The conversation Steve and I had about empanadas reminded me of a time when I asked Google something, and I think the AI, if it could, would have looked at me and said “Are you that stupid?”
If you ask Google what is the difference between two things, even if they’re not that similar, the AI will be generous and find some similarity. For example, when reminding myself what empanadas looked like, I asked to compare empanadas with samosas. It first said they were different, but they were both pastries with filling, and went about describing them. But in another case a few months ago, the AI just said “no!” and I felt really dumb. Here’s why.
Back a while ago, Dairy Queen had a sweet and spicy menu they were pushing. One of the items was a spicy lemonade. When I heard the commercial, I thought it said the lemonade was made with tahini. That was the only word in my vocabulary that even came close. So I pondered and I wondered and I thought. I don’t consider tahini spicy, but how on earth would that even go with lemonade? So I asked other people. And they hadn’t noticed the commercial and were also perplexed. I continued talking to other people, making the old broccoli ice cream joke about how lemonade and tahini are both good but you wouldn’t put them together,
and laughing and laughing because I thought I was so so funny. If you listened, you might have heard the sound of me digging myself a hole. Dig dig dig.
Here’s why. I thought the stuff in the lemonade was called Tahini. It is in fact called Tajín. You can see that this is not even close to tahini. *thump* Carin goes in the hole. Now all these people who watched me make dumb jokes either already think I’m a moron, or will as soon as they see what the name of the stuff actually is.
Hoping to redeem myself just a little bit, I asked Google, “are tahini and Tajín related?” This, or something similar, is what it said:
No, tahini and Tajín are not related. They are completely different foods from different parts of the world, and they only share a similar sound.
📌 The Main Differences
Feature
Tahini
TajínA creamy seed paste (like sesame butter)
A dry chili-lime seasoning powder…
Things have become a bit more generous since I googled this last time. At least now, the Google AI acknowledges their names share a similar sound because the j in Tajín is pronounced with an h and the i is pronounced with a long e. Back when I did it, it felt like the AI was just like “Nope. I don’t know what planet you’re on, stupidface. I can’t even imagine where you’re coming from at all.”
So yeah, I’ve learned something, and a bunch of people probably wish I knew stuff. Or maybe they learned something too, and we can feel silly together. I hope it’s that.