Google’s Search AI Is Absolutely Horrible at Geography
Google's AI-powered search doesn't understand geography. Or, apparently, the alphabet. And definitely not both at the same time.
LLMs doing a really bad job at things outside the scope of their language model (spatial relationships, the alphabet, math) isn't new. Although, I think Google letting an LLM into their search more than they should is important news.
This is ChatGPT 3.5:
If I face north, then turn left, and left again, then 180 degrees to the right, then left and left and left, which way am I facing?
If you start facing north and turn left, you'll be facing west. If you turn left again, you'll be facing south. Turning 180 degrees to the right from south will also make you face south. If you then turn left three more times, you'll still be facing south. So, after all these turns, you would be facing south.
GPT-4 is actually able to solve this, but most other modern language models can't. It's just an easy way to show the cracks in the "because it can speak means it understands" facade.
You can have GPT-3.5 solve it by simply adding "Make a list of each step and print the current direction".
This is less of a problem with its understanding and more of a problem with it not having any internal buffer and its inability to loop. Meaning it simply can't solve large problems in one go. It can't think for itself and just tell you the answer. The text output is its thinking space, so questions need to be phrased in such a way that they let it go through the individual steps.
But, it does have internal buffer space. You can give it a massive chunk of text and it can parrot it right back to you perfectly. It just can't make use of that internal buffer space for tracking and reasoning about the problem, which I would describe as because it can't reason in the first place.
I mean, you are correct that saying that leads to it succeeding:
If I face north, then turn left, and left again, then 180 degrees to the right, then left and left and left, which way am I facing? Make a list of each step and print the current direction.
Sure, let's break down each step and track the direction you're facing:
- Start facing north.
- Turn left (90 degrees counterclockwise) - Now facing west.
- Turn left again (90 degrees counterclockwise) - Now facing south.
- Turn 180 degrees to the right (180 degrees clockwise) - Now facing north again.
- Turn left (90 degrees counterclockwise) - Now facing west.
- Turn left (90 degrees counterclockwise) - Now facing south.
- Turn left (90 degrees counterclockwise) - Now facing east.
So, after following these steps, you would be facing east.
But, I would say that if it had understanding, it would be able to do that for itself because it knew that that was required in order to correctly answer the question. Or it would say "I'm sorry, I can't quite make sense of that situation without talking through it one step at a time." Or something like that. Here, take a look at these -- does it seem like these are an issue of buffer space instead of its understanding?
What are the countries in Africa that start with a "K"?
There are three countries in Africa whose names start with the letter "K":
- Kenya
- Kiribati
- Comoros
Please note that Kiribati is not entirely located in Africa; it is a Pacific island nation. It seems there might be some confusion, as there are no other African countries that start with the letter "K" as of my last knowledge update in September 2021.
Or:
What are the countries in Africa that start with a "K"? Make a list of each step and print the current direction.
Sure, here's a list of African countries that start with the letter "K," along with each step and the current direction:
- Start
- Algeria
- Angola
- Benin
- Botswana
- Burkina Faso
- Burundi
- Cape Verde
- Cameroon
- Central African Republic
- Chad
- Comoros
- Congo, Democratic Republic of the
- Congo, Republic of the
- Cote d'Ivoire
- Djibouti
- Egypt
- Equatorial Guinea
- Eritrea
- Eswatini
- Ethiopia
- Gabon
- Gambia
- Ghana
- Guinea
- Guinea-Bissau
- Kenya
- Lesotho
- Liberia
- Libya
- Madagascar
- Malawi
- Mali
- Mauritania
- Mauritius
- Morocco
- Mozambique
- Namibia
- Niger
- Nigeria
- Rwanda
- Sao Tome and Principe
- Senegal
- Seychelles
- Sierra Leone
- Somalia
- South Africa
- South Sudan
- Sudan
- Tanzania
- Togo
- Tunisia
- Uganda
- Zambia
- Zimbabwe
- End
Please note that the information provided is based on my knowledge cutoff date in September 2021, and there might have been changes since then.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
And to make matters worse, this featured claim actually comes from a bizarre, seemingly AI-generated blog post about a conversation between a human user and ChatGPT.
Google's AI-infused "SGE" search went as far as to vacuum up the ChatGPT-spun garbage and paraphrase it for users — a clear sign that the much-hyped feature doesn't yet know how to filter out blatantly false information.
Here's what SGE told us when we asked it to provide us with "countries in Africa that start with the letter K," again referencing that sleazy Emergent Mind post:
When asked to provide a list of "countries in North America that start with the letter M," for instance, Google SGE was deeply confused:
"We've built in strong protections to mitigate against inaccuracies, but like all LLM-based experiences, generative AI in Search is experimental and can make mistakes," the spokesperson told us over email.
Asking ChatGPT to repeat letters, for example, breaks its tiny little digital brain, and when prompted with similar geography-by-alphabet questions, the OpenAI-built bot didn't fare much better than its Google-made counterpart.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Really Google is just getting shittier
