Bloomberg’s reporting today that Google is working on AI software that can reason like a human, in a kind of expansion of its ongoing battle with OpenAI, almost made me do a spit-take.
That’s because, setting aside the AI cult that seems to be in charge of the Googleplex these days, this is the same Google that’s routinely failing at so many of the simple things — we’re talking the lowest of the low-hanging fruit. Seriously, Google, you’re going to recreate the complexity of the human mind when you can’t even handle something as basic as zapping the Hawk Tuah spam that’s all over Google Maps?
If what I just wrote comes as a surprise to you, by the way, I certainly understand. Apple Maps was a buggy mess back in the day, and the blogosphere had a field day dunking on Apple because of it. But a dumb, easily fixable, and stupidly obvious issue with Google Maps like schools and other locations getting renamed to some iteration of Hawk Tuah (and pranksters even working in Diddy references here and there)? Crickets.
Unless I’ve missed it, I don’t think there’s been any major media coverage of this, never mind that people have been all over social media about talking about Google Maps’ mind-boggling shoddiness vis a vis Hawk Tuah for a while now. There’s been some sporadic coverage of the issue here and there (one good example), and I can only attribute the radio silence to one of two things:
Most people don’t know about it, which is its own issue, or it’s that no one cares — specifically, because people are just increasingly accustomed to core Google products like Search slowly rotting, even as the company carps incessantly about how amazing its AI-focused future will be. Along those lines, I want to pause here and encourage everyone to read Ed Zitron’s The Man Who Killed Google Search, one of the most fantastic pieces of writing about this subject that I’ve encountered online in recent weeks.
The Google Maps Hawk Tuah spam, meanwhile, doesn’t seem to be localized to just one part of the country (or even the world). I’m currently seeing a number of locations in regions like Europe, while this is a current snapshot of the US:
Here’s what one school district in Pennsylvania told a local news station there about working with Google to get one of their schools’ appropriate names restored:
“We appreciate that many community members promptly brought this matter to our attention. Once we were informed of the name change on Google, the district’s technology department took immediate action. However, addressing this issue required significant time and resources as we responded to emails and calls related to the situation.”
Honestly, between this idiocy with Google Maps, the ad- and AI-filled hellscape that is now Google Search, its AI drawing ethnically diverse Nazis, those glue on pizza AI hallucinations, the way Google generally lets parasite SEO run wild — why does anyone think the company is going to successfully nail its wholesale embrace of AI?
