AI overviews provided by Google may draw from imperfect sources, leading to inaccuracies, embarrassments, and swift interventions by Google in rectifying erroneous information. While some queries are deliberately trollish or edge cases, the AI overviews also make mistakes on common inquiries, such as misidentifying the number of Muslim presidents in the US. This situation highlights the challenge of relying solely on AI-generated content without human scrutiny, as search engines like Google aim to address and improve the quality of information provided in their AI overviews by swiftly rectifying errors and developing broader improvements to their systems.
This week, Google found itself in more turmoil, this time over its new AI Overviews feature and a trove of leaked internal documents. Then Josh Batson, a researcher at the A.I. startup Anthropic, joins us to explain how an experiment that made the chatbot Claude obsessed with the Golden Gate Bridge represents a major breakthrough in understanding how large language models work. And finally, we take a look at recent developments in A.I. safety, after Casey’s early access to OpenAI’s new souped-up voice assistant was taken away for safety reasons.
Guests:
- Josh Batson, research scientist at Anthropic
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