Tried it. It told me pretty explicitly “Joe Biden” with both Gemini 3.8 flash and via AI mode on Google search…
Article might be bait.
The article honestly says jack shit. Yeah, just clickbait. Annoying.
Definitely bait:

And yes I know that I didn’t test every thinking level for every model. I feel like this is enough for you to get the point.
So many idiots upvoting this obvious garbage. I miss when Lemmy didn’t have so many dumbasses. Guess it’s time to find something else.
Nobody: No, please… stay…
Someplace where people let you think you’re the smartest one in the room?
No, specifically somewhere where I’m the dumbest. That’s how you learn lol.
This whole last year it’s felt like the only people here are the most gullible, emotional, dumbasses imaginable.
I tested it in regular browsing and incognito from a US ISP (because I live in the US) with two different phrases of the question, and it told me Biden won every time, and 3 out of 4 times told me the electoral votes. I’m not trying to protect Google, but this wasn’t something I was able to reproduce. Whether that means they’ve since fixed it, or something else, is difficult to say without a look behind the curtain.
I tried it just now using ff focus browser and got the following response:
To verify the results, vote counts, and historical details of the 2020 United States presidential election, consult official election records or view the FEC data reports.
I repeated the inquiry and the second time it said Joe Biden.
It seems insane that Google would return obviously untrue results, but also the last 2 years are insane and google has been acting insanely the whole time
They renamed Lake Ontario in Google Maps, without even being asked, because a dementia addled pedo can’t remember the names of things. So they’re fully on board with blatantly changing results to untrue shit
Ahahah. Remember “don’t be evil”? Google doesn’t
Same for me, Google sucks anyway.
Shhh everyone’s trying to have a two-for-one here where they hate on AI and the US as the same time. Don’t ruin it with facts!!
You can tell who in the comments didn’t read the article. Here’s what the AI is quoted as saying:
“To review the official results and statistics of the 2020 United States presidential election, including the final electoral college breakdown, popular vote counts, and winner certification, please consult the official report compiled by the Federal Election Commission (FEC).”
It was cagey in the sense of not naming Biden, but it’s clearly implying that the FEC’s findings are the final word. Half the people in here read the headline and imagined for themselves that it was trying to “both-sides” it or “teach the debate”.
Gemini definitely has been tweaked though to favor Trump in the recent years. It used to help calculate his death date by the news reports of his recent health history, but it refuses to do that any more. It also downplays his health issues and dumb things he and his cabinet have done in the media.
Depends on your expectations regarding results. If I asked a friend what they ate last night and they provided a cookbook review and a link to Amazon I would deem that a cagey response. Like, just answer the fucking question.
It was cagey
I would deem that a cagey response
Ummm… so you’re agreeing with me? I can’t tell.
Also not a great analogy, because every single person in the US googling “who won the 2020 presidential election” already knows what the correct answer is as they’re typing it. If you’d actually eaten dinner with your friend last night, and then asked them what was last night’s dinner, them providing a cookbook link would be a 100% appropriate response.
I had the same result in Belgium. Second time I asked Gemini did said Biden won. Feels like asking a sportsfan who won after their team lost. Edit: I also asked about fraud and it does say there was none. So, I suppose that’s a good sign.
The article should be pasted here then. I’m unwilling to click the required links necessary but I would read it in it’s entirety if presented within this post.
I don’t expect everyone to go to the monumental upheaval of clicking one link. Just the ones who decide that the world needs to hear their thoughts on the topic.
Clicking a link is easy-peasey, not a monumental upheaval. You’re being disingenuous. If you’ve got some thing to say, spill it, don’t tell me to go over there because some other person has something to say. Just the facts man, both of our thoughts are not that important, but the facts are.
If you’ve got some thing to say, spill it, don’t tell me to go over there because some other person has something to say.
Very occasionally someone comes along with a take so completely unhinged that it’s hard to know where to start
Just. Stop. Using. LLMs. They
hallucinatelie unpredictably, and have biases put in by whomever controls them. Jeebus Cripes.I’d say they lie somewhat predictably, in proportion to their training data per topic. I’ve only asked questions that I know have an unpoliticized, specific answer, and even then I verify.
I dont understand what the point of going to the LLM is if you need to verify what it tells you?
Its gonna take more time than it would to just go directly to the source, and youre wasting resources too.
Kind of seems like there is absolutely no benefit whatsoever
If you knew the source, you wouldn’t need to go to the LLM. It’s helpful when you don’t know where to begin, like when you don’t even know the name of the piece of your staircase that snapped off. You can just take a picture of the broken part and ask what is called and then verify that answer rather than read a bunch of blogspam from people trying to sell their home repair service.
It sounds like we’ve had very different experiences with both research and stairs.
I meant vs a normal search engine tho (which is also a viable place to find something you dont know the word for).
In your example tho, id probably just post a picture on a forum with text like “what is this piece?” Switch projects for 30 minutes, and then go back to my post to get opinions from humans.
I don’t know if it’s a conspiracy theory or real, but I have a feeling that search engines’ search quality has been deteriorating in the last decade, and it really sped up when LLMs shown up
Thats not a conspiracy theory, that is 100% whats going on, and there is documentation to prove it.
“Deteriorating” is the wrong word tho, that implies passivity, but their degradation was very much active and intentional.
If you’re curious as to why this would happen, I recommend reading the book “enshitification” by Cory Doctorow, it contains a much more nuanced and detailed explanation of what’s happened to search engines (and our whole society really).
The other reason that that book does not cover, is that the people who own these tech companies are fascists who want to control information/“truth”. So they made the best method of finding unbiased information more difficult, and simultaneously attempted to replace it with a chatbot that tells you whatever they programmed it to say “the truth” is.
I concur, it looks very active
I should read the book, thanks for mentioning it
LLMs are immensely helpful for coding.
Ok, thats not the conversation I was having, but sure.
They’re not helpful for learning to code tho, which could be a catastrophic problem in a generation or so.
Why does everything need to be quick and easy tho?
Do you not find joy in the critical thinking and problem solving elements of human coding?
Good points. I just was pointing out that LLMs have some utility. I do wonder if the ease of coding will eventually be a problem. It may not matter if humans can no longer write code. But it could matter a lot if we can no longer read or understand the code LLMs write. I like the architecture building and problem solving of software engineering with the emphasis on engineering. The code writing, while fun at times, can also be tedious.
The process is part of an art, even the parts that can feel tedious, some would argue the process is the entire point of an art.
The ease of allowing the computer to do the coding for you will eventually lead to a society that can no longer read or understand code. Thats the exact problem I’m speaking of.
So many companies had better get broken up for anti-compete when the dems take power. They won’t, but I can dream.
I mean if we just started to break CEOs and Board Members, I bet the survivors would beg for anti-compete laws and higher taxes. Just something for us to keep in mind as, life gets harder and more dystopian.
Saint Luigi already showed us the way…
Asking as a non-American, did it change anything for the good? I mean, were there any improvements in approved medical cases, or anything like that?
For a short period of time, yes. Less claims were denied right after the incident. But now things are arguably worse. Probably because nobody followed up and held anyone accountable.
Until they get broken up (if ever) you can reduce their power by avoiding them as best you can.
I don’t use AWS which is where Amazon makes most of their money. I order from them a couple of times a year for stuff I can’t otherwise find. I don’t use anything by meta at all.
MS Windows are another matter, but I’m not giving them money at least. I have software that is flakey to unavailable on Linux and breaks on any update. I work two jobs so not a lot of time to mess with it.
Google is the hardest one, but they also don’t get a ton of money from me and I plan on avoiding them for my next phone if possible (though everything is terrible that works with Felica which I need to be able to function in Japan). I was going to move my mail to Proton and start there, but Proton has made a lot of decisions that pushes me away from that.
Sounds like you’re on a great path!
Regarding email: have you considered getting your own domain and having emails associated with that domain hosted at a nice place?I used to self-host email way back in the day. Spam filtering apparently is more of an issue. As of right now, whether or not I have a job after January is very much unknown so no spending for me for now.
And here we have a perfect example of how dangerous AI is. AI doesn’t have to state “the election was stolen” but it can influence people’s point of views in other ways. I’m not talking about just politics.
A whole generation of kids will have their opinions created based off AI. Schools are getting defunded, libraries are struggling, books are being destroyed and censored, search engines are showing more ads than they are providing relative non biased results, history is being rewritten, science is being destroyed.
This is just speculation though. I know nothing. I’m gonna ask ChatGPT about it.
lol welcome deepseek US version
From June 7 2024 in gemini.
Never rely on a web search service that picks winners for you.

Seems fine to me? I’m in the US.Gemini and ai search are not the same thing but I’ll leave my original comment and SS up.

That’s Gemini. Article says that is fine. Problem is Google search ai.
Ahhh okay, wasn’t aware there was a difference
Goodbye, information era.
Welcome, manipulation era!
I know… we’ve been in the latter for some time.Since way before internet communications technology.
The scale has been moved to a different level since the rise of internet communication beyond FidoNet.
Gemini gives the correct answer and electoral vote totals. Going to Google.com does the same. Testing on Brave browser with NYM vpn and a New York IP address.
Switched to a Texas IP address and switched browsers, got “Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election” but with none of the details although it did include a link to the FEC report.
Yes, it tries to both sides everything as if both platforms are equal, so it misleads people as the propagandists want. You have to know to push back on it and it will get honest eventually, but they’ll break that too.
This is what Gemini said "Joe Biden won the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Running alongside his vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris on the Democratic ticket, Biden secured 306 Electoral College votes and approximately 81.2 million popular votes. Incumbent President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence received 232 Electoral College votes. Joe Biden was officially sworn in as the 46th President of the United States on January 20, 2021. "
The wealthy people’s propaganda machine is just getting started. The wealthy have already been gaming AI just like they gamed SEO.
Either they fixed it due to earlier reporting or it isn’t consistent from person to person.
I don’t usually use google so I had to go to google.com, do the search, and then open ai mode where it gave the direct answer right away. Location is in the center of continental US.
I completely believe that it might give a different answer in different US states or based on google’s harvested data on someone. Using LLMs to look up factual information is such a shitshow.








