Google Is in Its Elizabeth Holmes Era
SlateThe new artificial intelligence features Google announced just weeks ago are finally breaking through to the mainstream—albeit not in the manner Google might prefer. Still, the broken top-of-Google answers may even be spilling over into the search engine’s other features, like its automatic calculator: One U.S.–based user found, posting a screenshot to X, that Google’s tech couldn’t even scan that the unit cm stands for centimeter, reading the measure as a whole meter. That seems dubious in light of Google’s algorithms obscuring the search visibility of various trustworthy news sources and also possibly “torching small sites on purpose,” as SEO expert Mike King noted in his study of recently leaked Google Search documents. Last month, Amazon’s supposedly A.I.–powered, human-free “Just Walk Out” grocery-store concept actually featured … many humans behind the scenes to monitor and program the shopping experience. Similar results were found in supposedly “A.I.–powered” human-free drive-thrus used by chains like Checkers and Carl’s Jr. There’s also the “driverless” Cruise cars, which require remote human intervention almost every couple of miles traveled.
History of this topic
Google forges ahead with its next generation of AI technology while fending off a breakup threat
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