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Google increasingly is promoting a single answer for many questions

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Re: Google increasingly is promoting a single answer for many questions

#81

Post by ArchReaper »

untog wrote: post #80
ArchReaper wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your argument "Google should not be allowed to do anything if their algorithms aren't 100% flawless and perfect"? I really am failing to understand your viewpoint.

No, my argument is "Google should not present results as if they are an absolute answer when they are not capable of knowing whether that is true". It's pretty simple: a list of search results does not imply certainty. Injecting a single "answer" does. As I mentioned elsewhere, it's as if they have decided that the "I'm feeling lucky" button should apply to everyone.

I guess I fundamentally disagree that them providing an 'answer' is somehow unethical, unless there is some kind of verbiage on the feature that claims 100% accuracy that I am unaware of.

Re: Google increasingly is promoting a single answer for many questions

#82

Post by scoggs »

UncleMeat wrote: post #71
untog wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is not an encyclopedia or a dictionary, though. Encyclopedias are editorially curated products where each entry is researched and chosen very deliberately. The answers Google provides are picked by an algorithm and have nowhere near the level of oversight that dictionaries and encyclopedias do. > "Truth" is an inherently messy concept. The very best curated sources and human experts are frequently fallible. He…

Yet Wikipedia is one of the greatest stores of knowledge on the planet, despite being full of inaccuracies.

Wikipedia came to mind when this topic of 100% accuracy came up, a metric people seriously think Google needs to hit in order to not cause mass hysteria, it seems. Wikipedia is constantly updated because the information is curated by humans. Humans have the ability to lie, omit facts based on beliefs, fudge numbers to paint a specific narrative, and so many more egregious examples of ways to mislead those who would use the resource. I understand having high expectations for things but just like with anything fact based there needs to be a level of skepticism and self policing of what we allow to become things we know to be true based on our own acknowledgement.

This is something I feel long time internet users have built up a tolerance to and an eye for. Of course I understand wanting to hit that 100% metric for those unfamiliar with the concept of others steering folks in the wrong direction purposefully but how can we honestly draw a defined line in the sand to gauge a systems usefulness? Especially when that system's data is based on the concept of human knowledge, an ever changing, rapidly developing, and hotly contested part of the human experience?

Re: Google increasingly is promoting a single answer for many questions

#83

Post by johnhenry »

maxerickson wrote: post #25
johnhenry wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what the margin of error is on these things, but generally 97% should probably be considered 100%.

There's no margin of error for the test they did, just potential sampling bias. Given the 5000 questions they asked, the system will provide the wrong answer 2.6% of the time. Every time, until they improve it. There's a chance that they managed to ask the only 150 questions that it doesn't know the answer to, but not a very big one.

I agree -- given the sample space, there is not effective way to calculate the margin of error. Even so, I don't think that there are many examples of non-deterministic mechanisms that produce the correct answer 97% of the time.

Re: Google increasingly is promoting a single answer for many questions

#84

Post by jmknoll »

k2xl wrote: post #45

With my Google Home, I often ask it, "Can my dog eat X" and it'll answer usually from the single answer from Google. While Google Home usually says the source, "According to WebMD..." or "According to ..." it would be horrible if it gave the wrong answer - saying something was safe to eat but it really wasn't. I hope they take extra precaution with answers related to medicine/safety.

Relevant text:

"Google spokeswoman Susan Cadrecha said the company’s goal isn’t to do the thinking for users but “to help you find relevant information quickly and easily.” She added, “We encourage users to understand the full context by clicking through to the source.”"

I sincerely hope no one is relying on Google to do the thinking for them.

Re: Google increasingly is promoting a single answer for many questions

#85

Post by jgalt212 »

Kurtz79 wrote: post #54
jgalt212 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a parser that is 97% correct is broken.

A parser (assuming you are talking about a programming language parser) has the luxury of having highly structured and deterministic inputs, and to be able to refuse giving an "answer" if they are not.

> highly structured and deterministic inputs

not all parsers deal with such inputs, and parsers that don't can and often do produce multiple interpretations of the input data.

Re: Google increasingly is promoting a single answer for many questions

#86

Post by fragmede »

jdietrich wrote: post #62
untog wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's absolutely the wrong way to go about looking at it. Not all facts are of equal importance. 97 correct facts about, say, gardening, and three incorrect facts about first aid is not a successful system. If Google is presenting the tool as a canonical source of truth, it needs to be right 100% of the time. In fact, being right 97.4% of the time is worse in many ways, as it lulls people into a false sense of secur…

>If Google is presenting the tool as a canonical source of truth, it needs to be right 100% of the time. Should we burn all the dictionaries and encyclopaedias because they aren't perfectly accurate? Textbooks don't have a black-box warning on the front page saying "The accuracy of this book cannot be guaranteed. Please verify any facts stated before storing them in your long-term memory or using them for any purpose…

If an encyclopedia said the Earth is 6000 years old, and starts "Evolutionists fallaciously think that billions of years of time makes particles-to-people evolution possible", as the top hit when Googling "how old is the Earth" says, then yes, throw out that encyclopedia.

Being fallible is one thing, but Google's algorithm is misrepresenting scientific belief because an extremist group are the only ones who will pay for SEO about the subject. If Google wants to be the world's authoritative source of knowledge, they're gonna need a more advanced system where SEO spammers can't buy the truth, otherwise all we have are modern day iterations on Phillip Morris' research showing no link between lung cancer and cigarettes for decades.

Re: Google increasingly is promoting a single answer for many questions

#87

Post by ColanR »

jdietrich wrote: post #62
untog wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's absolutely the wrong way to go about looking at it. Not all facts are of equal importance. 97 correct facts about, say, gardening, and three incorrect facts about first aid is not a successful system. If Google is presenting the tool as a canonical source of truth, it needs to be right 100% of the time. In fact, being right 97.4% of the time is worse in many ways, as it lulls people into a false sense of secur…

>If Google is presenting the tool as a canonical source of truth, it needs to be right 100% of the time. Should we burn all the dictionaries and encyclopaedias because they aren't perfectly accurate? Textbooks don't have a black-box warning on the front page saying "The accuracy of this book cannot be guaranteed. Please verify any facts stated before storing them in your long-term memory or using them for any purpose…

> Textbooks don't have a black-box warning on the front page saying "The accuracy of this book cannot be guaranteed. Please verify any facts stated before storing them in your long-term memory or using them for any purpose"?

I just checked a 2004 medical textbok I had nearby (don't ask). YES, they do have such disclaimers, and they're worded even better than you put it.

Re: Google increasingly is promoting a single answer for many questions

#88

Post by reaperducer »

alister wrote: post #15

Google's instant answers are generally pretty good in my opinion, but in situations where the answer really matters, it could cause dangerous situations in the cases where Google does get it wrong. A good example is how Google chose the wrong picture on how to do cable crimping: https://imgur.com/a/H3Uhg Regarding the example above, Google's answer with a picture looks clear and sounds very authoritative. No further…

My company gets a minimum of six wrong numbers a day from people who got our phone number from Google. Google somehow thinks there are several thousand companies associated with our number.

Re: Google increasingly is promoting a single answer for many questions

#89

Post by k2xl »

VonGallifrey wrote: post #48
k2xl wrote: post #45

With my Google Home, I often ask it, "Can my dog eat X" and it'll answer usually from the single answer from Google. While Google Home usually says the source, "According to WebMD..." or "According to ..." it would be horrible if it gave the wrong answer - saying something was safe to eat but it really wasn't. I hope they take extra precaution with answers related to medicine/safety.

I personally would hope that you take extra precaution with answers related to medicine/safety. Why would you trust google with something like this? If you ask Google "Can my dog eat X" and blindly trust the answer then it is your fault and not google's if your dog gets sick. Google isn't responsible for your dog, you are!

First off, why are you assuming I'm saying that Google is responsible for my dog? You may want to re-read what I wrote. I never said I'm taking blind trust to what Google says.

However, for the average person, hearing an answer so confidentially from a Google product gives it integrity - whether you agree with it or not.

Think about it - millions of people Google medical questions and they trust "blindly" trust Google to provide them the right results.

Do you honestly not see the dangers of Google giving a single answer response to these types of questions?

Re: Google increasingly is promoting a single answer for many questions

#90

Post by dragonwriter »

ColanR wrote: post #87
jdietrich wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If Google is presenting the tool as a canonical source of truth, it needs to be right 100% of the time. Should we burn all the dictionaries and encyclopaedias because they aren't perfectly accurate? Textbooks don't have a black-box warning on the front page saying "The accuracy of this book cannot be guaranteed. Please verify any facts stated before storing them in your long-term memory or using them for any purpose…

> Textbooks don't have a black-box warning on the front page saying "The accuracy of this book cannot be guaranteed. Please verify any facts stated before storing them in your long-term memory or using them for any purpose"? I just checked a 2004 medical textbok I had nearby (don't ask). YES, they do have such disclaimers, and they're worded even better than you put it.

> I just checked a medical textbok I had nearby (don't ask). YES, they do have such disclaimers

Most textbooks do not. Medical textbooks (and websites, etc.) often do because of special circumstances (legal and practical) applying to that field.

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