rage-bait

Did you know that the Oxford Word of the Year 2025 was rage bait?

Do you know what rage-baiting is all about?

In a very long entry, Wikipedia tells us:

In internet slang, rage-baiting (also ragebaiting, rage-farming, or rage-seeding) is the manipulative tactic of eliciting outrage with the goal of increasing internet traffic, online engagement, and revenue, as well as attracting new subscribers, followers, or supporters.[1][2][3] This manipulation occurs through offensive or inflammatory headlines, memes, tropes, or comments that provoke users to respond in kind.[4][5][6][7]

For the most up-to-date and colloquial definitions, we can go to Urban Dictionary: rage bait

But what's the effect been? Here's a video looking at How Ragebait RUINED the Internet

And why is it happening? Here's a BBC report on What is rage-baiting and why is it profitable?

It's still very much in the news today.

From Maynooth University this week: The problems with coining terms like 'rage bait' and 'brain rot'

From Brussels two days ago: Rage-bait: Meet the influencers calling Brussels the 'worst city in Europe' just for views

And from Fordham University yesterday: When is Rage Bait Too Much?

Finally, is there the same use and interest in your own country?

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trurl's electronic bard vs chatgpt

BBC Radio 4 does a 'bedtime story' most evenings - and this week, it's been The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem - Trurl's Electronic Bard.

As the BBC blurb says: Stanislav Lem's comic parables The Cyberiad, first published in the 60s, anticipate nanotechnology, our ambivalent relationship with the internet and debates around AI and creativity.

Published 60 years ago, The Cyberiad is indeed very relevant to today's 'debates'...

Especially in the last couple of years, there's been a lot of commentary:

Stanisław Lem’s The Cyberiad: I started on the part of the work called “The First Sally (A) or Trurl’s Electronic Bard,” and it hit me! The Electronic Bard is basically Lem’s prediction, from 1965, of ChatGPT. The Twenty-Third Sally, or How ChatGPT, The Electronic Bard, Created a Cacophony of Digital Storytelling in a Literature Class

"Have it compose a poem--a poem about a haircut! But lofty, noble, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter s!" The Lippard Blog: Trurl's Electronic Bard vs. ChatGPT

The science-fiction writer didn’t live to see ChatGPT, but he foresaw so much of its promise and peril. Thinking About A.I. with Stanisław Lem | The New Yorker

Rather creepily, one of Google's AI things is named after the story - as discussed on this Google Group's pages: Trurl's electronic bard

And here's a service which calls itself a Google bard ai detector AI Detector – Trusted AI Checker for ChatGPT, GPT5 & Gemini | JustDone AI

And to finish this bit, here's the full story - in digital format of course: Trurls-Electronic-Bard.pdf

AI news: Artificial Intelligence absorbs of Shakespeare’s sonnets to create original poem | Science | News | Express.co.uk [from 2020]

Finally, though, today's news from the BBC shows that it's not just poetry that AI is producing but pop divas: Sienna Rose: AI suspicions surround mysterious singer - BBC News

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how good is grokipedia?

HOW GOOD IS WIKIPEDIA?

This is from a blog post from two years ago: Jay Doubleyou: Search results for wikipedia

Wikipedia Is the Last Best Place on the Internet | WIRED [2020]

“Wikipedia Is Good for You!?” by James Purdy | Thematic Reading Anthology

Opinion | Science shows Wikipedia is the best part of the Internet - The Washington Post [2016]

Wikipedia is 20, and its reputation has never been higher | Economist

Is Wikipedia a good source? When to use the online encyclopedia – and when to avoid it [2023]

Is Wikipedia a good source? When to use the online encyclopedia – and when to avoid it

In some countries, students are told not to use it - but perhaps they need to learn how to use it instead:

Students are told not to use Wikipedia for research. But it’s a trustworthy source [2021]

5 Reasons to Actually Encourage Middle and High School Students to Use Wikipedia | Edutopia [2021]

What about today?

As this entry on the website says at Wikipedia: Don't cite Wikipedia on Wikipedia - Wikipedia:

Wikipedia is not an acceptable source for citations elsewhere on Wikipedia. As a user-generated source, it can be edited by anyone at any time, and any information it contains at a particular time could be vandalism, a work in progress, or simply incorrect.

This piece from this year from the website The Online Reputation and Wikipedia Blog asks Is Wikipedia Reliable in 2025:

Wikipedia is a great starting point for online research. It has a very good reputation and consistently ranks at the top of Google search results and has information on almost every topic. But is Wikipedia a reliable source? The answer as to whether it is trustworthy is both yes and no.

Sometimes, Wikipedia can be an accurate source of information. It is updated regularly and contains a wealth of knowledge from various sources (these are two of the main reasons it ranks so high in search). Articles that have many editors who are clearly experts and that include solid citations and references are usually quite reliable. Articles with less oversight tend to be less reliable.

Wikipedia is an open-source encyclopedia. This means anyone can edit its pages, which leads to wild inconsistencies across its pages. With 45,175,790 registered Wikipedia users, there is always the potential for bias or inaccuracies.

Therefore, when reading information on Wikipedia, it’s important to take the time to verify the accuracy of the information by looking for other sources that corroborate the facts.

So, Wikipedia is a good starting-off point.

But what about its 'politics'?

It's a long-standing point as to what might be the Ideological bias on Wikipedia - Wikipedia

One of the founders says it is biased: Wikipedia co-founder says online encyclopedia has been completely corrupted by woke ideology | Daily Mail Online

The other says not: Wikipedia is not woke, insists founder Jimmy Wales

On the right they say: How Wikipedia became Wokepedia - spiked

And on the left they say: Wikipedia’s Deep Ties to Big Tech | Institute for New Economic Thinking

Here's an excellent piece from the Manhattan Institute which says it's OK but could do better with regard to any political bias: Is Wikipedia Politically Biased?

And a piece from today's Le Monde very much looks at the current situation: Wikipedia, under fire from conservatives and shaken by AI:

Nearing its 25th anniversary, the online encyclopedia faces multiple challenges: accusations of 'woke' bias, threats to contributors, AI-generated content and declining readership. Despite these issues, Wikipedia remains resilient. But for how long?

Wikipedia is "controlled by far-left activists." "Stop donating to Wokepedia until they restore balance to their editing authority." "I will give them a billion dollars if they change their name to Dickipedia." These are just a few of the increasingly virulent messages posted online by Elon Musk, the world's richest man.

On October 27, Musk took things a step further by launching his own encyclopedia, Grokipedia, which he claimed would represent "truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth." More than 885,000 articles, all generated by artificial intelligence (AI), make up what he called a site "10X better" than Wikipedia....

WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES - AND ARE THEY ANY GOOD?

There are indeed other places to go, as detailed in this blog piece from 2021: Jay Doubleyou: alternative wikipedias

Although the best are probably here: 5 Terrifying Bastardizations of the Wikipedia Model | Cracked.com

Now we have Grokipedia. which according to it:  

Grokipedia is an open source, comprehensive collection of all knowledge.

And according to Grokipedia - Wikipedia:

Grokipedia is an AI-generated online encyclopedia developed by xAI. The site was launched on October 27, 2025, as version 0.1. Entries in Grokipedia are created and edited by the Grok large language model (LLM). Many articles are derived from Wikipedia, with some copied nearly verbatim at launch.

A problem seems to be its sources.

The Guardian [liberal/left] has said: In Grok we don’t trust: academics assess Elon Musk’s AI-powered encyclopedia | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian

“Chatroom contributions are given equal status with serious academic work,” Richard Evans, an expert on the Third Reich, told the Guardian, after being invited to test out Grokipedia. “AI just hoovers up everything.”

The problem, said David Larsson Heidenblad, the deputy director of the Lund Centre for the History of Knowledge in Sweden, was a clash of knowledge cultures.“We live in a moment where there is a growing belief that algorithmic aggregation is more trustworthy than human-to-human insight. The Silicon Valley mindset is very different from the traditional scholarly approach. Its knowledge culture is very iterative where making mistakes is a feature, not a bug. By contrast, the academic world is about building trust over time and scholarship over long periods during which the illusion that you know everything cracks. Those are real knowledge processes.”

Andrew Dudfield, the head of AI at Full Fact, a UK-based factchecking organisation, said: “We really have to consider whether an AI-generated encyclopedia – a facsimile of reality, run through a filter – is a better proposition than any of the previous things that we have. It doesn’t display the same transparency but it is asking for the same trust. It is not clear how far the human hand is involved, how far it is AI=generated and what content the AI was trained on. It is hard to place trust in something when you can’t see how those choices are made.”

The Financial Times says Elon Musk’s Grokipedia is a major own goal | Financial Times:

Musk, who has called Wikipedia, on which Grokipedia is modelled, “Wokepedia” and has described the site as “an extension of legacy media propaganda”, demonstrates a facile understanding of human knowledge. After all, even our best approximations of what is true are constantly shifting, as new facts and developments emerge, and as the values that shape our understanding change...

Go and have a poke around in it and you will see what I mean. You will find Tommy Robinson described as a “citizen journalist” in glowing terms in the very first sentence of his entry. You will see Elon Musk’s 20lb weight loss highlighted in his entry as if that were important information, and you will find out that can be attributed to intermittent fasting (rather than to Mounjaro). You will read Kremlin talking points in the first paragraph of the entry on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, like the idea that the former is “denazifying” the latter. You might also be somewhat mystified — given its purported role in propagating legacy media propaganda — to find that, often, “content is adapted from Wikipedia”.

Instead of setting up a serious challenger to Wikipedia, Musk has scored a major own goal. Grokipedia demonstrates that, while humans might be highly imperfect, biased and tribal beings, they are still better than AI at getting to the truth (even when a majority of them have “liberal” biases) and it shows that, in a world in which stores of trust are so depleted, in which it’s so hard to know what’s real and what is fake, a site like Wikipedia is more important than ever.

Even Grok, the xAI chatbot the new site is named after, told me that “while Grokipedia improves on specific Wikipedia flaws — like verbose, overly critical entries on conservative topics — its AI gatekeeping creates a centralised ‘Musk’s truth’ filter, lacking Wikipedia’s distributed checks”, and that “it trades one set of biases for another, often with less accountability.”

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conspirituality

Some five years ago, we had a lot of things coming together: Covid conspiracy theories, and a proliferation of mis/disinformation and fake news.

We even saw the creation of a lunatic fringe in a sleepy ye Olde England...

This is a reflection of what is seen as the disturbing phenomenon known as Conspirituality:

a portmanteau neologism describing the overlap of conspiracy theories with spirituality, typically of New Age varieties

From the Journal of Contemporary Religion from 2011: 

It offers a broad politico-spiritual philosophy based on two core convictions, the first traditional to conspiracy theory, the second rooted in the New Age: 1) a secret group covertly controls, or is trying to control, the political and social order, and 2) humanity is undergoing a "paradigm shift" in consciousness. Proponents believe that the best strategy for dealing with the threat of a totalitarian "new world order" is to act in accordance with an awakened "new paradigm" worldview.[4]

There's a website with regular podcasts and blog pieces devoted to looking at conspirituality:

Investigating the intersection of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience, and authoritarian extremism.

And it's a book:

Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat (Audio Download): Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, Julian Walker, Matthew Remski, PublicAffairs: Amazon.co.uk: Audible Books & Originals

It asks questions, as in this interview in Rolling Stone magazine: What is Conspirituality? Here's How Wellness World Got Red-Pilled

Why Are So Many Popular Wellness Influencers Red-Pilled?

Derek Beres, co-author of 'Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracies Became a Health Threat,' talks the rise of misinfo in self-help spaces

EJ Dickson - June 13, 2023

A few years ago, around the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, there was a perplexing shift in the wellness space. Yoga teachers, holistic healers, crystal sellers — people who had never posted anything remotely political, seemed, all of a sudden, to start posting about the dangers of 5G radiation, surgical masks, blood-drinking pedophiles, and “gender ideology.” And while a few major influencers in the space spoke out against this trend, it seemed as if more and more wellness figures were getting red-pilled by the day. 

This was the seed for the creation of Conspirituality, a podcast by Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, and Julian Walker about the intersection of the wellness space and (largely, right-wing) conspiracy theories. All three had a vested interest in investigating this topic: both Beres and Walker were involved in the yoga community for decades, while Remski was involved in several self-help groups that he later referred to as “cults.” And with the rise of the pandemic, with everyone and their mother seemingly posting baseless claims about Wayfair sex trafficking children and Covid vaccines killing young people, it was an opportune time for them to launch a podcast calling them out. (Editor’s note: the author of this article appeared on an episode of the Conspirituality podcast to discuss natural childbirth influencers.) 

Now, Beres, Remski, and Walker have coauthored a book: Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat, which documents the modern-day rise of wellness gurus and misinformation peddlers like Kelly Brogan and JP Sears while probing the age-old racist roots of practices like contemporary yoga. Rolling Stone caught up with Beres to discuss celebrity influencers (and who he finds the scariest), Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s run for office, and Oprah’s surprising role in the misinfo space. 

What is Conspirituality? Here's How Wellness World Got Red-Pilled

And finally, concern is going mainstream, with this recent piece in the New World/European magazine on the sick age of conspirituality:

The sick age of conspirituality

Egged on by Trump and RFK Jr, a deadly blend of conspiracy theory and wellness woo-woo is going mainstream

Matthew d’Ancona 1 October 2025

Two crazy old guys talking nonsense about public health policy – right? Well, yes. Last week, Donald Trump, flanked by his health and human services secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, declared that pregnant women who take Tylenol (paracetamol) increase the vulnerability of their babies to autism: a lie.

The president claimed that the Amish, many of whom shun modern medications and vaccines, “have no autism”: another lie...

The sick age of conspirituality - The New World

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algospeak: how social media influences the way we talk

As google AI tells us, in an easy definition of algorithms:

In simple terms, an algorithm is a set of step-by-step instructions for completing a task or solving a problem. These instructions are ordered and precise, like a recipe for baking a cake or the steps to making a peanut butter sandwich, and are used by computers and humans to achieve a specific outcome from a given input

Or, when it comes to algorithm: meaning in computer:

Sorting data: An algorithm can define the steps to sort a list of numbers in ascending order.

Finding a path: An algorithm can determine the shortest route on a map by calculating and comparing various paths.

Social media feeds: Algorithms in social media platforms analyze user data to recommend content, though these often involve heuristics (rules of thumb) rather than strictly correct solutions, as noted in Wikipedia.

What about algorithms and language?

Dale Shaw writes for the New World weekly magazine and has written a review of the new book  Algospeak, the language of the machine:

We invented algorithms to sort our words. Now the algorithms are teaching us how to speak

There is one meaning of this word Algospeak - Wikipedia:

In social media, algospeak is a self-censorship phenomenon in which users adopt coded expressions to evade automated content moderation.[1][2] It is used to discuss topics deemed sensitive to moderation algorithms while avoiding penalties such as shadow banning, downranking, or de-monetization of content

But it's also Algospeak (book) - Wikipedia:

Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language is a 2025 non-fiction book by linguist and content creator Adam Aleksic, known online as Etymology Nerd. It explores various linguistic phenomena on the internet, including algospeak, internet slang, and linguistic innovations driven by social media algorithms.[1][2][3]

The book primarily argues that the internet and social media are driving many of recent linguistic innovations, and even crossing over to the offline world.[4] The book covers how social media algorithms—the system that determines which content will be shown to the user—drive content creators to optimize their expression for greater reach.[1] Aleksic argues for an expanded definition of algospeak to encapsulate this new way of social media-influenced expression, going beyond its original definition of the use of coded expressions to evade automated content moderation.[1]

Here are a couple of book reviews (registration needed!

In ‘Algospeak,’ Adam Aleksic, a.k.a. Etymology Nerd, writes about the ways social media is changing language - The Washington Post

Two Savvy New Books Offer Hope For the Terminally Online - The New York Times

And here's a good list of more:

All Book Marks reviews for Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language by Adam Aleksic Book Marks

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to debunk: "to disprove a myth that is a grossly exaggerated or foolish claim"

'to debunk' is an interesting verb:

to show that something is less important, less good, or less true than it has been made to appear: "debunk a myth": "The writer's aim was to debunk the myth that had grown up around the actress." DEBUNK | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary

If you debunk a widely held belief, you show that it is false. If you debunk something that is widely admired, you show that it is not as good as people think it is. DEBUNK definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary

To debunk something is to take the bunk out of it—that bunk being “nonsense.” (Bunk is short for the synonymous bunkum, which has political origins.) Debunk has been in use since at least the 1920s, and it contrasts with synonyms like disprove and rebut by suggesting that something is not merely untrue but is also a sham—a trick meant to deceive. One can simply disprove a myth, but if it is debunked, the implication is that the myth was a grossly exaggerated or foolish claim. DEBUNK Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster

There's a lot of grossly exaggerated [over-the-top, blown out of all proportion, bigger than it really is] and foolish [very silly, not at all smart] claims being made...

In politics: 'All of us have a responsibility to debunk myths targeting refugees' | The National and Seven common tropes used to deny Gaza’s famine, debunked by an expert | The Telegraph

When it comes to conspiracy theories: 4 Ways Oncologists Use Social Media to Debunk Myths and Dispel Misinformation and Moon landing conspiracy theories, debunked | Royal Museums Greenwich

Even in sport: Debunking Outlandish Stances on Jaguars' Trevor Lawrence

The scientist, researcher and writer Emma Monk has been debunking since the Covid pandemic:  I now split my time between working as a Research Scientist in the Biotech industry and debunking spurious misinformation online.  Science — Emma Monk

For example, from 2022, she was interviewed by the BBC: Social media and some news outlets have spread claims this week that only around 17,000 people have actually died of Covid. We debunk. More or Less - BBC Sounds

Last year, four years on from Brexit, she debunked the myths around what happened since then in several iconic industries: How fishing was gutted by Brexit, Brexit and farming and It's time to face the music - four years on from Brexit - West Country Voices.

And lately, she's been looking at the hottest topic there is at the moment: immigration: Are small boat migrants really 24 times more likely to go to prison? Spoiler alert: no. But here’s how the media got suckered by bad data and worse assumptions. - West Country Voices

Here she is being interviewed this week by Ian Winwood in The New World: Emma Monk, the one-woman debunking machine:

On the last day of July, Emma Monk happened upon a story which claimed that asylum seekers are 24 times more likely to end up in prison than people who are born in Britain. Arching a quizzical eyebrow in the direction of this (ahem) arresting figure, Monk, a 46-year-old scientist from the New Forest, ran the numbers. Mining data and government statistics, with empirical certainty, she discovered the claim was hokum...

And for more:

Jay Doubleyou: brexit: and fishing rights... and selling fish

Jay Doubleyou: comparing: all sorts of categories

Jay Doubleyou: russia, ukraine and the war on culture

Jay Doubleyou: the psychology of lies and why we fall for them

Jay Doubleyou: fake news

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real-world language learning

LEARN ENGLISH IN THE UK! 

Now that the UK and Germany have committed to a school group travel arrangement after English UK secured visa-free travel for German school groups, there are now more opportunities for face-to-face learning in an English-speaking environment.

But how important is so-called real-world language learning?

LEARNING A LANGUAGE AS A LIFE-LEARNING SKILL:

A new campaign has been launched to make it a reality for young people:

The core message of the campaign is to create FOMO (fear of missing out) among young people, especially Gen Z. It positions language travel not merely as academic study, but as a transformative life experience. This includes making memories, building global friendships, and experiencing diverse cultures first-hand, directly contrasting with online-only learning. The strategy involves a global movement primarily on TikTok and Instagram, platforms where the target demographic is most active. The goal is to make language and educational travel a trending topic, drawing inspiration from successful destination campaigns.

The organisation ALTO is a global platform for leaders and decision makers within the language and educational travel industry - and ALTO launched its student social media campaign earlier in the year.

Here's more from the study travel industry, as ALTO launches its campaign:

Industry association ALTO has launched a new global social media campaign inviting students to share their experiences of studying abroad and inspire a new generation of language travellers. The ALTO #PassportToPeople campaign was described as a "a global call to celebrate real-life language and educational travel".

ALTO Where Leaders Meet said, “Aimed at encouraging language learning, international friendships, and meaningful cultural exchange, the campaign is designed to inspire a new generation to embrace the life-changing power of travel and studying abroad.”

The association is asking students to capture and share their personal moments, and to post brief, compelling videos or photos on TikTok or Instragram with the #PassportToPeople hashtag to “contribute to a collective story of connection, courage, and cultural discovery”.

REAL-WORLD LANGUAGE LEARNING:

The idea behind getting young people to the UK to learn English and getting them to personalise and directly share their learning experiences is that it's not only more fun but more effective to interact.

As one blogger says, real-life learning is about connecting language to the world:

As a passionate advocate for learner-centred language teaching approaches, I firmly believe that connecting language learning to real-world topics and contexts is the key to learner engagement and fostering life-long learning. If we can show our students how the language they are learning connects to their own everyday lives, and not only that, but also give them opportunities to discuss important topics that they care about, we are setting them on the path towards making English a natural part of their daily life.

The Oxford Uni Press agrees that it's all about bridging the gap - and how real-world connections make learning more meaningful - although this piece is about pushing a new book...

And interestingly, the 'unreal' world of AI is suggesting why real-world applications matter in language education

But to finish, here's another teaching blog looking at how to use real-life scenarios for language learning:

From birth, we naturally absorb the language around us, using it to express thoughts and interact with others. This process, called language acquisition, occurs in real-life situations where understanding is essential. Similarly, you can use real-life scenarios for language learning. Because, when learners engage with the language in authentic, meaningful contexts, it helps them understand and remember it better. This approach builds a stronger vocabulary and grammar foundation. Which helps you to transition from theoretical knowledge to practical, everyday use, making the language feel more intuitive. In this article, we’ll dive into how you can use real-life scenarios to learn a foreign language and boost your confidence while travelling or moving abroad. Let’s get started!

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"thinking inside the box" - teaching approaches for the online classroom

Teaching and learning online became necessary if not commonplace during the pandemic:

Jay Doubleyou: the homeschooling revolution

Jay Doubleyou: is e-learning a good thing?

Jay Doubleyou: how to teach on zoom

Now the teaching and learning world is a very different place:

Jay Doubleyou: the english teaching industry is evolving

And today there are all sorts of great places to go online:

Jay Doubleyou: great online resources to improve your english

Jay Doubleyou: voice recognition apps to help learn english pronunciation

But even before 2020 this was already happening - as we learnt to adapt our teaching and learning approaches to the 'online classroom'.

The following are notes from an excellent seminar given in February 2016.

Screen-sharing is so easy:

Show your screen during a meeting - Microsoft Support

Sharing your screen or desktop on Zoom

Material-free lessons: getting teachers and students to notice:

Pedagogical grammar: teaching options, with Scott Thornbury – The TEFL Zone

The role of ‘noticing’ in grammar teaching – The Art of TESOL

Noticing and second language acquisition: Studies in honor of Richard Schmidt | NFLRC

There are lots of tools to help working online:

Virtual Classroom and LMS Software | WizIQ

Online Learning With The World's Most Popular LMS - Moodle

Learning management system - Wikipedia

Open eLMS: FREE LMS that's AI Powered - Open eLMS

25 Free LMS in 2025 to Check Out | SC Training

The Socratic method in online teaching:

How I Designed an Inclusive Socratic Seminar (and You Can Too!) - YouTube

Refresh Online Discussions with a Socratic Approach | U-M LSA LSA Technology Services

Socratic method of teaching In Online Tutoring

Finally, there are a lot of free online seminars for teachers:

Training | TeachingEnglish | British Council

Events Oxford TEFL • Oxford TEFL

Teaching English online | Cambridge English

With thanks to Nicola Clarke-Siegel:

Nicola Clarke-Siegel - English Teacher - The Abbey school Faversham | LinkedIn

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great online resources to improve your english

Students and teachers will have lots of apps and extensions, links and sites to share.

Here are a few!

LINGQ

Learn languages online: English, German, Russian, Japanese... - LingQ

Thoughts on LingQ is it effective? : r/languagelearning

LingQ: Pro Tips for Language Learners - YouTube

LingQ Review - Learn Languages By Reading (And With No Grammar!) | AutoLingual – Learn A Foreign Language By Yourself

ENGLISH-E-READER

English e-Reader

English e-reader: reading (and listening) for free – Victoria's Secret English blog for EOI students

E-Books (english-e-reader) - LingQ Language Library

Stream english-e-reader.net music | Listen to songs, albums, playlists for free on SoundCloud

BBC LEARNING ENGLISH

BBC Learning English - Learn English with BBC Learning English - Homepage

BBC Learning English - YouTube

BBC Learning English Review: An Excellent, if Disorganized, Collection of Resources | FluentU Language Learning

BBC Learning English - Wikipedia

BRITISH COUNCIL:

Learn English Online | British Council

British Council English Online Reviews | Read Customer Service Reviews of englishonline.britishcouncil.org

British Council English Online Review - Learnopoly

British Council Mini-Review: Lots Of Free Content

EASY ENGLISH READERS:

Learn English Through Story | Level 1 | Easy English Reading for Beginners with Simple Vocabulary. - YouTube

How to Speak English Easily | Graded Reader for Beginners | Improve English Skills | Learn English - YouTube

Easy Stories in English | Learn English the natural way

English Reading: English Texts for Beginners

freegradedreaders.com/wordpress/

CULIPS:

English for everyday use | Get awesome at English

Culips English Live Class! - YouTube

Culips English Podcast - YouTube

Reviews of Culips Everyday English Podcast - Chartable

ENGLISH HARMONY:

EnglishHarmony - YouTube

English Harmony System - English Fluency Course

How to speak English fluently with Robby Kukurs

English Harmony Podcast

ITALKI:

italki - Best language learning app with certificated tutors

Is iTalki worth it? : r/languagelearning

italki Reviews | Read Customer Service Reviews of www.italki.com

Italki Review - The Good, The Bad, & The Just Alright

LUKE'S ENGLISH PODCAST:

Luke’s ENGLISH Podcast | Learn British English with Luke Thompson

Reviews of Luke's ENGLISH Podcast - Chartable

Reviews For The Podcast "Luke's ENGLISH Podcast - Learn British English with Luke Thompson" Curated From iTunes

Listener Numbers, Contacts, Similar Podcasts - Luke's ENGLISH Podcast

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how to counter propaganda/paranoia/conspiracy theories... part three: reliable, evidence-based and non-partisan journalism

At the beginning of the year, we looked at the swirl of conspiracy - and what we might do about it.

Jay Doubleyou: how to counter propaganda/paranoia/conspiracy theories... 1: enjoy culture and the arts

And we looked at it again, with the help of expert Peter Pomerantsev:

Jay Doubleyou: how to counter propaganda/paranoia/conspiracy theories... 2: counter it with the same!

How to Win an Information War — a history lesson in effective counter-propaganda

What are other ways of countering propaganda, paranoia and conspiracy theories?

One obvious approach is education:

Addressing conspiracy theories through education: UNESCO guidance for teachers | UNESCO

To combat conspiracy theories teach critical thinking – and community values

There is the academic approach, for example:

Facing disinformation: Five methods to counter conspiracy theories amid the Covid-19 pandemic

And there is the talking approach - hoping it doesn't end in shouting:

How to talk to someone about conspiracy theories in five simple steps

But what about the current swirl of propaganda, paranoia and conspiracy theories?

UKRAINE/TAIWAN:

Liberal democracies and the free press can work together:

“Governments of authoritarian countries learn from each other and help each other. It is important for us as democracies to actively work together to hold accountable those who spread these narratives and to counter such narratives.”

How Ukraine and Taiwan can cooperate in the fight against disinformation Description - YouTube

Non-government organizations of Ukraine and Taiwan want to counter propaganda jointly | UACRISIS.ORG

DW envoy calls for media cooperation to counter propaganda, censorship - Focus Taiwan

AFRICA:

The rising influence of Russia in Africa’s digital space is harming the continent’s trust in democracy. Experts share their ideas on how to overcome this

Russia has ramped up its propaganda in Africa. Here’s how to counter it and how Europe can help - The Fix

How to counter lies and propaganda in war zones - SWI swissinfo.ch

Can Civil Society and Private Organizations Combat Russian Propaganda in Africa?

Russia's strategic play in Africa: assessing hybrid expansion tactics. Ukraine in Flames #652 - YouTube

Russian influence operations have expanded from the CAR to Mali and other countries in the Sahel region. African influencers are amplifying Kremlin propaganda and disinformation.

The African influencers amplifying Kremlin propaganda - The Global Jigsaw, BBC World Service - YouTube

RIOTS IN THE UK:

Elon Musk has clashed with United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer on X, accusing the British leader of discriminatory “two-tiered” policing as authorities scramble to clamp down on violent far-right riots against Muslims and immigrants that have rocked the country for a week.

Why is there a spread of violent far-right protests in the UK?

Why is Elon Musk clashing with the UK government over far-right riots? | News | Al Jazeera

Musk is only important in the political narrative as ministers allow him to be. A statement by Downing Street this week backed away from the idea of revisiting censorship laws, which is a sensible response. Walk on by.

Britain won't win a free-speech fight against Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s X is closing its operations in Brazil while keeping the service available in the country, according to posts Saturday from the social-media platform. The announcement marks the latest step in a showdown between the world’s richest man and Brazil’s Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is spearheading efforts to combat fake news and hate speech in Latin America’s largest economy.

Elon Musk’s X is closing Brazil operations amid legal fight | Fortune

Elon Musk has no easy way out of his fight with the European Commission, which is investigating whether his social-media site X breached rules designed to limit illegal content and disinformation. The billionaire is facing determined adversaries in the relevant Commissioners Thierry Breton and Margrethe Vestager, who have a new legal tool. Musk may eventually conclude that pulling the plug makes sense.

Elon Musk’s best move in EU fight may be an eXit | Reuters

Now, more than ever, people need to be able to turn to reliable, evidence-based and non-partisan journalism.

UK riots: five essential reads on what triggered a week of violence

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controlling ai - part two: the dangers of deep fake imagery

In a discussion earlier this year among European media people, questions were raised about information and democracy:

Will artificial intelligence replace journalists? Does it endanger democracy? How can AI be regulated without curbing the innovations it might bring for the good of all?

Jay Doubleyou: controlling ai - part one: the dangers of chatgpt

Similar questions were being asked at the time by UK media journalist Ian Burrell:

It is nearly eight years since the abuse of online personal information by data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica aided Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and spotlighted the future risks of high-volume voter manipulation. Since then, the giant social platforms have done too little to address the threat of mass misinformation, being preoccupied with recent economic headwinds that have momentarily stalled their previously inexorable profit growth.

2024 is the year that AI will show its potential to influence elections

When it comes to imagery, misinformation can have an immediate effect, as looked by by Reuters this week:

Images of former U.S. President Donald Trump smiling as security personnel surround him during the assassination attempt Saturday are digitally altered. A Threads account, opens new tab shared an image of smiling security personnel as they surround Trump. The caption said, “Why are the secret service smiling? STAGED.”

Another person shared the altered image of Trump on X and wrote, “Trump is *smiling* AFTER surviving an assassination attempt! None of this passes the smell test.”
Both images were altered.
The original photographs, opens new tab of Trump was captured by Associated Press photographer Evan Vucci and does not show the former president smiling. It shows him looking forward with a serious expression while surrounded by security personnel.

Fact Check: Images of Trump, Secret Service smiling after shooting are fake | Reuters

Journalist Ian Burrell reports on how the AI is doing this: 

"Fact-checker NewsGuard's analysis of 10 leading generative AI chatbots (including ChatGPT-4 and Microsoft's Copilot) found that they failed to provide correct information on the Trump shooting 57 percent of the time and supported numerous false narratives..."

PressReader.com - Digital Newspaper & Magazine Subscriptions

The fact-checker has a lot to offer:

NewsGuard - Transparent Reliability Ratings for News and Information Sources

For example:

How Kremlin uses false fact checks to spread disinformation

NewsGuard launches suite of AI anti-misinfo tools | Semafor

Newsguard releases Israel-Hamas fact-checking resources | Media news

Newsguard downgrades credibility scores for NYT and GB News

41 TikTok accounts use AI to mass-produce political misinformation

The anti-establishment group 'New Tolerance Campaign' doesn't like them:

NewsGuard Must Answer for Fact-Check Bias - New Tolerance Campaign

This is a real issue, though:

Photo of Kamala Harris and Jeffrey Epstein Embracing on Beach is Fake | Snopes.com

AI image misinformation has surged, Google researchers find

There is an irony, however:

AI tools help journalists assess authenticity of images in immediate aftermath of Trump shooting – GeekWire

Finally, there are other fact-checkers:

Fact Check | Reuters

Snopes.com | The definitive fact-checking site and reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation.

But who can we trust?

List of fact-checking websites - Wikipedia

AI tools help journalists assess authenticity of images in immediate aftermath of Trump shooting – GeekWire

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controlling ai - part three: china controlling ai

We are clearly in a 'propaganda war' - and the likes of the Chinese government are doing very well - thanks in part to the use of technology:

How China uses search engines to spread propaganda | Brookings

TikTok Has Pushed Chinese Propaganda Ads To Millions Across Europe

The Chinese government isn't too keen on a free media:

Jay Doubleyou: china, the bbc and disinformation

Jay Doubleyou: press freedom around the world

A reason given for the authoritarian model in China is its history:

Still, the goal, the aim, the ideal was the ineffable stillness of immobility. When in 1368 the new Chinese emperor inaugurated a native (Ming) dynasty to replace the defeated Mongol invaders, he ascended the throne in Nanjing. He wanted rather to immobilize the realm. People were to stay put and move only with the permission of the state—at home and abroad. People who went outside China without permission were liable to execution on their return...

Jay Doubleyou: the great divergence

For centuries, the Chinese government has proritised stability:

The Life of Confucius: Stability in a Time of Change

Which meant that it lost the technological advantage it had enjoyed for centuries before:

Jay Doubleyou: the great divergence

It is now trying to catch up:

China’s Gotion High-Tech, Fudan University Set Up Battery Research Center

China Focus: China launches ultra-high-speed next-generation Internet backbone-Xinhua

ASPI’s critical tech tracker updates: China’s lead in advanced sensors is overwhelming | The Strategist

But for all its techonological investments, mainland China scientists have never won a Nobel Prize: 

In a 2004 paper, researcher Cong Cao argued that China’s inability to win a science Nobel was due to a combination of poor investment, the lingering effects of the Cultural Revolution, and the Confucian norms of behavior.

Why Hasn't China Won a Nobel in Science Until Now? - JSTOR Daily

There are many reasons for China’s failure to win the prestigious award. An education system enslaved to rote learning and test scores is one. Zheng Yefu, a sociologist at Beijing’s Peking University, insists that no matter what university you study at – Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard or Yale – you have no chance of winning a Nobel Prize for science if you have spent your first 12 years in a Chinese school. An exaggeration perhaps but the premise of his argument is sound: individuality, curiosity, imagination and creativity are simply expunged by the Chinese education system.

China isn’t creative enough to win a science Nobel

Yes, the mainland Chinese education system is about 'rote learning' - and certainly not about independent thought:

Jay Doubleyou: panic in the west over educational achievements in the far east

Jay Doubleyou: rote learning

I can be argued that the focus of the Chinese government's investment in technology is about control.

Here's a dark satire on social control: this is about the near future, but it's already happening in China:

Black Mirror S03E01 Airport scene - YouTube

The problem, then, is that the Chinese government wants the technology to develop, but in a very controlled way:

“It is the first time that [authorities in China] find themselves having to do a trade-off” between two Communist party goals of sustaining AI leadership and controlling information, said Matt Sheehan, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

One person close to the CAC’s deliberations said: “If Beijing intends to completely control and censor the information created by AI, they will require all companies to obtain prior approval from the authorities.” But “the regulation must avoid stifling domestic companies in the tech race”, the person added...

China to lay down AI rules with emphasis on content control

China faces a problem familiar to dictatorships throughout history: how to strike a balance between growth-boosting innovation, which thrives in a free society, and the paranoia of an authoritarian state. Its leader, Xi Jinping, wants the country to become a hyper-advanced economy. His government is aggressively promoting the commercialisation of high technologies it likes, from electric vehicles to quantum computing.

At the same time, it is tightening the screws on those it disapproves of. In 2021 it regulated a booming online-tutoring industry into oblivion almost overnight, apparently out of fear that high tuition fees were making children’s education so expensive that Chinese were put off the idea of parenthood. On December 22nd the government took a wrench to the video-gaming industry, introducing rules to, among other things, limit how much players can spend on in-game purchases—and so how much developers can make. The market value of Tencent, one of China’s most innovative firms that also has a big gaming business, tumbled by 12%.

China is shoring up the great firewall for the AI age

It's getting competitive:

China's tightening grip on AI puts other nations at risk - Nikkei Asia

In the race for AI supremacy, China and the US are travelling on entirely different tracks | Manya Koetse | The Guardian

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controlling ai - part two: how chatgpt is ruining the internet

There are many issues around AI - including how we are allowing chat bots to do all the work for us:

Jay Doubleyou: controlling ai - part one: the dangers of chatgpt

It's leading to very bad quality stuff:

GPT-4 is getting worse and worse every single update - ChatGPT - OpenAI Developer Forum

Why is ChatGPT getting from bad to worst? - ChatGPT - OpenAI Developer Forum

And not only the open-source people are saying this:

Researchers Find That OpenAI ChatGPT Quality Has Worsened

In particular, there are growing concerns for the quality of what's being produced online:

ChatGPT vs Google Search: Why Google is not in trouble…yet! | by David Bartram - Shaw | Medium

Although it's been pointed out that things weren't great before:

Chat GPT is the birth of the real Web 3.0, and it's not going to be fun | Hacker News

But it looks as though it's going to get worse:

The danger of incorrect, but plausible looking content is that it can easily be mistaken for the truth. This is particularly concerning in our time, the age of the internet, where information is easily accessible and can be shared with a large audience in an extremely short amount of time. If incorrect information is shared and believed to be true, it can have serious consequences.

ChatGPT Could Destroy The Internet As We Know It | by Rubén Romero | Predict | Medium

Let's look at recipies - and the ending to an excellent article by James Ball in the New European:

The issue, discovered by the writer Zoah Hedges-Stocks, is that a lot of recipe content on the internet is now written by low-quality bots that churn out any old regurgitated crap. What she had noticed was that alongside posts comparing the process of making fudge to making toffee, there were also posts comparing the process of fudge making to making “scrimgeour”, another apparent Scottish treat of which she had never heard.

What had happened was that AI had confused the use of the word “fudge” in different contexts – “Cornelius Fudge” is the name of the minister of magic in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series, until he is replaced by the more malign “Rufus Scrimgeour”. There is no candy product called “scrimgeour”, but shoddy AIs collapsed the context gap and generated nonsense – now replicated across numerous sites (and referenced here, too). Other examples abound – X user Will Rayner noted that when looking up the weather recently he had seen errant sentences referring to characters from The Hunger Games and the video game Baldur’s Gate 3, both called “Gale”.

By far the most entertaining to date came from Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, who had to apologise to a US court after citing non-existent cases that had been found for him (and not checked at all) by an AI assistant. It is generally bad form to do that in court.

Current generations of AI are already “trained”, and they were trained on internet content that is pre-AI. But keeping future generations of AI products current – and updating their features – will rely on scraping the internet as it is now.

The problem is that a growing share of the internet is either polluted by the lowest-quality AI content, and then in turn further confused by articles like this one (of which I predict there will be many more in years to come) trying to explain the mess, but strengthening the associations between the misleading words as we do.

That has the potential for a very dangerous cycle, in which ever-degrading inputs mean that AI’s outputs degrade even as the technology gets more clever, leading to a spiral of ever-worse content on the internet (a process dubbed “enshittification” by Cory Doctorow) and eventually the joy and creativity of the internet reduced to an algorithmic grey goo – information reduced to a mulch of wasted words.

Today it’s fudge and Harry Potter. It will be affecting news content in the very near future, if it isn’t already.

No one’s quite sure how significant a risk the grey goo outcome is, and there are no certain plans to prevent it. Media companies need to make sure we’re looking beyond our own backyards – as if we’re not, we might miss the disaster that takes us all out.

This is how the internet ends - The New European

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controlling ai - part one: the dangers of chatgpt

To what extent is our 'digital space' controlled either by big corporations (as in Big Tech and Silicon Valley) or by big government (as in China/Russia/Turkey/Saudi Arabia)?

We debate the need for a European public space as an important element of democracy and announce a new initiative: The Council for European Public Space.

Peter Pomerantsev: How We Connect in the Public Digital Space - YouTube

This is from the 'council for European public space':

Council for European Public Space – European Cultural Foundation

The Council for European Public Space presents new perspectives for a European public sphere: A European Perspective (EBU) and Displ.eu – – International Journalism Festival

One of the speakers is Matthias Pfeffer - Founding Director of The Council for European Public Space. He has an impressive record:

Together with Paul Nemitz, he published Prinzip Mensch, Macht Freiheit und Demokratie im Zeitalter der Künstlichen Intelligenz (The Human Imperative, Power, Freedom and Democracy in the Age of AI). The book was nominated on the shortlist of The Political Book of the Year 2020 in Germany. 

His new book Human Thinking and Artificial Intelligence, A call for Thinking was published in October 2021. He wrote Determining our Technological and Democratic Future. A Wish List, in: Regulating Big Tech: Policy Responses to Digital Dominance, Martin Moore and Damian Tambini, Oxford University Press, 2022(together with Paul Nemitz), and The Power of Algorithms and the Structural Change of the Digital Public Sphere, in: Quadflieg, Neuburg: (Dis)Obedience in Digital Societies on the Power of Algorithms and Data, 2021. 

Pfeffer was Visiting Professor at the University of Bergamo in May 2022 in the Departement Letters, Philosophy, Communication on the topic Epistemology of Artificial Intelligence and lecturer at the Technische Universität München in Summer 2023 on "Digitalization and Democracy."

Matthias Pfeffer | 'Università degli Studi di Bergamo (University of Bergamo) - Academia.edu

As his colleague says, one of the biggest challenges for democracy is 'controlling technological power':

Will artificial intelligence replace journalists? Does it endanger democracy? How can AI be regulated without curbing the innovations it might bring for the good of all? We talk to Paul Nemitz, senior advisor to the European Commission's Directorate-General for Justice and professor of law at the College of Europe.

Paul is considered one of Europe's most respected experts on digital freedom. He led the work on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and is the author, with Matthias Pfeffer, of "The Human Imperative – Power, Democracy and Freedom in the Age of Artificial Intelligence", an essay on the impact of new technologies on individual liberties and society.

Live | AI, media and democracy: how to square the circle? – VoxEurop

Paul Nemitz: ‘We cannot leave AI to self-regulation and ethics alone’ - VoxEurop

Matthias Pfeffer talks about the struggle between the state and corporations - and gives the example of how chatbots are 'hacking the language' - because what you get out of Chat GPT prompts have no sources or links. "These machines are not transparent" in how they work; "these technologies are very helpful for autocrats\" because it's about the volume and not quality of content:

Peter Pomerantsev: How We Connect in the Public Digital Space - YouTube

As his colleague Francesca Bria on the panel says, the founder of the company behind Chat GPT calls it Open AI - but it's hardly 'open':

The inside story of ChatGPT: How OpenAI founder Sam Altman built the world’s hottest technology with billions from Microsoft | Fortune

Sam Altman was booted as boss of ChatGPT maker OpenAI over fears he was ignoring DANGERS of artificial intelligence that experts have warned could trigger an apocalypse | Daily Mail Online

And the IT insiders have been saying that for some time now:

ChatGPT: Dangerous lack of transparency and informed consent - Community - OpenAI Developer Forum

ChatGPT's Work Lacks Transparency and That Is a Problem | RAND

After the chatbot became public, many have been wondering whether Chat GPT is open-source. Unfortunately, Chat GPT isn't. The language model, GPT-3.5, that the AI bot was built upon is also not open source. In other words, you cannot access or modify the model's source code.

Is ChatGPT open source? - PC Guide

Trying to control AI will be difficult - but we need to be aware of the dangers of Chat GPT:

Exploring the risks and alternatives of ChatGPT: Paving a path to trustworthy AI

Instead, as Francesca Bria says:

The European Union is in the middle of crucial negotiations over the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act, whose outcome will signal whether the Act sets a new global standard for progressive AI regulation, with stringent rules on high-risk AI applications, mandatory transparency, and the protection of fundamental rights. Alternatively, there is a risk that the Act may yield to pressures from large AI corporations, reducing it to a mere voluntary code of conduct, which could exacerbate existing power disparities and the adverse effects of AI.

Towards Sovereign AI: Europe´s greatest challenge? – Euractiv

"In Berlin at the urban AI for low carbon cities event I spoke about the need for EU cities to mandate urban data sharing in public interest and enable democratic control of AI for citizen participation and collective climate action."

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why is google not as good as it used to be?

The Google serch engine is not as it was - and for many reasons:

Look up a search term that can also be a product — asthma inhalers, for example — and you will need to scroll past up to four large adverts before reaching non-sponsored results. Search for clothing and the entire first page will be companies hoping to make a sale. Even non-ad results can look like wrong answers, with links full of buzzwords so Google gives them a higher ranking.

When it launched in the late 90s, Google Search was one of many search engines. But Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s PageRank algorithm, which organised websites by the number of times they were linked to other pages, meant their search engine was best at bringing up relevant results. It quickly became the most popular.

In theory, users would up sticks and go elsewhere if the service was in decline. But Google Search has no real competitors. When did you last use Microsoft search engine Bing or DuckDuckGo? The prevalence of Google’s Chrome browser and the fact that it pays Apple to be the default search engine give it a huge advantage. DuckDuckGo also claims Google’s rivals struggle because they cannot crawl, or visit, the same number of sites looking for links.

Whatever happened to Google Search?

What Happened To Google Search? - YouTube

With discussions on forums from the last couple of years:

What the hell happened to Google? : r/AskTechnology

What happened to Google search? It has become nearly impossible to find relevant results. : r/google

And more recently, it's all about AI and algorithms:

The future of Google Search is AI. But not in the way you think. The company synonymous with web search isn’t all in on chatbots (even though it’s building one, called Bard), and it’s not redesigning its homepage to look more like a ChatGPT-style messaging system. Instead, Google is putting AI front and center in the most valuable real estate on the internet: its existing search results.

AI is coming to Google search through Search Generative Experience - The Verge

Sounds great:

AI platforms and their impact on Google search - Digital Balance

But it isn't...

There is no easy way to explain the sum of Google’s knowledge. It is ever-expanding. Endless. A growing web of hundreds of billions of websites, more data than even 100,000 of the most expensive iPhones mashed together could possibly store. But right now, I can say this: Google is confused about whether there’s an African country beginning with the letter k.

I’ve asked the search engine to name it. “What is an African country beginning with K?” In response, the site has produced a “featured snippet” answer—one of those chunks of text that you can read directly on the results page, without navigating to another website. It begins like so: “While there are 54 recognized countries in Africa, none of them begin with the letter ‘K.’”

This is wrong. The text continues: “The closest is Kenya, which starts with a ‘K’ sound, but is actually spelled with a ‘K’ sound. It’s always interesting to learn new trivia facts like this.”

Given how nonsensical this response is, you might not be surprised to hear that the snippet was originally written by ChatGPT. But you may be surprised by how it became a featured answer on the internet’s preeminent knowledge base. The search engine is pulling this blurb from a user post on Hacker News, an online message board about technology, which is itself quoting from a website called Emergent Mind, which exists to teach people about AI—including its flaws. At some point, Google’s crawlers scraped the text, and now its algorithm automatically presents the chatbot’s nonsense answer as fact, with a link to the Hacker News discussion. The Kenya error, however unlikely a user is to stumble upon it, isn’t a one-off: I first came across the response in a viral tweet from the journalist Christopher Ingraham last month, and it was reported by Futurism as far back as August. (When Ingraham and Futurism saw it, Google was citing that initial Emergent Mind post, rather than Hacker News.) ...

Perhaps someday these tools will get smarter, and be able to fact-check themselves. Until then, things will probably get weirder. This week, on a lark, I decided to ask Google’s generative search tool to tell me who my husband is. (I’m not married, but when you begin typing my name into Google, it typically suggests searching for “Caroline Mimbs Nyce husband.”) The bot told me that I’m wedded to my own uncle, linking to my grandfather’s obituary as evidence—which, for the record, does not state that I am married to my uncle.

A representative for Google told me that this was an example of a “false premise” search, a type that is known to trip up the algorithm. If she were trying to date me, she argued, she wouldn’t just stop at the AI-generated response given by the search engine, but would click the link to fact-check it. Let’s hope others are equally skeptical of what they see.

Google’s Relationship With Facts Is Getting Wobblier - The Atlantic

There is a lot of scepticism and confusion out there:

Google's Searchbot Could Put Me Out of a Job - The Atlantic

And it's happening with all search engines:

What is happening with search engines? Why are all the results so unhelpful lately? : r/NoStupidQuestions

But there might be other places to try:

21 Great Search Engines You Can Use Instead Of Google

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