When the "Most Populated German State" is ... Wisconsin
A recent Google search for the "most populated German state" produced the following result: "The state with the highest percentage of residents reporting German ancestry is Wisconsin, with 36.9% of its population claiming German heritage". In other words, Gemini answered a slightly different question — one about German heritage in U.S. states — instead of identifying Germany’s most populous federal state, North Rhine-Westphalia.
Why did the mix-up happen? One might point to "U.S. defaultism" in AI training data: ambiguous queries often get interpreted through a U.S.-centric lens. Others blame location bias, since Google may tailor results to the user's region (and in this case, the person searching was indeed located in New York). Or did we collectively overlook that Germany had somewhen annexed Wisconsin? Anyway, the screenshot is a good reminder that large language models (LLMs) can be both context-sensitive and context-confused.