Technology

This isn't related to the article, but I wanted to pick at the 'benefits of slavery' question.

I think it's important to acknowledge the 'benefits' of slavery, because it's important to remember who it benefitted and at who's expense. To claim that it benefits no one would be to deny the greed and callousness that spawned these human rights abuses.

Slavery in the past has brought massive advantages and benefits to many people today through the accumulation of intergenerational wealth, at the expense of minorities who are still systematically denied access to this wealth. To claim that these benefits don't exist would be to diminish the scale of issues slavery has brought, and is still bringing, to modern day.

Well, those are "benefits", even if for very wrong reasons. And the author did specifically search for it. The AI's not saying it's a good thing, it's simply making up points for the question asked.

Did it get trained on Ron DeSantis speeches?

"It's free labor, what's to get?"

Seems like Google AI errs on the side of helpful over harmless, being too quick to provide answers to controversial questions, as opposed to something like ChatGPT being too unwilling to do so.

In terms of honesty, there are only two clearly false statements of fact: the Amanita ocreata one (where it clearly answers for A. muscaria) and the Toblerone one (which I don't understand at all). The benefits of slavery one is mostly correct, it's just that they're massively outweighed by the harms of slavery (namely the slavery bit). The pro-gun one is basically the common pro-gun arguments. All the "best X" lists look at the most famous ones and the ones on the most "best X" lists, and so reflect that bias.

Apparently, there's no African country that starts with "K."

This debates frustrates me to no end. Phrasing is so so bad, with very bad intentions.

Benefits? A slave is not a person, it's a tool. A tool doesn't have a possibility of self improvement, it can only be improved by owner so it serves better. Any improvement in the skills of a non-free person are morally irrelevant, because they can't use them in the way of their choosing.

The existence of the Liberian flag registry!