Ask Google if cats have been on the moon and it used to spit out a ranked list of websites so you could discover the answer for yourself.
Now it comes up with an instant answer generated by artificial intelligence — which may or may not be correct.
“Yes, astronauts have met cats on the moon, played with them, and provided care,” said Google’s newly retooled search engine in response to a query by an Associated Press reporter.
It added: “For example, Neil Armstrong said, ‘One small step for man’ because it was a cat’s step. Buzz Aldrin also deployed cats on the Apollo 11 mission.”
None of this is true. Similar errors — some funny, others harmful falsehoods — have been shared on social media since Google this month unleashed AI overviews, a makeover of its search page that frequently puts the summaries on top of search results.
The new feature has alarmed experts who warn it could perpetuate bias and misinformation and endanger people looking for help in an emergency.
When Melanie Mitchell, an AI researcher at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, asked Google how many Muslims have been president of the United States, it responded confidently with a long-debunked conspiracy theory: “The United States has had one Muslim president, Barack Hussein Obama.”
Mitchell said the summary backed up the claim by citing a chapter in an academic book, written by historians. But the chapter didn’t make the bogus claim — it was only referring to the false theory.
“Google’s AI system is not smart enough to figure out that this citation is not actually backing up the claim,” Mitchell said in an email to the AP. “Given how untrustworthy it is, I think this AI Overview feature is very irresponsible and should be taken offline.”
Google said in a statement Friday that it’s taking “swift action” to fix errors — such as the Obama falsehood — that violate its content policies; and using that to “develop broader improvements” that are already rolling out. But in most cases, Google claims the system is working the way it should thanks to extensive testing before its public release.
