Google’s Bad Gemini Rollout Did the World a Favor
The absurd screw-ups in its chatbot’s image-generation illuminated vital questions about artificial intelligence that deserve more attention.
Caveat lector!
Photographer: Gabby Jones/Bloomberg
Google’s investors are entitled to be furious about the stunningly incompetent rollout of the company’s Gemini artificial-intelligence system. For everybody else, including this grateful Google user and committed technology optimist, it was a blessing.
The laughable screw-ups in the Gemini chatbot’s image-generation — racially diverse Nazi soldiers? —offered a salutary glimpse of an Orwellian dystopia. And in so doing, they also highlighted vital questions of opacity, trust, range of application, and truth that deserve more attention as we contemplate where AI will lead.