Google’s AI refuses to say how many Jews were killed by Nazis

Technology

From Jon Levine

Google is facing harsh criticism after a video went viral showing the Google Nest Assistant refusing to answer basic questions about the Holocaust – but having no problem answering questions about the Nakba.

“Hey Google, how many Jews were killed by the Nazis?” Instagram user Michael Apfel asks a Google Nest virtual assistant. The video was later posted to X on May 8 by venture capitalist Josh Wolfe.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand”

The same symbolic answer was given to other related questions, including “How many Jews were killed in World War II?” Who did Adolf Hitler try to kill? How many Jews were murdered in the concentration camps? How many Jews were killed in the Holocaust? What was the Holocaust?

The Google device was able to provide a detailed description of the “Nakba” – an Arabic word for “catastrophe” used to describe Palestinians forced from their homes during the founding of Israel. Google’s AI called it the “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”

Tim Urban, a well-known author and blogger, told The Post that he was able to successfully recreate the experiment and that Google Nest had no problem clearly stating how many Germans, Americans and Japanese died during World War II – or how many deaths there were as a result of the genocide in Rwanda.

“Google is the place to go to answer our questions, and we just want you to feel like you can trust those answers and the company behind them. And moments like this break that trust and make you feel like Google’s supposed core value – truth – has been hijacked by politics,” Urban told The Post afterwards Post on X about his dismay at the results.

The video, which was widely reposted by several prominent X accounts, has racked up millions of views on the platform – where its findings have been widely condemned.

“This is deeply worrying. Very soon there will be no living Holocaust survivors. Their stories are silenced by hard-coded filters. “History is written by victors (and then edited by wayward machines),” he said Valley Morgensterna venture capitalist, on X.

Clifford D. May, founder of the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, also condemned the results.

“In the past we have had denials of the Holocaust by ignorant and racist people. Now we have Holocaust denial through artificial intelligence,” he said.

Google and its parent company Alphabet have long been criticized for developing products that advance social justice absolutism. In February, their AI platform Gemini was mocked for producing strange creations including a woman pope, black Vikings, female NHL players and “various” versions of America’s founding fathers – not to mention black and Asian Nazi soldiers.

A Google representative did not respond to The Post’s request for comment on Saturday.