Dec 1, 2020
You really think Google would do that?
No statement is to be trusted absolutely. Not even those with a “proof”. Everyone should actively decide to trust a statement, after verifying their purported proof. It’s our algorithm of verification that makes us either fools, or bearers of reliable information.
One very fast verification algorithm is conformism — to authority, to majority, to the surrounding group. It is basically a non-algorithm, that delegates the decision to others with high reputation in the society. The problem with the conformism is that if a population is saturated enough with conformists, a dominant authority of that time will then be able to steer a majority of the society by its will. Even if the authority is not malicious, it may still just be genuinely incorrect, and become the single point of failure. Lazy as we are, many humans practice conformism, and thus our society today can barely discern what is true from false with occasional failures.
Mis-Information age
The internet increased the speed of information, may it be correct or false. Individual or organized attempts at spreading false
Its mostly uncontrolled environment enables spreading of individual or organized attempts at spreading false information at huge rates can be made without any repercussions.
Many of us are well aware that we should not rely on statements made by some random people on the internet nowadays, but what about those that appear reputable? Are we also critical about their claims? Should we be?
A recent YouTube video uploaded by Technology Connections points out to an incidence of Google’s featured snippets being inaccurate. A featured snippet is the boxed result you get when you provide Google with a search query that looks like a question. It also puts the phrase or sentence from the snippet which Google thinks might be the answer in bold and up top in the box. Semantically, it sure looks like the almighty Google is confident with it.
You probably wouldn’t immediately believe this if you had seen it on ifcry.com, but when Google features it on such a display, it suddenly becomes very convincing. However, as examined further in the video, the touch lamp was actually invented in 1954. This bit of information is wrong, and Google is parroting falsehood.
With great power…
Google obviously does not intend to misinform the public with this one particular example. Still, I would argue that they are going a bit over the top with their featured snippets. With such great power they have, they should have been more responsible about what they put on display.
Their semantic parser is probably already as good as the average human, but given Google’s reputation, we expect them to be far more accurate with their answers. Until they improve their answering engine to get on par with their reputation, they should put a huge disclaimer, admitting that they aren’t sure about those answers.
Conformism only works out because there are always some people who aren’t conformists. Google’s featured answers is perhaps among the most harmless examples of how it can go wrong. It is best to declare your independence, and adopt a better verification algorithm.
