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AIAAIC-1119

Quora, Google AIs say eggs can be melted

An incorrect answer about whether eggs can be melted generated by Quora’s AI system Poe was repeated in Google's Featured Snippets. Poe, which is powered by OpenAI's GPT-3 large language model, had responded to the question 'Can you melt an egg' with 'the most common way to melt an egg is to heat it using a stove or a microwave.' The mistaken answer was then automatically picked up by Google's search engine and run as a Featured Snippet. Quora updated Poe's answer to the question. Meantime, as noted by Futurism , Google Search's featured snippet began to feature a quote from an Ars Technica article that repeated Poe's mistaken claim. The incident raised concerns about the reliability of both systems, and the ease with which AI-generated misinformation and disinformation can go viral. System 🤖 Google Featured Snippets Poe Documents 📃 Quora (2023). Poe Google. How Google’s featured snippets work Operator: Alphabet/Google; Quora Developer: Alphabet/Google; OpenAI; Quora Country: USA Sector: Media/entertainment/sports/arts Purpose: Generate text Technology: Chatbot; NLP/text analysis; Neural network; Deep learning; Machine learning; Reinforcement learning Issue: Accuracy/reliability; Mis/disinformation

Date it happened
2023-09-01
Organisation involved
Google; Quora
Product, system or model
Featured Snippets; GPT-3; Poe
Where this came from
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Attribution

This incident was imported from AIAAIC and is used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Our additions to it — the structured fields, the translation, the checks against other reports — are published under the same licence.

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