Nearly a year ago, Google introduced AI to its search engine in what it dubbed the Search Generative Experience, or SGE for short. However, it bears mentioning that the SGE is known for providing answers that are misleading or false. Initially, this included absurd statements such as eggs being able to melt and even assertions that slavery was a good thing, and research has shown that it continues to hallucinate in this manner to the present day.
For example, when asked about a fictional Chinese restaurant, the AI confidently mentioned that it had extremely long wait times and long lines of people waiting to place orders. What’s more is that it provided false citations for the assertions it was making.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that accounting is yet another thing that SGE seems to be struggling with as well. When asked to calculate financial totals, the AI often ended up spewing bizarre results with all things having been considered and taken into account. In one example, the Washington Post asked the AI to provide Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth, which is just under $170 billion.
In spite of the fact that this is the case, the AI ended up claiming that he earned $46.24 per hour, or $96,169 per year. A further breakdown of the financial totals led to it asserting that he earned over $230 million on a daily basis.
Google has been hard at work trying to fix these issues because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up causing reputational damage to the company. It will be interesting to see where things go from here on out, since Google is still dead set on expanding SGE and making it a core part of the SERP despite all of its pervasive issues. The way it performs at this current point in time could end up determining whether or not Google will be able to keep it going in the near to distant future whilst maintaining the quality of its search results.
Image: DIW-Aigen
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