Breaking: Google liable for hallucinations
Sorry to bother your mailbox again but this legal decision is potentially huge, especially if it spreads and other countries make similar decisions.
Coupled with my newsletter from earlier today on SoftBank and OpenAI (which is seeming more relevant by the minute) and another day on Wall Street like this, it looking like it could be a tough week for generative AI.
P.s. My thought just now on Masa and the industry as a whole
:,
You can't have it both ways. You can't say, oh wow, look at our superintelligent machines, way beyond a sackful of PhDs, you can't believe just how clever they are. And then say -- oh, they make the most horrendous mistakes, don't you know, they just make shit up, they do it all the time, it's up to you to check and verify. Don't blame us, it's *your* fault, the user, for using our product and believing what it said.
For me, this is a defining moment. I keep saying, when are they going to call these LLMs out as deceptive technology, as an outright fraud. You can't have it both ways. You can't create a universal encyclopedia that you claim can answer all questions and then say, oh, it makes up stuff all the time.
This has all been deception on a grand scale and it has to end, pronto. This is exactly the way to do it -- you simply make the AI companies responsible for their products. That's all. We have been bewitched by robots and this is how we break the spell. What's so hard about this? Why do AI companies get a pass on being responsible for the dangerous malfunctioning of their products when operated perfectly normally?
I have a screenshot from May 2 2026 of Google AI Overview telling me that 2027 is not next year, it's the year after next. Google AI Overview cannot add 6 + 1. If you bought a calculator and it told you very confidently that 6 + 1 = 6, you would take it back to the shop and get your money back.
Google is being held responsible for the misinformation they shove into our faces. Good. And if this news crashes the share prices, then I have only one thing to say to salty investors: HA