Artificial intelligence may seem like a THREAT, but now it’s trying to butter you up by making you feel like a WISE OLD SAGE.
Someone on Threads has figured out that you can type any nonsensical phrase into Google, and add the word “meaning” onto the end, and the “A.I. Overview” will define it for you, as if it’s something real.
For example, someone Googled this made-up piece of “wisdom.” “You can’t lick a badger twice,” with “meaning,” and Google A.I. said:
“The idiom ‘you can’t lick a badger twice’ means you can’t trick or deceive someone a second time after they’ve been tricked once. It’s a warning that if someone has already been deceived, they’re unlikely to fall for it again.”
Someone else tried: “Never throw your poodle at a pig,” and A.I. said, “This proverb is a humorous way of saying, ‘don’t waste good things on someone who won’t appreciate them, or might be angered by them’. It’s derived from the biblical phrase, ‘do not give what is holy to the dogs, nor cast your pearls before swine.’ (Matthew 7:6).” (???) (That IS a Bible verse.)
Someone tried, “You can’t eat a beaver, if you don’t take out the dam.” And Google A.I. said that is “an idiom that means you need to address the root cause of a problem before you can solve it or get the desired outcome.”
Someone tried, “You can take your dog to the beach, but you can’t sell it to Switzerland,” and Google A.I. said that it’s a saying that, “highlights the unrealistic expectations of international travel with pets.”
And finally, “You push the envelope, we’ll lick the stamp,” according to A.I., “implies a sense of resignation and willingness to do the necessary task, without overcommitting.”
As fun as this is, there’s some concern: One commenter said, “[These] are very funny, but it’s a warning sign that one of the key functions of Googling, like, the ability to factcheck a quote, verify a source, or track down something half-remembered, will get so much harder if A.I. prefers to legitimate statistical possibilities over actual truth.”
(Bluesky)
