Nine Mind-Bending Questions to Challenge Google’s Latest AI

Now that Google is offering a new search feature powered by artificial intelligence, it’s quite likely you’ll be holding query with the gods that govern all things internet searches even more than before.

Google’s new tool, which is simply called AI Mode, is programmed to provide conversational responses to complex questions.

The company says its AI Mode is able to analyze information from multiple sources in order to offer comprehensive, multi-faceted answers, allowing for a deeper exploration of topics, as well as topical comparisons, and follow-up questions.

Wow! Well, while that all sounds super nifty, just like any informational consumer who doesn’t happen to be one of the eggheads involved in making the technology they’re using – I really don’t care how it works, I just want it to do my bidding (…and not just on eBay ;-)!

Although it’s more than likely that Google’s new AI Mode is already fielding a bevy of vastly less-intriguing questions like “how do I get a girl to like me back” and “can I survive a zombie apocalypse” (which you’re already at least partially responsible for starting just by asking something so dumb, by the way…), there are also any number of inquiries which could be posed to the new technology that are of superior depth and enormously broader interest.

And so, I give you a list of nine questions for posing to Google’s new AI Mode which have managed to stump humans for a very long time but it just might know the answers to…or fry its circuits to a crisp (we can only hope).

I. WHAT’S THE MEANING OF LIFE?

Yeah, this one’s always seemingly been the biggest of the biggies. Admittedly, however, it seems the way this ages-old catechism of mystery’s highest order is phrased might be becoming a bit antiquated. Perhaps something more like, “Why does life exist” or “Does life have an intended purpose” are better fits for the neoteric inquisitor? But any way you word it, I’m certain Google’s new AI Mode will have a field day coming up with potential answers, just not one that’s entirely decisive no doubt.

By the way, the gang at Monty Python took on some of the moving parts within this question as part of their 1983 film of the same name. And I have to say, for me personally at least, I think they probably came damn close to being correct in all of its sequences.

II. IS THERE A GOD?

I would imagine, and even hope that since Google’s AI Mode itself does in fact have a creator, that its own answer about how this question relates to the potential maker of the querent would yield at least a modicum of weight to that fact. But who knows? Maybe AI doesn’t exactly consider the humans who created it to be as gods, but more like a bunch of children from a species that hasn’t grown up enough yet to realize when it shouldn’t go playing around with something it invented that might be able to answer this very question before they could? Either way, I’m all-in to hear what our new AI pal has to say about this one.

III. WHAT IS THE TRUE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE?

You can file this one right alongside the God question I suppose, since its answer (if it were ‘yes’ anyway) would immediately provide the correct response to this query. Again, it all goes back to the never-ending desire to know if someone or something snapped its fingers one fine day to create absolutely everything we can know and perceive within the set boundaries of corporealism, or was it something else that touched off this thing we call existence?

IV. IS THERE AN AFTERLIFE?

Funny thing, I’ve always felt like the better question is the afterthought to this A-lister from history’s shakes of the big Magic 8 Ball…”would it matter?”

Well, regardless, it’s still one of those things that human beings tend to ponder throughout their lives, even if and when they find themselves theologically or philosophically satisfied with the potential answer.

In all honesty, I’m a lot less concerned about there not being an afterlife than I am if there is one, that it continues to include direct marketing and taxes.

V. WHY AM I HERE? / WHAT’S MY PURPOSE IN LIFE?

Yeah, these are two different questions altogether I guess, but they tend to go hand-in-hand in so many ways that I just lumped them together into one big problem for Google’s AI Mode.

In the movie The Empire Strikes Back, Yoda told Luke Skywalker that there “is no why,” but despite the Jedi master’s words of poignant wisdom, most of us still tend to attach a ‘why’ to a lot of things in life, including the reason for being here.

It seems not enough just to exist and be as one might choose on their own in a world where we’ve all learned that it’s far more preferable to be pretty, rich, famous, and powerful, so we tend to skew towards the need for assigning a why when we aren’t at least one of these things already.

Well, even without AI Mode’s help, I can assure you myself that your reason for being here has absolutely nothing to do with simply being any of these things, so maybe with Google’s help you can fill in the gaps?

VI. WHEN AND HOW WILL THE WORLD END?

Oh, c’mon, like you aren’t actually curious.

If for no other reason, I think this question bears asking because not only might it be a lot sooner than you’d expect, but happen through a set of means which are far more interesting and unusual than your own imagination could conjure.

I know we’d all be expecting to hear something like supervolcano, giant asteroid, or gamma ray burst from nearby space as the reason for our collective demise, but you simply can’t avoid asking this question because of how dumbstruck you’d be in finding out that it would instead occur due to a sudden plague caused by the stuff they use to frost Pop-Tarts, an atomic chain reaction created when corporate scientists are trying to develop a pill that makes the penis grow permanently larger, or an invasion of giant prawns from another planet with a thirst for human blood by the billions.

VII. ARE ALIENS REAL AND, IF SO, ARE THEY VISITING EARTH?

Yet another question that many have gone to great lengths to answer with no empirical proof, although one could also argue its been right in front of our faces for centuries and we’re just not wanting to see it.

Just be careful when asking this one that you aren’t being followed soon afterward by several men dressed in dark clothing with little black cords sticking out of their ear who are all wearing sunglasses at night.

VIII. WHO BUILT THE PYRAMIDS OF EGYPT?

I know, sadly a lot of people would probably rather find out what kind of cereal Taylor Swift eats for breakfast. But hey, that’s what we have social media for, right? This is Google’s AI Mode, where the questions which have been burning mere mortals like a case of jock itch that’s been left untreated for millennia are finally soothed with a workable-enough answer through burgeoning technology that’s unwittingly being beta tested on the human guinea pigs who make up nine-tenths of the world’s computer users.

While it might not come before a lot of other queries you’d have on your list, it’s still a fair enough ask, and one that theologians and scholarly, pipe-smoking archeologist types have been debating since the ancient world dried up and became a novelty to the uncommonly curious.

IX. WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO JIMMY HOFFA & D.B. COOPER?

Yes, it’s true I’m afraid, but most Gen Z’ers and even a bulk of Millennials probably don’t even know who these two fellows are. But within the lexicon of proper nouns attached to the halls of those with either bewildering origins or endings, the legacies of both Hoffa and Cooper have persisted for decades without satisfactory conclusions to the latter.

While it’s generally accepted that Hoffa was offa’d by da’ Mafia, the whereabouts of his remains have remained shrouded in obscurity since his disappearance in 1975, and I think it’s time we let Google’s new AI-driven toy provide us with an answer about his final resting place. And who knows, maybe he met with a different fate than has been widely postulated for 50 years now?

As for Cooper, his survival after pulling off one of the greatest ransom heists in modern history in 1970, is still in question to this day.

Sure, there’ve been any number of documentaries, YouTube videos, and podcasts claiming to feature historical sleuths who have unraveled the enigma and been able to tie an irrefutable bow on the case, but none of it has proven to be concrete to the satisfaction of ubiquity.

So yes, while I’m certain the younger generations would rather get the real answers behind conundrums like “why they don’t make lime green Skittles anymore” and “what ever happened to Brooke Hogan and Clay Aiken,” the rest of us are still lining up like lemmings to know about two men who vanished without a trace at a time when it was actually a lot easier to do so…go figure.