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We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

calpaterson.com

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Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#61

Post by cton »

gverrilla wrote: post #6

amazing quotes: > Larry Page and Sergey Brin were originally pretty negative about search engines that sold ads. Appendix A in their original paper says: we expect that advertising-funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of theconsumers and that we believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have acompetitive search engi…

Technically they held true to this sentiment. Google Scholar doesn’t seem to have ads.

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#62

Post by sjg007 »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #45
pea wrote: post #29

An annoying example which has gotten worse recently is recipes. I generally trawl through 5k words of someone's life story and product promotions to get to the piece of information I need, and they often rewrite the recipe 5 different times in different levels of detail -- is this because to make the first page rank on Google you need to pad out the SEO? I too always find myself doing site:reddit.com.

Google page ranking depends on how long people spend on the webpage, so if you have to wade through longform text, it mistakenly assumes that the content is quality. Note that most recipe blogs are fake. Someone wrote the original content long ago. Then, someone else hired a copywriter off a freelancing platform to change the words of the text just enough to avoid copyright violation, then put up a new copycat websit…

There are a bunch of these all templated exactly the same way. It’s fascinating.

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#64

Post by vanderZwan »

tomp wrote: post #41
pea wrote: post #29

An annoying example which has gotten worse recently is recipes. I generally trawl through 5k words of someone's life story and product promotions to get to the piece of information I need, and they often rewrite the recipe 5 different times in different levels of detail -- is this because to make the first page rank on Google you need to pad out the SEO? I too always find myself doing site:reddit.com.

a few more that I swear by: site:greatbritishchefs.com site:greatitalianchefs.com site:seriouseats.com WARNING: the last one usually has 2 pages listed for each recipe - the recipe itself, and also a "story" blog post - except that the "story" is also very useful (not "someone's life story" which is basically spam), because it explains the reasoning behind the method, different alternatives and the trade-offs between…

I also have good experience with thespruceeats.com regarding in-depth explanations of food. I have to add that I'm using adblockers pretty heavily so I have no clue how bearable these sites are without it.

Anyway, it's pretty easy to turn this into a keyworded bookmark on Firefox for some quick searching:

    https://duckduckgo.com/lite/?q=%s+(site%3Aseriouseats.com+%7C%7C+site%3Agreatbritishchefs.com+
  %7C%7C+site%3Agreatbritishchefs.com+%7C%7C+site%3Athespruceeats.com+%7C%7C+site%3Abbcgoodfood.com)

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#65

Post by tester34 »

cainxinth wrote: post #22
gverrilla wrote: post #6

amazing quotes: > Larry Page and Sergey Brin were originally pretty negative about search engines that sold ads. Appendix A in their original paper says: we expect that advertising-funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of theconsumers and that we believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have acompetitive search engi…

I guess the prospect of literally a hundred billion dollars each made them reconsider.

I thought it wouldnt be suprising, especially that we're on news hacker out of all places

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#66

Post by arbitrage »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #54
selfhoster11 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally append "site:reddit.com" like in the article whenever I'm looking for reviews and comparisons. Google is nearly useless for finding content among the sea of crap and autogenerated near-crap (like Slant). I might click on the links going to sites that I half-remember by name, but for open-ended searches it's a lost war.

That worked for awhile. But even Reddit has been overrun with coordinated marketing efforts to make sure you can't really get an honest review without checking every comments post history.

> even Reddit

no, reddit? i'm shocked /s

your implication seems to be that reddit should somehow be resistant to parasitic capitalism. reddit has been compromised and on the side of the advertisers since the beginning.

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#67

Post by cjauvin »

I believe this way of understanding AI and its implications is quite sound, and it reminds me of Rodney Brooks' Productivity Gain[0] article, where he argues that we should focus on talking about "digitalization", instead of trendier buzz terms like AI or whatever is in vogue at the moment (the toll taker's job on the highway has not been replaced by a sophisticated robot, but rather by a transponder, along with the digital networking backbone it must rely upon).

[0] https://rodneybrooks.com/the-productivity-gain-where-is-it-c...

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#68

Post by tjr225 »

cblconfederate wrote: post #37

The problem is that google created a negative feedback loop with the web. People have a tangible interest to game google, which worsens the quality of their AI datasets, which makes their AI suggestions terrible. There was the expectation that google's AI suggestions and info boxes would improve over time, but i 've noticed them getting worse and consider them a permanently broken gimmick now. They probably have the…

> Voice recognition on the other hand keeps getting better because there's no tangible benefit for someone to game it.

Knock on wood! It is creepy to imagine a world where computers have the upper hand on vocal inputs but I already sometimes feel this way with text and autocorrect...

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#69

Post by melech_ric »

pea wrote: post #29

An annoying example which has gotten worse recently is recipes. I generally trawl through 5k words of someone's life story and product promotions to get to the piece of information I need, and they often rewrite the recipe 5 different times in different levels of detail -- is this because to make the first page rank on Google you need to pad out the SEO? I too always find myself doing site:reddit.com.

When I tried this two months ago it was great:

https://www.JustTheRecipe.app

This recipe: https://wildwildwhisk.com/basic-buttermilk-scones/

Turns into this: https://www.justtherecipe.app/?url=https://wildwildwhisk.com...

I think there are Firefox and Chrome add-ons/extensions that do similar things.

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#70

Post by wayoutthere »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #32
cainxinth wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the prospect of literally a hundred billion dollars each made them reconsider.

It would be interested to know how this process looked like. I'd imagine it was very gradual and consisted of little steps each leading to the next one, and when they finally started to serve ads they were probably thinking it's not that bad. I believe crossing that line made paved the way for considering things like tracking the whole web morally acceptable, maybe even positive.

They hired Eric Schmidt as CEO. That’s how it happened. Larry and Sergei were still in “don’t be evil” mode. But you have to be a little evil when this much money is involved, so they hired Schmidt to be evil for them. They then learned how to be evil under his tutelage. Schmidt is absolutely an ethical nihilist, just listen to any of his speeches on privacy and security.
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