Google Books reportedly indexing bad AI-written works
Google Books, which indexes published material and has become essential for academics, has begun indexing low-quality books, which could impact how it informs its language tracking tool, Ngram.
404Media reports Google Books included several books that AI could have written. The publication searched Google Books with the term “as of my last knowledge update,” a common phrase chatbots like ChatGPT use. You can search Google Books for specific sentences or terms, and it will normally send back written works with those phrases.
It found that most of the books in the first few pages of the search were works about AI, but scattered among those results were ones that did not talk about the technology and seemed written by a bot.
404Media said the books it found, like Tristin McIver’s Bears, Bulls, and Wolves: Stock Trading for the Twenty-Year-Old, looked like these trawled Wikipedia for information about financial events and did include the sentence “as of my last knowledge update.” Other books on topics like Twitter still contained information from 2021, when some AI models would’ve last gotten training data.
Google Books makes up most of the data backing its Ngram viewer, a research tool that tracks how language has changed over time. Ngram takes information from written works to show how language usage evolves.
Google Books scanned and indexed written works dating back to the 1500s, and Ngram last updated the data it cites in 2019. Though Ngram is not perfect, many linguists and other academics use the tool for research gathering.
Google told 404Media that recent works on Google Books do not show up on Ngram results, but it is possible that these might make it into future data updates.
Google Books, which indexes published material and has become essential for academics, has begun indexing low-quality books, which could impact how it informs its language tracking tool, Ngram. 404Media reports Google Books included several books that AI could have written. The publication searched Google Books with the term “as of…
Recent Posts
- GitLab Duo AI interface and new AI privacy controls released by GitLab
- This gadget promises to increase productivity inside your vehicle by converting ICE screens into displays — and even includes Samsung DeX compatibility for free
- Quordle today – hints and answers for Monday, April 22 (game #819)
- NYT Strands today — hints, answers and spangram for Monday, April 22 (game #50)
- Why is Windows 11 so got dang annoying?
Archives
- April 2024
- March 2024
- February 2024
- January 2024
- December 2023
- November 2023
- October 2023
- September 2023
- August 2023
- July 2023
- June 2023
- May 2023
- April 2023
- March 2023
- February 2023
- January 2023
- December 2022
- November 2022
- October 2022
- September 2022
- August 2022
- July 2022
- June 2022
- May 2022
- April 2022
- March 2022
- February 2022
- January 2022
- December 2021
- November 2021
- October 2021
- September 2021
- August 2021
- July 2021
- June 2021
- May 2021
- April 2021
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- December 2011