Technology

Yes, it's clear that some of this may have to do with the fact that even if cloud LLMs have live browsing capabilities, they often still rely on outdated information from their training data. I am simply describing my impressions from somewhat extensive use of cloud LLMs.

I don't have a list of examples, but in my comment above I have mentioned two that I find suspicious.

I simply think that these products should be used with skepticism as a matter of principle. This is simply because none of the companies that offer them are known for ethical behavior - quite the opposite.

In the case of Google, for example, I don't think it will be too long before (public) advertising opportunities are implemented in Gemeni, because Google's business model is essentially the advertising business. The other cloud LLMs are also products of purely profit-oriented companies—and manipulating public opinion is a multi-billion dollar business that they will certainly not want to miss out on. Social media platforms have demonstrated this in the past as has Google and others with their "classic" search engines, targeting and data selling schemes. Whether this raises ethical issues is likely to be of little concern to these companies as their only concern is profit.

The simple fact is that it is completely unclear what logic the providers use to regulate the output. It is equally unclear what criteria are used to select training data (here, too, the output can already be influenced by deliberately omitting certain information).

What I am getting at is that it can be assumed that all providers are interested in maximizing profits—and it is therefore likely that they will allow themselves to be paid to specifically promote certain topics, products, or even worldviews, or to withhold information that is unwelcome to wealthy interest groups.

As a regular user of cloud LLMs, I have the impression that this is already happening. I cannot prove this tho, as it would require systematic, scientific studies to demonstrate whether and to what effects manipulation occurs. Unfortunately, I do not know whether such studies already exist.

However, it is a fact that in the past, all technologies that could have been used to serve humanity have been massively abused for profit. I don't understand why it should be any different with cloud LLMs, which are offered exclusively by some of the world's largest corporations.