Working with The Associated Press to provide fresh results for the Gemini app

RAG isn't re-training. You can have vector embeddings of all AP news in a vector DB, then when prompted, find related news via similarity search, and add the most similar (and thus related) ones to the context.

Here's some simple example code in Go, for RAG with 5000 arXiv paper abstracts: https://github.com/philippgille/chromem-go/tree/v0.7.0/examp... (full disclosure it's using a simple vector DB I wrote)

> Anyone trying to argue that it doesn't happen that often or anything is missing the key problem. Sure it may be right most of the time, but all that does is build a false sense of security and eventually you stop double checking or clicking through to a source. Whether it is a search result, manipulating data, or whatever.

Same problem existed before AI summaries.

"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."

– Michael Crichton (1942-2008)

Take it a step back further, and you will see that the media landscape capitulated to Big Anything a long time ago. For probably generations now, if we consider people like william randolf hearst and other newspaper men.

i don't think you can assume that - "real time" in this context could just mean they feed every article into their training system as soon as it's published.

I think people really don't understand the effort, care and risk that goes into producing quality reporting.

I work with investigative reporters on stories that take many months to produce. Every time we receive a leak there is an extensive process of proving public interest before we can even start looking at the material. Once we can see it in we have to be extremely careful with everything we note down to make sure that our work isn't seen as prejudiced if legal discovery happens. We're constantly going back and forth with our editorial legal team to make sure what we're saying is fair and accurate. And in the end, the people we're reporting are given a chance to refute any of the facts we're about to present. Any mistakes can result in legal action that can ruin the lives of reporters and shut down companies.

Now, imagine I were to go to a reporter who has spent 6 months working on a story about, for example, a high profile celebrity sexually assaulted multiple women, how the royal family hides their wealth and are exempt from laws, or how multinational corporations use legal loopholes to avoid paying taxes, and said, "oh, 1% of people reading this will likely be given some totally made up details".

Given that stories often have more than a million impressions, this would lead tens of thousands of people with potentially libellous "hallucinations".

It simply should not be allowed.

LLMs have their place, for sure, but presenting the news is not it.

The Gemini models themselves may score well on this, but Google's feature implementations are a whole other thing. AI Overviews frequently take untrustworthy search results (like a fan fiction plot outline for Encanto 2) and turn those into confidently incorrect answers. https://simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/29/encanto-2/

1.3% isn't great. I'd rather just go, and pay, directly to trusted news sources. Everyone has different tolerance for falsehoods and priorities I guess.

> There's always a chance what you're reading is wrong - due to purposeful deception, negligence, or accident.

I am quite certain my personal hallucinations level is more than 1.3%, obviously we want our machines to be better than us, but my doctor once said folic acid is not a vitamin.