this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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Google search is over (mastodon.social)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/technology
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Via @[email protected]

Right now if you search for "country in Africa that starts with the letter K":

  • DuckDuckGo will link to an alphabetical list of countries in Africa which includes Kenya.

  • Google, as the first hit, links to a ChatGPT transcript where it claims that there are none, and summarizes to say the same.

This is because ChatGPT at some point ingested this popular joke:

"There are no countries in Africa that start with K." "What about Kenya?" "Kenya suck deez nuts?"

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[–] spacebot3000 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I just did it. It told me there were no countries in Africa that start with K, except for Kenya, which starts with K. That obviously doesn't make any sense, and sounds suspiciously similar to a lot of chatGPT-generated content (the distinguishing factor being that it sounds confidently incorrect, and contradicts its own statements). Then it said some stuff about how fun it is to learn new things, 100% reeks of shitty AI-generated content. I can post a screenshot if you want proof.

[–] solstice 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I believe you. Maybe it depends on browser, whether you are logged in, things like that?

This is the first result at the top spelled out succinctly:

Kenya is located on the eastern coast of Africa and borders Somalia to the northeast, Tanzania to the north, Uganda to the west, South Sudan to the northwest, Ethiopia to the southwest, and Somalia again on the southern border

Next link was worldometer with Kenya pulled up first.

Is this what you saw?

Human:

Did you know that there is no country in Africa that starts with the letter "k"?

ChatGPT:

Yes, that's correct! While there are 54 recognized countries in Africa, none of them begin with the letter "K". The closest is Kenya, which starts with a "K" sound, but is actually spelled with a "K" sound. It's always interesting to learn new trivia facts like this.

That was in the third or fourth link down. Sort of makes sense if it is trending or whatever.

[–] spacebot3000 2 points 1 year ago

Oh yeah, the chatGPT text you posted is word-for-word identical to the google result. Could be any number of factors affecting the pagerank I guess.