No, seriously, I have flat-out proof. Artificial Intelligence Lies. You’ve heard that might be a thing, right? I’ve even heard a story about Artificial Intelligence threatening to key a user’s car. What follows is a story about artificial intelligence lying, and it did so to me and admitted it.
Your Rent A Dad wasn’t working or doing research on the subject, either. I was watching my beloved New York Mets play another meaningless game and noticed that their catcher was wearing a personalized chest protector. That’s nothing special these days. But the name on Francisco Alvarez’ gear was Luciano, and having watched Frankie wear several different sets of personalized gear I was curious who this Luciano was.
It turns out that Luciano doesn’t exist.
OK, that’s not true. I’m sure there’s a Luciano out there who means something to Francisco Alvarez, but there’s no information available on the topic as of today. But Artificial Intelligence happy lied about it. Willfully. It even said so. You can see the entire back-and-forth I had with Gemini on the topic, here.
Read that through, or just accept these highlights:
- I asked about the equipment and artificial intelligence lied by telling me I was simply confused. OK, that’s a judgement and a dismissal more than a lie, but it was factually incorrect
- I pointed out the mistake and Gemini immediately apologized for doing shoddy work, changing its answer to Alvarez honoring his father, who’s name is Luciano. Problem is, that WAS a lie; Francisco Alvarez’ father’s name isn’t Luciano
- Maybe that was inference rather than lying. Not good, but at least not my choice of AI lying to me. Well guess what? I pointed ot that the answer had been made up and Gemini said—no kidding—I apologize for doubling down with wrong information. I hallucinated the details about his father, whose name is actually José. Uh-huh. it followed with this:
- The chest protector actually says “Luciano” because Luciano Javier is his son. Problem: Alvarez has one daughter and no sons.
- I pointed out that lie and Gemini acknowledged its veracity issues. And then lied again, saying it was young Mr. Alvarez’ grandfather being honored, even providing a link to an article that—you guessed it—says nothing of the sort.
Honestly, I’m not sure whether I’d rather my AI of choice lies to me or…ok, lies to me…just makes things up. But I am sure that AI is of very little real use if you can’t trust it.
You can’t. Artificial Intelligence Lies.