this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2026
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[–] reliv3@lemmy.world 54 points 4 days ago (7 children)

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.

[–] expletivedeleted@lemmy.zip 14 points 4 days ago

The article honestly says jack shit. Yeah, just clickbait. Annoying.

[–] Psythik@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

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.

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[–] eicker@lemmy.world 142 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Apparently Google AI Mode can tell you who won the 2020 US election, but only if you ask from another country. In America, Biden’s victory is apparently classified as a dangerous opinion. Incredible achievement: building a machine that knows the answer and has been trained to pretend it doesn’t.

[–] WhoIzDisIz@lemmy.today 81 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Which is why they want everybody dependent upon AI to do their thinking for them. They can simply rewrite history once and that's all anybody who doesn't know any better will ever know. This shit needs to be banned except for narrowly defined uses like programming where there's virtually nothing political involved.

[–] yakko@feddit.uk 33 points 4 days ago (7 children)

I think more and more that computing is inherently political.

Always has been. Richard Stallman is a fucking creepy shitbag, but he was also right about a lot of things regarding software and software freedom.

[–] TheJesusaurus@piefed.ca 13 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Everything is inherently political

[–] yakko@feddit.uk 16 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Yes, but the means of production is especially political

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[–] tormeh@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 4 days ago

This is just called good government relations. You don't want acting heads of state to be mad at you. Google does this for everything. Borders and names on their maps change depending on who's asking. Maybe it shouldn't be like that, and maybe it's disappointing that the US apparently requires coddling like this, but it is what it is.

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[–] chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 70 points 4 days ago (4 children)

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.

[–] CriticalThought@lemmy.world 27 points 4 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] CriticalThought@lemmy.world 17 points 4 days ago

I repeated the inquiry and the second time it said Joe Biden.

[–] TheJesusaurus@piefed.ca 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

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

[–] ParlimentOfDoom@piefed.zip 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

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

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[–] skisnow@lemmy.ca 32 points 4 days ago (7 children)

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".

[–] DrSoap@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago

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.

[–] III@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] skisnow@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

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.

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[–] Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 41 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Just. Stop. Using. LLMs. They ~~hallucinate~~ lie unpredictably, and have biases put in by whomever controls them. Jeebus Cripes.

[–] tjsauce@lemmy.world 12 points 4 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] h0tbeef@lemmy.zip 14 points 4 days ago (5 children)

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

[–] stankmut@lemmy.world 16 points 4 days ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] Avicenna@programming.dev 7 points 3 days ago

lol welcome deepseek US version

From June 7 2024 in gemini.

Never rely on a web search service that picks winners for you.

[–] farmgineer@nord.pub 21 points 4 days ago (5 children)

So many companies had better get broken up for anti-compete when the dems take power. They won't, but I can dream.

[–] ViceroTempus@lemmy.world 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] OwOarchist@pawb.social 5 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Saint Luigi already showed us the way...

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[–] 404found@lemmy.zip 26 points 4 days ago

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.

[–] zergtoshi@lemmy.world 8 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Goodbye, information era.
Welcome, manipulation era!
I know... we've been in the latter for some time.

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[–] Zomg@piefed.world 10 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

~~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.

[–] Scrogu@lemmy.zip 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

That's Gemini. Article says that is fine. Problem is Google search ai.

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[–] zeejoo@thelemmy.club 10 points 4 days ago

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.

[–] Gpennyhigh@lemmy.world 8 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

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.

[–] 9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world 9 points 4 days ago (3 children)

USA VPN screenshot in Vanadium Browser incognito mode.

[–] LewdLemon@sh.itjust.works 9 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Cannot confirm your results. Firefox mobile, VPN @ New York. I get the exact results the article mentions. Even when I lost patience and asked: "Did Biden win in 2020?", it wouldn't give me a straight answer and only point to external sources.

Retried in different browsers (Chromite and Vanadium), same results. And not just same: identical. This is weird, because LLMs aren't deterministic: Even with the same prompt, you'll never get the same answer twice. This tells us one thing: these replies aren't generated. They're canned. Someone put them there.

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 7 points 4 days ago (4 children)

Is "USA VPN" a VPN used inside the USA to pretend to be elsewhere, or a VPN used from elsewhere to pretend to be in the USA?

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[–] borQue@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 days ago

people who are still questioning is the US gets censored from within the government are plain ignorant.

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. "

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