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Whoops! Google's reached a new level of JAQing off and decided to answer the questions instead of just leading to them (arstechnica.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hermansson logged in to Google and began looking up results for the IQs of different nations. When he typed in “Pakistan IQ,” rather than getting a typical list of links, Hermansson was presented with Google’s AI-powered Overviews tool, which, confusingly to him, was on by default. It gave him a definitive answer of 80.

When he typed in “Sierra Leone IQ,” Google’s AI tool was even more specific: 45.07. The result for “Kenya IQ” was equally exact: 75.2.

Hmm, these numbers seem very low. I wonder how these scores were determined.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think the usual output from the AI Overview (or at least the goal) is to give a long and ostensibly Fair and Balanced summary. So in this case it would be expected to throw out "some say that people from Australia are extra dumb because of these studies, but others contend that those studies were badly performed" or whatever. Asking the question on more words to represent both sides so that it can pretend not to be partisan.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Let me be more clear about this: an LLM trying to answer a question (successfully or otherwise) is doing basically the opposite of a human asking questions (disingenuously, as in "JAQing off," or otherwise).

I wasn't trying to solicit comments trying to explain what the LLM was doing; my point was simply that OP is confused and used a term incorrectly in the title.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

i like turtles