Hacker News Reader

Comment by nomel | Hacker News Reader

Google is not responsible, and should never be responsible, for protecting mentally ill people from themselves. It would be at a severe detriment to the rest of us if they took on that responsibility. Society should set the bar to “a reasonable person”, otherwise you’re doomed, with no possible alternative to a nanny state.

View on HN

It's not only mentally ill people that are at risk, but anyone that doesn't know it's not a good idea to put "non-toxic" glue in pizza cheese. That includes a lot of not-mentally-ill but just plain dumb people. Google didn't need to tell people that glue+pizza is a reasonable thing to do, or even just a thing. It sure did frame it like it was a legitimate response. And Google didn't even have to reply with this or anything else, they could have just supplied the links to other sites where it had been suggested, but no - they have to make a show of force with their premature foray into AI, and have it tell real people all kinds of false, and possibly dangerous things. That's an unforced error by Google that they could end up being prosecuted for.

Thats what parents and mentors are for. We as a society should not have to break our backs bending over backwards to stop people from doing stupid things. People can make their own descisions and be responsible for them. If they lack proper guidance, well that just sucks.

>Thats what parents and mentors are for.

It's nice that you have a parent that cares about how you are raised, or "a mentor". Do you realize that not everyone has that?

>We as a society should not have to break our backs bending over backwards to stop people from doing stupid things.

Sure, let's take down all the speed limits and see what happens. Let's tell people it's an option to wear seatbelts and see what happens. Let's deregulate everything and hope for the best. Sounds reasonable?

>People can make their own descisions and be responsible for them. If they lack proper guidance, well that just sucks.

There's this thing called "human nature". I think you should do some reading about it.

Sure. But we have to keep the bar somewhere reasonable, otherwise you won’t be free to make mistakes.

They absolutely should bear responsibility for authoritatively telling people wrong and unsafe cooking temperatures for meats or spreading lies about people on their results page, in their own voice. "It's just a random text generator!" isn't a protection against, say, gross libel.

They pass the threshold of criminal negligence when they keep up a system that they know will actively mislead countless people in subtly dangerous ways. The problem being hard or the tech being fundamentally unsound doesn't wave away their culpability - if anything it destroys any reason why they should be given some leeway.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com