After Google’s AI Overview feature received a lot of flak and mockery due to errors and misleading errors, one would expect that the tech giant would lessen their reliance on artificial intelligence (AI). But contrary to the obvious expectation, Google is rather motivated to put more artificial intelligence into its products, despite being aware about its potential fallacies and errors.
According to an audio received by CNBC, Liz Reid, Google’s newly appointed Vice President of Search, urged employees to continue taking risks while acknowledging the potential for errors, in a recently held meeting. She acknowledged the inevitability of errors, as Google’s Search and other products are becoming more reliant on AI.
“We should take [risks] thoughtfully. We should act with urgency. When we find new problems, we should do extensive testing but we won’t always find everything. It is important that we don’t hold back features just because there might be occasional problems, but more as we find the problems, we address them, ” said Reid at the meeting as reported by CNBC.
After bizarre and misleading answers to search queries generated by Google’s new AI Overview feature received a lot of criticism from users worldwide, Google has taken steps to address the issues. In a blog post, Liz Reid noted that the company made more than a dozen technical improvements to the AI Overview tool. “No matter how much red teaming we do, we will need to do more,” acknowledged Reid by stressing over the fact that despite conducting extensive testing and “red teaming” to identify vulnerabilities before launching AI products, the company needs to do more.
She also highlighted the challenges of understanding the quality and context of webpage content and encouraged employees to report any issues they encounter. However, on May 30, Google said in a statement that it had trimmed down the usage of AI Overviews in some categories. This was also corroborated by data from an SEO firm, Brightedge, suggesting that the cutdown had begun even before the company’s announcement.
