Gemini wont talk about Bernie Sanders
I was watching the RFK Jr questioning today and when Bernie was talking about healthcare and wages I felt he was the only one who gave a real damn. I also thought "Wow he's kinda old" so I asked my phone how old he actually was. Gemini however, wouldnt answer a simple, factual question about him. What the hell? (The answer is 83 years old btw, good luck america)
Why would you use a chatbot to attempt to obtain factual information?
I mostly can't understand why people are so into "LLMs as a substitute for Web search", though there are a bunch of generative AI applications that I do think are great. I eventually realized that for people who want to use their cell phone via voice, LLM queries can be done without hands or eyes getting involved. Web searches cannot.
Because web search was intentionally hobbled by Google so people are pushed to make more searches and see more ads.
Would saying “Gemini, open the Wikipedia page for Bernie Sanders and read me the age it says he is”, for example, suffice as a voice input that both bypasses subject limitations and evades AI bullshitting?
Web searches cannot
Web search by voice was a solved problem in my recent memory. Then it got shitty again
While I mostly agree, I have used LLMs to help me find some truly obscure stuff or things a normal web search would take a long time to sift through a lot of sources that are too generalized. An LLM can give you the exact thing from a more generic search, then I can take that specific output to find the detailed source.
Especially something so trivial. If you use it to learn about some larger conflict or something, fine (though don't expect accuracy). If you're using for age, which has been trivial to find with a quick search for at least a decade, something has gone wrong with you. It's the higher effort option for a worse result.
Have you seen the web lately?
Maybe it's easier to talk to than a real person. Real people have differing opinions, which is rude.
To see if it can do it and how accurate its general knowledge is compared to the real data. A locally hosted LLM doesnt leak private data to the internet.
Most webpages and reddit post in search results are themselves full of LLM generated slop now. At this stage of the internet if your gonna consume slop one way or the other it might as well be on your own terms by self hosting an open weights open license LLM that can directly retrieve information from fact databases like wolframalpha, Wikipedia, world factbook, ect through RAG. Its never going to be perfect but its getting better every year.
To be honest, that seems like it should be the one thing they are reliably good at. It requires just looking up info on their database, with no manipulation.
Obviously that's not the case, but that's just because currently LLMs are a grift to milk billions from corporations by using the buzzwords that corporate middle management relies on to make it seem like they are doing any work. Relying on modern corporate FOMO to get them to buy a terrible product that they absolutely don't need at exorbitant contract prices just to say they're using the "latest and greatest" technology.
To be honest, that seems like it should be the one thing they are reliably good at. It requires just looking up info on their database, with no manipulation.
That’s not how they are designed at all. LLMs are just text predictors. If the user inputs something like “A B C D E F” then the next most likely word would be “G”.
Companies like OpenAI will try to add context to make things seem smarter, like prime it with the current date so it won’t just respond with some date it was trained on, or look for info on specific people or whatnot, but at its core, they are just really big auto fill text predictors.
Yeah, I still struggle to see the appeal of Chatbot LLMs. So it's like a search engine, but you can't see it's sources, and sometimes it 'hallucinates' and gives straight up incorrect information. My favorite was a few months ago I was searching Google for why my cat was chewing on plastic. Like halfway through the AI response at the top of the results it started going on a tangent about how your cat may be bored and enjoys to watch you shop, lol
So basically it makes it easier to get a quick result if you're not able to quickly and correctly parse through Google results... But the answer you get may be anywhere from zero to a hundred percent correct. And you don't really get double check the sources without further questioning the chat bot. Oh and LLM AI models have been shown to intentionally lie and mislead when confronted with inaccuracies they've given.
Confirmed
Dunno if your typo was intentional or not, but all I see in this thread is that somehow a typo is a way to bypass whatever block they have on discussion related to political figures. Which is bonkers. The great minds at the Goog somehow missed a pretty obvious workaround.
What's the knowledge cutoff date for the model? Is that even a thing on Gemini? I've been pretty intentional about not using it.
Is it from before Musk became such an overt political figure? I genuinely don't know.
It calls Twitter X, so to answer the last question: no
Gemini doesn't really have a cutoff date.
It looks like they disabled responses about current major political figures.
As OP's query regarding RFK Jr. yielded a response he can be considered "not a major political figure" then, I guess. Nice burn, Gemini 🤭.
????? Hitler?
The only mildly infuriating thing is that people keep posting this shit
They've politicised age! What's next!?🕴️
This will be a blanket filter on his name, not his age. And if anything they are trying to de-politicise gemini.
Not that i agree with that practice, personally.
But its not fair to say they are politicising age by omitting any responses related to a political figure.
Haven't they been doing that for years?
My genitals... Oh wait...
AOC and Ted Cruz got the same response, as did "who is $X".
Google has implemented restrictions on Gemini's ability to provide responses on political figures and election-related topics. This is primarily due to the potential for AI to generate biased or inaccurate information, especially in the sensitive and rapidly evolving landscape of politics. Here are some of the key reasons behind this decision:
That’s because Google is not only a shit company, it’s also in Trump’s pocket. They changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico for US users. WTF?
Gemini sounds like me in my 20's "don't talk trouble, won't be trouble"
Tf is Gemini?
Google’s generative AI
Googles ai, but it always reminds me of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol)
So stop using them.
Yeah it won't answer for any alive current political figures. Meh.
I guess braindead counts as a form of dead
It answered for RFK jr
I think the worm ate enough of his brain for him to be considered dead.
Damn those chinese censors!!!... wait
This may be an unpopular opinion (though I doubt it), but I think this is good. I don't want people making opinions about politics based on AI output. In the best case, it isn't reliable. In the worst case, it'll make things up and lead people to false conclusions. If you want the information then it's out there. Don't rely on LLMs to give accurate information, especially on current events.
This doesn't stop people from letting Gemini control their political opinion.
But Google making Gemini not able to talk about progressivism definitely makes sure those political opinions won't be progressive.
Sure, but this is clearly any politician, not just Bernie. It can't talk about Trump either.
Kinda difficult to have an AI with those restrictions because anything is politicized depending on your pov- just getting information and using science is considered politics in 2025. That said, AIs need to do a better job sourcing their info of people are using them to search so it's at least traceable. Chances are most of this info is just from Wikipedia but they should do track it better
Well, seeing as they're just LLMs and not intelligent, yeah that would be too restrictive for any of this crap. I agree. That's fine with me.
This is absolutely a good thing. There's enough misinformation out there, we don't need people getting their news about politics from an algorithm that is used to generate text.
Have you tried a search engine?
Missing the point
By the way...
Local LLM gang represent! ✌️
Local LLMs aren't perfect but are getting more usable. There's abliterated models and uncensored fine tunes to choose from if you don't like your LLM rejecting your questions.
How do I start?
I have dabbled with running llms locally, I'd absoluteley love to but for some reason amd dropped support for my GPU in their ROCm drivers, which are needed for using my GPU for ai on Linux.
When I tried it fell back to using my cpu and I could only use small models because of the low vram of my RX 590 😔