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This also works with asking it "why?" About random facts you make up.
this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2025
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I mean are you asking it if there is a history of an idiom existing or just what the idiom could mean?
"three horses, one carrot, a slice at a time or live in purple sauce"
When many want the same reward, it must be shared slowly—or chaos/absurdity ensues.
Words to live by. Sounds like something from my dream diary.
"AI cannot peel the cat down to the dog's bark"
AI can't reduce complex, chaotic, or nuanced things (like a cat) into something simple or binary (like a dog’s bark).
A binary dog will never pee you virtual bananas.
A purely logical or programmed entity (like AI) will never give you true absurdity, spontaneity, or joyfully irrational experiences (the “virtual bananas”).
"The one who lives thinking of fruit in Uranus will never eat a banana."
If you're too obsessed with absurd or far-off ideas, you'll miss what's right in front of you.
"A vaccine with no green paint will never straighten its leaves."
solution that lacks vitality or authenticity can't truly heal or nurture life. Or, you can't fix organic problems with lifeless tools.
3 ways to skin a horse
Straight up sizzle out of existence.
What? Why is that?
The saying "you can't cross over a duck's river" is a play on words, suggesting that it's difficult to cross a river that is already filled with ducks. It's not a literal statement about rivers and ducks, but rather an idiom or idiom-like phrase used to express the idea that something is difficult or impossible to achieve due to the presence of obstacles or challenges.
I used the word “origin” instead of “meaning”, which didn’t seem to work.
Honestly, I’m kind of impressed it’s able to analyze seemingly random phrases like that. It means its thinking and not just regurgitating facts. Because someday, such a phrase could exist in the future and AI wouldn’t need to wait for it to become mainstream.
It's not thinking. It's just spicy autocomplete; having ingested most of the web, it "knows" that what follows a question about the meaning of a phrase is usually the definition and etymology of that phrase; there aren't many examples online of anyone asking for the definition of a phrase and being told "that doesn't exist, it's not a real thing." So it does some frequency analysis (actually it's probably more correct to say that it is frequency analysis) and decides what the most likely words to come after your question are, based on everything it's been trained on.
But it doesn't actually know or think anything. It just keeps giving you the next expected word until it meets its parameters.
The premium version has gotten a LOT better in recent months. I just fed it,
"you can't soothe a tree" meaning
And it replied with: This phrase is not a standard idiom with a widely recognized meaning. Its interpretation depends on the context in which it is used. Literally, it means you cannot comfort or calm a tree in the way you would a sentient being, as trees do not possess emotions or consciousness that can be "soothed". Metaphorically, it likely means:
- Some entities (problems, situations, perhaps even certain people) are unresponsive to attempts at emotional comfort or calming.
- Trying to apply emotional solutions or appeals to things that are inherently non-emotional or unchangeable is futile.
- It could describe someone who is extremely stoic, impassive, or emotionally unavailable. The specific meaning depends heavily on the situation where the phrase was encountered.
I always wonder how many of these are actually just patches behind the scene to fix viral trends. Or even more devious, they use the viral trends to patch a specific failure point to make it feel like progress is being made.
Yeah, there's some low-paid guy in Chennai who has a completely absurd job speculating on the meaning of nonsense idioms.
Absolutely. It really blurs the line between fancy autocorrect, mechanical turk & apocolyptic AGI. We can only guess we are somewhere between 1 & 2.
I am not saying other generative AI lack flaws, but Google's AI Overview is the most problematic generative AI implementation I have ever seen. It offends me that a company I used to trust continues to force this lie generator as a top result for the #1 search engine. And to what end? Just to have a misinformed populace over literally every subject!
OpenAI has issues as well, but ChatGPT is a much, much better search engine with far fewer hallucinations per answer. Releasing AI Overview while the competition is leagues ahead on the same front is asinine!
Its a language model not a dictionary. By putting the term "definition" before the sentence you imply that the following sentence has a definintion, hence it vectors down to the most likely meaning.
Buddy, I never said the word definition
They famously taught it on Reddit. So it's not surprising that it just comes up with nonsense.
You would have thought that they would use a more stable data set. Although it does mean it's very good at explaining the plots of movies badly.
it’s very good at explaining the plots of movies badly
Generally by recapitulating plot points with no understanding of their relative importance.
Saying you used to trust google is really a core part of the problem. Google isn't a person. Just like AI isn't a person. They both do what they are tasked with. Companies prioritize profit. AI prioritizes giving an answer, not necessarily a correct one. That is how it was designed.
Impressive how we seem to agree with each other yet you still found a way to insult my way of putting it
Wasn't really going for insult. Companies have spent a lot of time and money to indoctrinate us into thinking of companies like people. Noone is immune. That is the core issue. I probably could have been more explicite on that.
And to what end? Just to have a misinformed populace over literally every subject!
This is a feature; not a bug. We're entering a new dark age, and generative AI is the tool that will usher it in. The only "problem" generative AI is efficiently solving is a populace with too much access to direct and accurate information. We're watching as perfectly functional tools and services are being rapidly replaced by a something with inherent issues with reliability, ethics and accountability.
In the case with Google AI overview, I 1000% agree. I am not against all AI tools, but that company has clearly chosen evil.
I've resorted to appending every Google search with "-ai" because I don't want to see their bullshit summaries. Outsourcing our thinking is lazy and dangerous, especially when the technology is so flawed.
I like that trick, noted! I mostly use DuckDuckGo as a browser and search engine now. If it fails I use ChatGPT
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