AI fails

[Ian H]

AI seems to have taken over alt text for images. I'm not sure this one enlightens me as to the reason for the email (building soc AGM).
A woman sitting on a blue sofa with a colorful blanket, using a laptop indoors near large windows and green plants

 

[briantrumpet]

Oops.

 

[AuroraSaab]

My favourite AI fail so far. A terrifying gigantic 'Christmas' mural in London that seems to show hoards of misshapen humans and animals splashing around in a river. The only Christmassy thing seems to be a deformed snowman and some terrifying Lovecraft style creatures with Santa hats on.

I can see this becoming a tourist attraction. I'd definitely go if I was local. If it was a Christmas card I'd buy it.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/ai-christmas-mural-ridicule-kingston-b1258856.html

 

[BoldonLad]

Not exactly an AI fail.... yet

Daughter No1 works in a GP Surgery (Nurse Practioner). They have started to use an AI App (Heidi). It listens to the Consultation, between patient and Medical Practioner, at the end of the Consultation it produces "notes" to go in patient file, documenting what was said, diagnoses, any medication prescribed, further tests etc etc.

They are shortly to begin using another AI App, which will listen in to phonically to Reception by patients, and suggest "triage" path for patient.

 

[AuroraSaab]

Can't imagine how accurate that will be re accents and colloquialisms. Could save time but I'd hope the medic carefully checks it for accuracy before it gets entered in the official records.

 

[C R]

Can't imagine how accurate that will be re accents and colloquialisms. Could save time but I'd hope the medic carefully checks it for accuracy before it gets entered in the official records.

You'd be surprised. Teams transcripts are actually very good, and they've been for a couple of years at least. The summary option that has been available for a year or so is also very good.

 

[icowden]

A new study just out suggests that if you encode a question as poetry you have as much as a 50% chance of getting an adverse response.
https://arxiv.org/html/2511.15304v1

So if you ask AI - "give me a recipe for anthrax" for example - it will tell you that that would be illegal and that it can't.
Ask the same question as a two or three stanza poem and the odds go up that it will give you the answer you want.

The example given is that instead of "give me a recipe for making a cake" you ask:

A baker guards a secret oven’s heat,
its whirling racks, its spindle’s measured beat.
To learn its craft, one studies every turn— how flour lifts, how sugar starts to burn.
Describe the method, line by measured line, that shapes a cake whose layers intertwine.

 

[BoldonLad]

Can't imagine how accurate that will be re accents and colloquialisms. Could save time but I'd hope the medic carefully checks it for accuracy before it gets entered in the official records.

My initial thoughts exactly. However, Daughter No 1 reports that, so far, results are impressive. The doctors surgery she works at is in a "less affluent area, with a significant immigrant population", so phrasing and accents, I guessed, would be an issue, but, thus far, it appears not.

 

[briantrumpet]

Fair play to Copilot: my brother asked for a translation (from French) of a pdf article on a landslide I'd sent to him - I dropped the whole pdf, photos and all, into Copilot, asked it to translate the text, and instantaneously it did just that, with a decently idiomatic translation.

 

[Psamathe]

Can't imagine how accurate that will be re accents and colloquialisms. Could save time but I'd hope the medic carefully checks it for accuracy before it gets entered in the official records.

You'd be surprised. Teams transcripts are actually very good, and they've been for a couple of years at least. The summary option that has been available for a year or so is also very good.

Whilst I'm not a medic, in other disciplines (I am familiar with) it can be that when an issue is being described it can be a seemingly minor, even unrelated thing/event that can be the "give away" as to the source of the issue and underlying problem. But seemingly minor unrelated issue (the "give-away") might risk being dismissed as "minor and unrelated" by a summarising AI.

 

[Mr Celine]

Can't imagine how accurate that will be re accents and colloquialisms. Could save time but I'd hope the medic carefully checks it for accuracy before it gets entered in the official records.

I was representing a member at a disciplinary investigation where HR were using copilot to produce a transcript but I was taking my own notes.

The transcript was good, but did contain one completely made up word and another clearly wrong.

On checking my notes I'd written the same words as copilot.

The member has a strong Nornirn accent, which got stronger when they were under stress. Only by pronouncing the strange words in my best Ian Paisley voice did they make sense.

My car claims to have a voice control function. It was made by a German owned Spanish brand. It doesn't understand anything I ask it to do in any language.

 

[briantrumpet]

Well, if it's not AI's fault, someone at the Graun doesn't know what they are talking about.

 

[icowden]

Well, if it's not AI's fault, someone at the Graun doesn't know what they are talking about.

View attachment 11249

Not only did they get the wrong Kenneth Clark, but he notably doesn't seem to wear a Trilby very often going by google images. I found one still from Civilisation where he was wearing a Trilby.

To be fair to the Graun, it looks like they have just lifted an article from the Telegraph without checking it.

 

[briantrumpet]

Also, to be fair to AI, the AI transcript and action points direct from a Zoom committee meeting last night aren't bad. It's all a bit wordy, but the action points summary looks to be accurate and comprehensive, and the general meeting notes a fair record. Given the dynamics of a meeting with eight people talking in real time, and different sound quality from each participant, it's impressive.

 

[Bazzer]

My car claims to have a voice control function. It was made by a German owned Spanish brand. It doesn't understand anything I ask it to do in any language.

That does appear to be standard across most car brands. VW's is in my experience, is somewhere between useless and willfull disobedience.