I don’t use “AI” search obviously, but occasionally at work when DDG or one of the other privacy-respecting engines lets me down, I will begrudgingly search the Big Goofy Site. Of course, it puts its “AI” results at the top of the page, and I always find it interesting to see what they get right (rare), what they get wrong (often), and what they literally make up on the spot (less often but it happens).
You see, I work for two very different businesses under the same owner. One is a run of the mill online and storefront reseller, think Big Lots but not a chain, and most sales online rather than in-store. This is the business that has me on payroll, and my only role there is sysadmin.
The other business in the building next door is extremely niche, vertical market stuff, think health and wellness equipment, along with parts and tech support for said equipment. There I am also sysadmin, along with lead sales rep, lead tech support, mechanical and electronics engineering, equipment repair including board level repair, parts design and fabrication, and so on.
I tell you all of that so you understand just how deep my knowledge and experience goes when it comes to that line of work. So, when I search the big G and its “AI” proudly presents me with its infinite knowledge, I can tell right away when it’s flat-out wrong or just making shit up. Like today when I was working on a circuit board and I searched for a specific component on that board as one does to find the datasheet, Google told me that that tiny electronic component was actually a type of jet engine used on specific planes manufactured by some company I’d never heard of, and I could find no reference to online anywhere when I searched for it out of curiosity.
In other words, it completely made up an entire product in a completely unrelated field, because it couldn’t find the actual answer. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if some fiction author somewhere unwittingly used that part number in a description of a made-up jet engine in their aeronautical thriller and it got slurped up by the plagiarism machine.
Anyway, I did some digging and finally found the datasheet I needed, no thanks to the Big Goofy Liar search engine.
This is why we can’t have nice things.