physicist': is the biggest search... by tonynator on Saturday July 20, 2024 @08:32PM (#41021441)
So we shouldn't use AI at all because it's often inaccurate? I think it's fine as long as it's made clear that it's not totally reliable, both in widespread public knowledge and in UI disclaimers.
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Re:'Google says I'm a dead physicist': is the biggest search... by loktarogar on Saturday July 20, 2024 @09:57PM (#41021786)
I reckon it's reasonable to say we shouldn't use AI (LLMs) in places where we're looking for accurate information, yeah. Expectations for accuracy are higher in a seemingly curated summary.
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Re:'Google says I'm a dead physicist': is the biggest search... by tonynator on Sunday July 21, 2024 @03:51AM (#41023307)
Who would it be "curated" by if not AI?

Any form of auto-generated summary online is from AI

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Re:'Google says I'm a dead physicist': is the biggest search... by loktarogar on Sunday July 21, 2024 @04:06PM (#41027721)
We don't need auto summaries if they're not actually correct. It's not a choice between AI or not AI, it's a choice between summaries or no summaries
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Re:'Google says I'm a dead physicist': is the biggest search... by tonynator on Monday July 22, 2024 @02:10AM (#41031335)
People seem to like "mostly correct" summaries though, like most other things AI
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Re:'Google says I'm a dead physicist': is the biggest search... by CRConrad on Friday July 26, 2024 @11:35AM (#41079493)
> So we shouldn't use AI at all because it's often inaccurate?

Preferably not, yeah.

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Re:'Google says I'm a dead physicist': is the biggest search... by Zambyte on Saturday July 20, 2024 @09:49PM (#41021751)
It is unreasonable when it has been reported multiple times, like the OP says they did before writing the article.
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