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Searching for 'Disregard' Breaks Google

BigBlur said:
I don't get it... The chatbot does what you said, and the regular search results for "disregard" are shown below that. What exactly is broken?
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I don't understand the issue either. If I wanted the definition for "disregard," I'd type "disregard def" or "disregard definition" into Google search.

People need to learn to be specific with what they want.

As usual, PEBKAC
 
jclo said:
The problem is that it's the default. Like when I go to Google.com and type in "disregard," that's what I get. It'd be fine if I was trying to interact with a chatbot, but I just want to search the web.
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You still can search the web. As written in (your?) article: "You do get standard search results like a Merriam-Webster definition of disregard if you scroll down further, but the AI Overview reply is filled with a bunch of white space that blocks out what's below."

Google just needs to fix the white space. This isn't a "broken" Google search.
 
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When I googled "cancel" it was also acting abnormal.
 

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I think it really depends on how you ask search eng or AI tool. they can't tell what you really want without telling them what you really want exactly.
 
ChrisA said:
If you said “disregard" to a human, what would s/he do? Certainly, you would not expect the human to recite the dictionary definition of "disregard". You would expect the human to disregard something. So now the AI is only acting like a real person.
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When you say "Disregard definition" to a SEARCH ENGINE, you expect the definition for disregard, not for an AI to respond (why is it in a search engine anyway?) and take it as a command.
 
ChrisA said:
The system did EXACTLY what it was programmed to do. Not a bug, nothing is broken. People will learn there are several of these commands.



What if you type "translate" or "proofread"? These are all single-word sentences with one verb and in English, single-word verb sentences are a command to the listener. Like "Stop" or any of a dozen other examples.



If you said “disregard" to a human, what would s/he do? Certainly, you would not expect the human to recite the dictionary definition of "disregard". You would expect the human to disregard something. So now the AI is only acting like a real person.

Basically, the author of this article is either another AI or a person who did not think about this for very long.
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Maybe at a spelling bee.
 
ChrisA said:
The system did EXACTLY what it was programmed to do. Not a bug, nothing is broken. People will learn there are several of these commands.

What if you type "translate" or "proofread"? These are all single-word sentences with one verb and in English, single-word verb sentences are a command to the listener. Like "Stop" or any of a dozen other examples.

If you said “disregard" to a human, what would s/he do? Certainly, you would not expect the human to recite the dictionary definition of "disregard". You would expect the human to disregard something. So now the AI is only acting like a real person.

Basically, the author of this article is either another AI or a person who did not think about this for very long.
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You used to be able to put in a simple word and it would bring up the definition.

Now that it's AI mode all the time, you need to add "definition" so that it doesn't interpret the word as a command.

Yes I understand that something like "disregard" alone is interpreted as a command when in AI mode, but that means the decision to kill normal search and use only AI mode isn't going to be practical or as quick to use as it once was.

Or perhaps we just don't need AI mode everywhere for everything, but clearly the business wants something else.
 
I have also broken Google! (kind of annoying that you have to scroll past 2 and a half pages before you see the first web result)
Screenshot 2026-05-22 124453.png
 
ChrisA said:
The system did EXACTLY what it was programmed to do. Not a bug, nothing is broken. People will learn there are several of these commands.



What if you type "translate" or "proofread"? These are all single-word sentences with one verb and in English, single-word verb sentences are a command to the listener. Like "Stop" or any of a dozen other examples.



If you said “disregard" to a human, what would s/he do? Certainly, you would not expect the human to recite the dictionary definition of "disregard". You would expect the human to disregard something. So now the AI is only acting like a real person.

Basically, the author of this article is either another AI or a person who did not think about this for very long.
Click to expand...
The very issue is that this is “EXACTLY what it was programmed to do”. “If you said ‘disregard’ to a human” without any context they would give you a confused look. Whoever programmed it for a search engine “did not think about this for very long”.
 
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