Language models can be used for question-answer exchanges. She uses the Google Assistant in her kitchen to convert units of measurement in a recipe.
Last year, Shah and Bender gave a more troubling example, when the answer to the query "What is the ugliest language in India?" was in the form of a Kannada language.
There is a dilemma here. Direct answers can be convenient, but they can also be incorrect and offensive. Benno Stein is a professor at the University of Weimar in Germany. Stein and his colleagues published a paper in 2020 about the problems with direct answers.
Stein and his colleagues believe that search technologies have moved from organizing and filtering information to making recommendations in the form of a single answer to a question, through techniques such as providing a list of documents matching a search query. They think that is a step too far.
The problem is not the limitations of technology. Stein says that we don't know what a good answer is because the world is complex.
Shah agrees. Providing people with a single answer can be problematic because the sources of that information and any disagreement between them is hidden.
They suggest a number of solutions to the problems they anticipate. Many of the ways that people use search engines are not served by direct answers. Shah says that people use search to explore topics that they may not have any questions about. A list of documents would be more useful.
If an artificial intelligence is drawing pieces from more than one source, it must be clear where the information comes from. Some voice assistants already do this, prefacing an answer with something like "Here", for example. Shah says future search tools should be able to say "That's a dumb question." This would help the technology not to say offensive things in a query.
Stein suggests that the pros and cons of different viewpoints could be presented by the search engines.
Many of the suggestions highlight the dilemma that Stein and his colleagues identified. If you don't click through to the second page of the search results, you won't want to read different arguments.
Many of the issues that these researchers raise and work hard to develop technology that people find useful are aware of by Google. The developer of the service is Google. Tools will be built that bring in the most people.
Stein hopes that it won’t all hinge on convenience. “Search is so important for us, for society,” he says.
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