this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
1234 points (94.1% liked)

Technology

60078 readers
3308 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
1234
Google search is over (mastodon.social)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by JoBo@feddit.uk to c/technology@lemmy.world
 

Via @rodhilton@mastodon.social

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?"

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] solstice@lemmy.world 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.

[โ€“] spacebot3000@lemmy.world 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.