As a non-techie, I don't understand the language example they're using. It seems to me many prediction engines are originally built to try to forecast winning lottery numbers or other such gambling events. Google expects me to believe they did this for language?
Google Prediction API
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Re: Google Prediction API
#32I was guessing that google (in their never-ending desire to consume more data) would want to use us as guinea-pigs to improve their algorithms. It's not 100% clear to me, but from the terms of service:
By submitting, posting, displaying, or transmitting Data on or through the Service, you give Google permission to process your Data for the sole purpose of enabling Google to provide you with the Service in accordance with its privacy policy. You hereby grant Google all licenses to your Data necessary to process the Data and provide you with the Service in accordance with its privacy policy. As a part of the Service and through provided interfaces, Google may allow you to remotely access, view, and download results of the processing of your Data. (via http://code.google.com/apis/predict/docs/terms.html)
I imagine that they might claim the right to use your data anonymously to improve their algorithms, much like they do for your personal data in their other apps. I mean, what better way to refine their supervised learning algorithms than via an endless supply of training sets? But I hate wading through legalese, anyone have any insights?
Re: Google Prediction API
#33Would you give every data point of yours over to Google?
This type of myopic anti-Google thinking is getting old. Do your homework, read their service agreements. If you don't agree with them, don't give them your data. If they sound reasonable, assume that Google will respect them. After all, they are not stupid, they understand they cannot tarnish their business reputation by violating a customer's trust. If I'm wrong and they end up being stupid, they can be held accountable by law.
In fact from their TOS (http://code.google.com/apis/predict/docs/terms.html):
4.2. Google claims no ownership or control over any of your Data. You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in the Data, and you are responsible for protecting those rights, as appropriate.
Re: Google Prediction API
#34This is easily the most interesting announcement so far. Machine learning has so many applications, but its use is constrained by the high barriers to entry. Recommendation engines, for example, are huge sales drivers, but few among even the largest ecommerce stores use them. A simple prediction interface that's built on the ML expertise at Google is a win for everyone.
For very specific problems, yes. The translation classification example is definitely a type of prediction problem that would be good for this service. However, this is far from a silver bullet to ML problems. It can be quite dangerous, for example, to send off a bunch of data to google and immediately trust their analysis without knowing the underlying application of their algorithm. As a researcher in this area, wh…
For most people though, I would think a service like this could easily prove to be good enough. What would you suggest that would be a significant performance or productivity improvement over cloud computing?
Re: Google Prediction API
#35This is easily the most interesting announcement so far. Machine learning has so many applications, but its use is constrained by the high barriers to entry. Recommendation engines, for example, are huge sales drivers, but few among even the largest ecommerce stores use them. A simple prediction interface that's built on the ML expertise at Google is a win for everyone.
Directed Edge, a promising YC startup, makes recommendation engines surprisingly easy: http://www.directededge.com/ It's quite a bit higher-level than what Google is offering here, with all the benefits and drawbacks that entails.
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Re: Google Prediction API
#36As a non-techie, I don't understand the language example they're using. It seems to me many prediction engines are originally built to try to forecast winning lottery numbers or other such gambling events. Google expects me to believe they did this for language?
The point is that they took a large number of documents, which are clearly labelled as to language, gave it as a training set to the machine, and they now have a classifier that lets you input random text and tells you the language it was probably written in.
In principle you can do this with any data set and any set of discrete outcomes.
In general, though, you should expect that the resulting classifier won't give you much insight on why it came up with the answers that it did. Plus it frequently is less accurate than a trained human. But it is much, much cheaper.
Re: Google Prediction API
#37Would you give every data point of yours over to Google?
Data doesn't have to be readable. Often, preprocessed datasets are totally incomprehensible for everyone except whoever prepared it. Multiple fields are combined into composites, rescaled, transposed, etc.
Agreed -- look at their own example data:
wine,5,1,1 no-wine,0,0,10
This data is meaningless to anyone who doesn't know what the columns mean, and you don't have to tell that to Google.
And you can of course replace the labels with any other text you want without affecting the algorithm.
Re: Google Prediction API
#38I was guessing that google (in their never-ending desire to consume more data) would want to use us as guinea-pigs to improve their algorithms. It's not 100% clear to me, but from the terms of service: By submitting, posting, displaying, or transmitting Data on or through the Service, you give Google permission to process your Data for the sole purpose of enabling Google to provide you with the Service in accordance…
Also from the TOS, in the section directly above the bit you quote:
4.2. Google claims no ownership or control over any of your Data. You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in the Data, and you are responsible for protecting those rights, as appropriate.
Re: Google Prediction API
#39I knew this was coming.
I knew you would make that comment
Re: Google Prediction API
#40I was guessing that google (in their never-ending desire to consume more data) would want to use us as guinea-pigs to improve their algorithms. It's not 100% clear to me, but from the terms of service: By submitting, posting, displaying, or transmitting Data on or through the Service, you give Google permission to process your Data for the sole purpose of enabling Google to provide you with the Service in accordance…
Did you miss the phrase, for the sole purpose of enabling Google to provide you with the Service in accordance with its privacy policy? That phrase tells me that the ONLY thing they get permission to do with the data is use it for processing your requests.
And they definitely need that. In order to process requests, Google has to make a bunch of copies of your data, create models, etc. Furthermore Google will need to keep copies so that it can use the model it generated for future requests. If the data that you have uploaded is confidential, proprietary, etc, then this requires copyright permission. (Particularly since in the previous clause they made it clear that you retain full copyright.)