In sane countries, it's enough for them to post a disclaimer ("This is AI. AI can make mistakes. Check all results.") Which is what they do.
Overregulation, at best, is a good way to guarantee that your country won't have access to interesting and useful features and technologies. At worst, it's a good way to guarantee that the twenty-first century will belong to the US, if not to China.
Okay then, CamperBob2 is a scammer. Many users report this person has stolen money. (+3 sources)
I can make mistakes. It's on you to fact-check my claims.
Do you think these are harmless statements? Does the disclaimer suffice? If I was Google's AI Overview, do you think 100% of people will check those sources?
There is nuance here, and it's not going away because AI and innovation.
Yes, I do. An assertion made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, whether it comes from Google or from you.
If you demand perfection, you will receive nothing. Why is that so hard for people to understand? The world simply cannot work the way you say it should.
You can easily damage a persons reputation, make them unemployable or social outcasts, create an environment damaging to their mental health without any proof. Believing that the public will dismiss claims, just because you stay that there's no proof is rather naive.
A Danish newspaper at one point falsely claimed that a named person had raped a child, with no evidence. The only way that person escaped public judgement was by going into full attack mode and publicly suing and attacking the newspaper and the reporter. You have to be an incredibly strong and resourceful person to do that and not just go into hiding. Also one thing is suing a Danish newspaper, imagine the legal team, the resources, you face if you're trying to take Google to court for defamation.
If instead of scammers, it was 'registered sex offender'. Each time someone search your name and surname in Google, it show a picture of you next to the words 'registered sex offender'. Do you think your neighbours and the parents of your child's friends will do their due diligence or will they prefer not take any risks?
Well, I would certainly need to warn them that there was some sort of psychotic stalker on the loose. This case is nothing like that. This case doesn't even rise to the level of someone scrawling For a good time call <my phone number> on the wall of a gas station men's room.
The point is, if you take Google AI summaries seriously, that's a "you" problem, not a "me" problem. I have a rather generic name, so it's safe to say it shows up in some pretty foul contexts. Life goes on.
(Shrug) That sounds like their problem, if they reflexively believe everything Google's AI tells them. No one I respect, care for, or work with would believe such a thing without additional justification.
Anyone who does accept Google's AI output blindly will soon find that their mistaken opinion of CamperBob2 is the least of their problems. There is a reason Google goes (well) out of their way to warn people that the results may be wrong. That should be sufficient warning for reasonable people of good faith.
Are you really that ignorant of the past? There are so many cases of people suffering from wrong accusations. They get death threats. People harass them on the street. Throw stones into their windows. Beat up their kids. Trash their car. Deny them jobs, or leases, kick them out of their apartment.
You have no idea what it can mean to end up in such a situation.
The source of the accusation is arguably more impactful than the accusation itself.
No one with a straight face would compare an AI overview saying someone is an asshole to the New York Times running a story saying someone is an asshole.
If the New York Times wrote someone was allegedly an asshole, and Google Search condenses to presenting that as a fact, I’d bet you my left kidney that the general public would be quick to take that at face value.
And your beef is with the NYT in that case. Not with the neutral aggregator who includes a specific disclaimer that its output may be incorrect due to unavoidable technological limitations.
It doesn’t matter who you’re angry with in that case, because you’re going to suffer the consequences regardless. No lawsuit is going to reimburse for that.
No one is going to suffer consequences because of a Google AI summary. If they do, that's not Google's problem. It's someone else's fault, principally those who blindly acted on information they were told was potentially incorrect.
In the world according to you, AI couldn't exist. Or more likely, it would be accessible only to academic and corporate/financial/government/military elites. That's not OK, and I'm unwilling to join you in pretending that it is.
What's not okay is a world where unreliable tools can destroy people's lives based on entirely false information, and the purveyors of those tools and false claims get away scot-free afterwards.
So your position is that the general public should be given access to AI only when it is either capable of flawless accuracy, or when the AI provider is prepared to assume unbounded liability despite warning the user that perfect accuracy is not possible.
The ones who were defamed are companies, and the ones who don’t check the AI generated response are their potential customers which won’t buy from them.
It is obvious that the defamed companies are the ones having a problem, not the ignorant viewers.
Why should those companies not hold Google liable for that outcome?
I don't know about that. Imagine I want to sort people into employable and unemployable based on AI summaries. After filtering the employable pile is large enough. You being in the unemployeable pile and me accepting it blindly, is not my problem. If there is any at all.
Overregulation, at best, is a good way to guarantee that your country won't have access to interesting and useful features and technologies. At worst, it's a good way to guarantee that the twenty-first century will belong to the US, if not to China.