Hi all, Parker here.
A Google search for the phrase “how many rocks should I eat each day” returned an AI-generated result citing “UC Berkeley geologists” who suggest people eat “at least one small rock a day.” It turns out that the actual source of this information was a 2021 article from the satirical website The Onion.
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Onion CEO Ben Collins noticed this and another example, posting them on Bluesky. The second example, a search for “what color highlighters do the CIA use,” brings up a result that indirectly cites The Onion’s 2005 article, “CIA Realizes It’s Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years.”
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I tested this with a number of other prompts and found that the search engine simply couldn’t tell the difference between news and satire.
To say it’s been a rough start for Google’s AI-generated search results would be an understatement.
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A Media Matters report by Matt Gertz illustrates how a single piece of disinformation can fuel a weeklong attack narrative in the land of right-wing media.
“How the right-wing echo chamber constructed a Biden assassination plot against Trump” (Media Matters for America, Matt Gertz, 5/22/24)
Over a handful of hours on Tuesday, the right’s conspiracy theory ecosystem concocted a sinister plot by President Joe Biden to assassinate his predecessor out of the banal fact that FBI agents received standard instructions on the use of force before conducting a court-ordered search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in 2022.
Basically, a right-wing writer named Julie Kelly pulled up a filing from one of Trump’s lawyers that highlighted that the FBI was authorized to “use deadly force when necessary.” Reputable reporters like Reuters’ Brad Heath noted that “these are the rules that apply to FBI agents whenever they do anything,” but Kelly had set something awful in motion.
There was obviously no plan to use “deadly force” as part of the Mar-a-Lago raid. This whole controversy was nonsense invented by someone with poor reading comprehension skills (or, more likely, someone whose motivated reasoning led her to interpret what she read in a conspiratorial way).
From there, the story made its way to Trump, his allied members of Congress, the Republican National Committee, and, of course, Trump-aligned media. Check out the Media Matters report for more on that.
Gene Park is a brilliant games journalist for The Washington Post. On Thursday, Rolling Stone published an equally brilliant story about how the video game “Cyberpunk 2077” helped him work through his battle with cancer. If you have the time, please check it out.
“‘It Helped Me Embody Someone Else’: How ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ Helped Gene Park Battle Cancer” (Rolling Stone, Patricia Hernandez, 5/23/24)
In 2022, like many gamers, Gene Park booted up Cyberpunk 2077, the latest open-world RPG. The futuristic video game by the makers of The Witcher depicts a world full of neon lights and cybernetic enhancements, and it had recently received a big content update. Controller in hand, Park vividly recalls directing a digital Keanu Reeves to try and stop a murder, all while medical tubes protruded from his body. The tubes plugged into a port on his torso, and they were ready to pump chemicals inside. Unlike the digital augments that buffed his video game character, chemotherapy is corrosive in a way that makes the experience invasive, even as it was helping. Park likens it to having poison being poured into his heart.
A new poll conducted by Harris for The Guardian found that the American public is widely misinformed about the economy. This is a pretty damning indictment of the news media, generally.
“Majority of Americans wrongly believe US is in recession – and most blame Biden” (The Guardian, Lauren Aratani, 5/22/24)
Nearly three in five Americans wrongly believe the US is in an economic recession, and the majority blame the Biden administration, according to a Harris poll conducted exclusively for the Guardian. The survey found persistent pessimism about the economy as election day draws closer.
The poll highlighted many misconceptions people have about the economy, including:
55% believe the economy is shrinking, and 56% think the US is experiencing a recession, though the broadest measure of the economy, gross domestic product (GDP), has been growing.
49% believe the S&P 500 stock market index is down for the year, though the index went up about 24% in 2023 and is up more than 12% this year.
49% believe that unemployment is at a 50-year high, though the unemployment rate has been under 4%, a near 50-year low.
Many Americans put the blame on Biden for the state of the economy, with 58% of those polled saying the economy is worsening due to mismanagement from the presidential administration.
At The Present Age this week…
What else I’m reading…
“Why the Alito Flag Story Matters” (
, , 5/23/24)“New Hampshire Legislature Repeals Several Protections Barring Trans Discrimination” (
, , 5/23/24)“Private Equity is Ruining My Weekends” (
, , 5/22/24)“Harassment of scientists is surging — institutions aren’t sure how to help” (Nature, Bianca Nogrady, 5/21/24)
I'm so glad I switched from Google to Bing years ago...
Yes, Bing uses AI to provide summarized results as well, but at least it clearly annotates which sites/pages it drew parts of the summary from and provides a list of footnotes.
As for the misinformed American public... I despair! How are so many people -- a majority or near-majority on those issues -- so out of touch with reality? Is the news media doing such a poor job, or is it the politically motivated media just overwhelming any good news coming out of the mainstream?
Yet no comments on the CIA protocols on usage of purple vs. green ink on document markups?