What are the chances this isn't intentional to some extent? This wouldn't be the first time we've traded downstream legal trouble for short term gains.

Making AI utilization appear to go up is the only thing that matters right now if you're in the boardroom at one of these companies. Whether or not that utilization was actually intended by the customer is entirely irrelevant. From here, the only remaining concern is mitigating legal issues which google seems to be immune to.

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nl 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Does anyone really believe something like this?

There's a long stretch from over optimizing a UI to something that is very clearly an error like what has happened here.

	▲	data-ottawa 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I save $20/mo on my internet by having cable that I don’t watch. Why? So my telecom company can boast higher tv subscriber counts to shareholders and ad-networks. It is entirely believable to me that a company like Google would do the same with AI use numbers. I suspect that all these AI use factors in corporate performance reviews are about the same thing. This could be a standard oversight too, I find Google’s documentation on this stuff to be Byzantine.