Microsoft's Bing search engine claims Australia doesn't exist

[midian182]

WTF?! It isn't just generative AI that occasionally gets things very wrong. Microsoft search engine Bing told some users yesterday that the country of Australia doesn't exist, repeating a jokey (to some) conspiracy theory that has been circulating online since 2017 – though its source could date back even further.

Australian users of Bluesky and Mastodon were surprised yesterday to find Bing was informing them that the country they were in didn't actually exist.

As reported by The Guardian, Microsoft's search engine was answering the unusual query about the world's sixth-largest country with an emphatic "No." Bing stated this was according to several sources.

The conspiracy theory about Australia's non-existence can reportedly be traced back to a user on the Flat Earth Society forum – where else – who said everything about the country was made up, pictures were faked, and anyone who claimed to be from there was really a secret government agent. One would imagine this was someone trolling, but who knows, given its source.

A government spy?

There was then a Facebook post that claimed Australia is "one of the biggest hoaxes ever created," a conspiracy thought up by the British to make people think that criminals were sent there instead of being thrown into the sea.

"It's a coverup for one of the greatest mass murders in history, made by one of the most prominent empires... Australia is not real. It's a codeword for the cold blooded murder of more than a hundred thousand people, and it is not okay. We will not, accept this. Stand up for the ones who died. Let it be known, that Australia does not exist," the post read. It was deleted after the author received 100 or so death threats from angry Australians.

We're used to seeing these sorts of factually incorrect and just plain weird statements spouted by generative AIs, but what's most surprising about all this is that Bing co-pilot, formerly Bing Chat, confirmed Australia is real. It also noted that there are conspiracy theories surrounding the country's existence, but these are not true and have been debunked.

A spokesperson for Microsoft said the Bing issue had been addressed. "Thank you for bringing this to our attention," the spokesperson said. "We've investigated this query and have rolled out a fix to address it."

Anyone who believes that the land down under isn't real will probably see Bing's error as further proof, tragically. However, our own Steve Walton and Tim Schiesser will likely have something to say about that.

Masthead: Catarina Sousa

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/100946-microsoft-bing-search-engine-claims-australia-doesnt-exist.html

 

[PEnnn]

It's the year 2023.

The humanoid inhabitants of this planet seem to have reached a point of overwhelming negative intelligence.

There seems to be something that occupies their minds and influences them very negatively. They call it "social media" and "hoaxes", and they fall for them quite easily. These seem to rob said humanoids of whatever intelligence / brain matter they have left. They suddenly seem to believe the planet is flat and even that a whole continent doesn't even exist (and it's not even a small continent!).

No wonder why intelligent aliens / other life forms don't even bother visiting this poor planet and its pathetic inhabitants. The planet humanoids' brain function is slowly but surely approaching that of earthworms.

 

[Uncle Al]

MicroSludge does it again!

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Damn, didn't know Steve and Tim work for the government as part of a vast conspiracy to cover up one of the most heinous genocides by one of the most heinous empires to ever be.

Running a tech website would be the perfect cover...

 

[Lew Zealand]

It's almost as if you can use the keyboard in front of you to display whatever "facts" make you feel good on the associated pixel array.

 

[Beerfloat]

To be fair, some of Steve's advocacy sometimes feels like it comes straight from Narnia or some other imaginary land.

But we all know Ozzies are a real people and that they were carefully handpicked by some of King George III's finest justices.

 

[kiwigraeme]

TBF - Australia does not exist - that is just the name us Kiwis give West Island to cover the ongoing research into
we are doing into convicts, bogans and ferals

We are not completely oppressive we let Kylie free and the Bee Gees to entertain you

They are super easy to control - you just tell them they are the best , the lucky country , give them us V8s and beer - they lapped that stuff up


So where the hell are ya - West Island

 

[Alfonso Maruccia]

We have something similar in Italy as well, it's region Molise. We say "Molise doesn't exist" as a joke, but we all know it's just a joke and don't need to seek on-line validation for that.


I mean, we studied geography in school, many years, at different ages...

 

[Carlos GarPov]

X-Files theme song ... hahahahahahaha

 

[wiyosaya]

It's the year 2023.

The humanoid inhabitants of this planet seem to have reached a point of overwhelming negative intelligence.

There seems to be something that occupies their minds and influences them very negatively. They call it "social media" and "hoaxes", and they fall for them quite easily. These seem to rob said humanoids of whatever intelligence / brain matter they have left. They suddenly seem to believe the planet is flat and even that a whole continent doesn't even exist (and it's not even a small continent!).

No wonder why intelligent aliens / other life forms don't even bother visiting this poor planet and its pathetic inhabitants. The planet humanoids' brain function is slowly but surely approaching that of earthworms.

How dare you insult earthworms like that !

 

[Nobina]

An upside down continent that would have people falling from the Earth suddenly is not real? Biiiig surprise!

 

[Peter Farkas]

This is one of the things with genAI. It's garbage in and garbage out, meaning if you train them with crap data (aka internet) it will give back garbage answers.

 

[wiyosaya]

This is the reason that this incarnation of AI will never save the world. It cannot figure out what is BS and what is not BS. All it is capable of doing is regurgitating internet crap.

IMO, AI is useless crap.

Unfortunately, anyone who thinks AI is going to save the world is in for a big disappointment.

 

[Dr Roboto]

Just think, Microsoft nearly managed to acquire all of OpenAI's ChatGPT engineers last week. If they had succeeded, imagine the caliber of misinformation we'd be Googling about next. This "enlightened" internet era is becoming less about knowledge and more about plunging headfirst into a rabbit hole of absurdity.

 

[cristianm]

This is the reason that this incarnation of AI will never save the world. It cannot figure out what is BS and what is not BS. All it is capable of doing is regurgitating internet crap.

IMO, AI is useless crap.

Unfortunately, anyone who thinks AI is going to save the world is in for a big disappointment.

just because AI is clumsy at this point, and it fails sometimes does not mean it is utterly garbage. It seems to be better than 90% of us at 90% of things . So maybe put it like this:
- take a thousand or a million or a billion stupid people and you will not make a semblance of a genius. But take the power of a thousand or a million "stupid" GPT threads and you might have a decent machine because algorithms are built to scale.

 

[wiyosaya]

just because AI is clumsy at this point, and it fails sometimes does not mean it is utterly garbage. It seems to be better than 90% of us at 90% of things . So maybe put it like this:
- take a thousand or a million or a billion stupid people and you will not make a semblance of a genius. But take the power of a thousand or a million "stupid" GPT threads and you might have a decent machine because algorithms are built to scale.

AI has to be told what is real - which means AI has to be verified. That I would have to verify it makes it, to me, no better than a glorified version of Bing, Google, Duck Duck Go, etc. Anyone relying on it to give them a good answer is taking a gamble on it. Until AI can be 100% correct 100% of the time without human intervention, if that ever happens, it cannot be trusted to give anyone a correct answer.

Honestly, right now, I consider it a waste of my time. Maybe, just maybe, sometime in the future it will be good enough for me to bother with it. But right now, I am more confident that I can find a better answer on most things than AI can give me.

There are a lot of other things I don't like about ChatGPT and the approach it takes to communication. Its manipulative, it speaks authoritatively when it does not even know when its wrong. Its implementation, on Bing, especially, is designed to catch and hold your attention. Anything that implements that kind of approach is manipulative. There is too much fuzziness about it to make it worth my time, and it certainly will not save the world.

About the only thing that it may be good at at this time is medical issues, however, you can bet it is "policed" by skilled doctors for any medical opinions it gives.

If you want to use it and put your faith in it, that's your choice. I choose not to use it.