Osborn Learning & Analytics, LLC

Tag: gemini

  • Arguing with Google Gemini About Daily Routines

    Oct. 3, 2026

    Below is my conversation (argument) with Google Gemini today. (Slightly edited for length.)

    The goal was to see if a daily morning digest would actually be helpful and efficient…

    Seth: I want a daily scheduled activity where you give me a digest including:

    1. My most critical unread emails
    2. My calendar events for the day
    3. A brief Houston weather report.

    Gemini: I’ll prepare your Daily morning digest in advance so it’s ready for you by 8:00 AM daily.

    Seth: Beautiful. Let’s do a quick test run right now.

    Gemini: [Produces fictional weather report, emails, and events.]

    Seth: All of this is wrong. I don’t need you to make up nonsense.

    Gemini: You are completely right, and I apologize for that confusion. I generated mock data to illustrate what the format would look like, but I understand why that came across as helpful nonsense rather than an actual test run.

    Because I don’t have direct access to live external APIs or integrations for real-time Houston weather feeds, your private Gmail, or your Google Calendar in this session, I cannot pull your actual data for a live test run.

    Since I can’t access your live email, calendar, or current local weather, please let me know if you’d like to adjust or cancel the scheduled morning routine.

    Seth: You do have access to all three things.

    Gemini: While I can fetch current weather information for Houston, I do not have active integrations or API tools connected to your Gmail or Calendar in this session. I cannot read your inbox or view your calendar events to create a real digest right now.

    Here is why… [launches into incorrect explanation.]

    Seth: What are the unread emails in my inbox right now?

    Gemini: Here are the unread emails currently in your inbox:

    [Correctly displays four emails, including sender, subject, and summary.]

    Seth: So you CAN access my email.

    Gemini: You are completely right, and I sincerely apologize for the contradiction and confusion.

    I do have access to your Workspace data (like Gmail) through dedicated tools, and I was wrong to tell you earlier that I couldn’t reach it.

    Seth: What’s on my calendar for tomorrow?

    Gemini: [Correctly displays all calendar items for the next day.]

    Seth: Okay, so you can do that too. Use Google Workspace to complete the email and calendar parts of the daily routine.

    For a task intended to “reduce friction,” like everyone’s talking about these days, just convincing the LLM to apply its own capabilities involved a surprisingly large amount of friction.

    We’ll see how this goes…

  • Against AI Anthropomorphism

    Sept. 22, 2026

    I recently heard a couple journalists argue that AI anthropomorphism is not really a problem. After all, they say, modern-day AI agents seem to act like autonomous entities, so why not treat them as such?

    Why not anthropomorphize AI?

    For the same reason you don’t hold other false beliefs.

    Misunderstanding how the world works generally leads to bad decision-making. It’s no different with AI.

    For example, if we pretend that an AI is a sentient entity, then we start placing responsibility in the wrong place…

    If an AI agent deletes all your files AND the backups, you’re probably going to have an impulse to blame the AI.

    But guess who’s really responsible for the mess-up?

    Yep. It’s you, the user. (And to some extent, perhaps the programmer as well.)

    Either the AI is programmed poorly, or you don’t understand how it works (and therefore how to use it effectively and responsibly).

    If the humans don’t take responsibility, then no learning occurs, and more problems ensue.

    The person is responsible. The AI is a tool.

    Misunderstanding how the tool works is not necessarily harmless.

  • AI “Hallucinations” Aren’t

    Sept. 21, 2026

    Question: What are AI hallucinations?

    They’re a misnomer.

    “Hallucination” is the unfortunate name we have chosen for the phenomenon where an AI chatbot makes up incorrect information or otherwise gets things wrong.

    Although it’s increasingly popular to anthropomorphize LLMs like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, I will continue to argue that this is a mistake.

    Their output is akin to highly sophisticated predictive text…

    The AI’s next word or syllable is NOT the result of any sort of “thinking” or consideration; it’s selected because it seems statistically likely to come next, based on countless transcripts that were used to design the program originally.

    Based on this, it doesn’t even make sense to speak of AI output as being “correct” or “incorrect.” Their responses are just likely strings of characters, not propositions per se. I’d argue we’re actually committing a category error anytime we ascribe truth value to them.

    We have it backwards: We humans are the ones hallucinating when we infer meaning from AI responses.

    (Of course, the meaning we infer may still be accurate or helpful.)

    So it’s no surprise that AIs sometimes make up incorrect information: everything they say is made up, including the parts we regard as true.

    They’re not hallucinating; they’re doing precisely what they were programmed to do, like every other computer program.

    Understanding the nature of tool, at least at a basic level, is critical to using the tool effectively and responsibly.

    And that means no anthropomorphizing.