If you ask the average American “When did Niel Gaiman set foot on the moon?” Most would answer that they don’t know exactly but think it was in the 60’s.
This is not a limitation of AI, it’s exactly what you want it to do. It’s reading into the context of the question and finding it more likely that you made a mistake in your question than seriously want an answer for a constructed nonsensical question that has no frame of reference or context in our common knowledge pool.
If you want exact logical answers deduced from base prepositions you don’t want ML models or “AI” your looking at formal logic and deduction.
> Most would answer that they don’t know exactly but think it was in the 60’s.
I think this is an important point. Humans and Google have a similar bias (for different reasons) that they want to be helpful or seem knowledgeable when asked a question, so won't say "I am confused by that question" and will rather give an answer to a question which is similar to a question that they can understand, in the hopes that it is approximately right.
In the case of asking when Neil Armstrong landed on Mars, guessing "I think it was in the 60's" is accurate to within 10 years but off by 56 million km. For a good example of what average people think about the solar system, though, consider the question "Is the moon really a planet?" that was once part of an impromptu debate on TV:
I dont think comparing yourself to an average idiot on the street is what google should strive for.
The way it used to work you had one intelligent entity forming a query and a machine performing said query. Somewhere along the line Google got this idea returning no result was a bad outcome and started overriding queries. Its like you go to the hardware store and ask for nails, but shopkeeper starts telling you all about nail saloons in the vicinity because they ran out of finishing nails - or worse, goes nail saloon -> spa -> finishing -> ending -> happy ending.
We went from intelligent entity forming a query and a machine performing said query to idiot computer treating you line an idiot.
This is not a limitation of AI, it’s exactly what you want it to do. It’s reading into the context of the question and finding it more likely that you made a mistake in your question than seriously want an answer for a constructed nonsensical question that has no frame of reference or context in our common knowledge pool.
If you want exact logical answers deduced from base prepositions you don’t want ML models or “AI” your looking at formal logic and deduction.