We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by esailija » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 4:33 PM UTC

selfhoster11 wrote: post #35

hajile wrote: post #3

The commercial opinion bit is incredibly annoying. Ask for an opinion and you’ll get 5 pages of custom built “review” sites that offer nothing useful besides copious ads and paid click-through to Amazon. Even when Google knows where I go with my searches, they still refuse to show those sites for anything that might have commercial interest. So much for customized search. I get tired of being the product. Can we get…

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.

Also try appending:

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

#212

Post by GCA10 » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 4:37 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #134

sseagull wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't this also the story of a dating site (whose name escapes me. OKCupid? PoF?)? Original owner wrote an article about how paying for a dating site is a bad idea. Money is offered, article disappears. Searching is failing me at the moment edit: Was OKCupid: https://www.themarysue.com/okcupid-pulls-why-you-should-neve...

From the article > 12-moth plan > 6-month plan Why would a dating site have a 12-month plan, and why would a user of a dating site want a 12-month plan? Not only would you hopefully want to be off the site within 12 months, as soon as you found someone compatible, you would hopefully delete the app, but you've unnecessarily paid for months you will (hopefully) never use. I don't understand why anything but month-to-m…

But wait!

Yes, aspiring monogamists will fit your bill of people who "want to be off the site in 12 months" or sooner. That's one segment of your users, but it really isn't everyone by a long shot.

Plenty of users are signing up for the chance to meet ("get to know") a steady stream of people. We don't stigmatize people who subscribe to Netflix for many years so that they can keep watching different movies and shows. There's some segment of the dating-site world that has more of a Netflix model in mind.

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

#213

Post by wnevets » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 4:39 PM UTC

Zelphyr wrote: post #129

carrozo wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody’s got a plan until they’re punched in the face (with hundreds of billions of dollars).

Or, maybe, "Everybody is altruistic until they have shareholders." The idea that companies should only be beholden to shareholders that has taken firm hold over the past 50(+/-) years doesn't look to be a good one, in hindsight.

They don't have to be. Everyone just chooses to do it that way because its easier to make loads of money.

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

#214

Post by johndags » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 4:40 PM UTC

zitterbewegung wrote: post #174

soarfourmore wrote: post #49

The following quotes are fairly interesting and ironic: > 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 the consumers" > and that >> "we believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives…

The AI that makes Google work is not the algorithms they use to index the web its AdWords which uses a general purpose algorithm to auction ads. https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c... Sure, google search was the core prototype that used algorithms to give great search results but without Adwords google wouldn't be google.

I think this is largely misunderstood about Google. It seems like ads placed in search results only accounts for a small portion of their revenue. Not sure how much the targeting of ads by analyzing your search history actually contributes either. I think Google just figured out how to scale online ad sales really well.

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

#215

Post by autokad » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 4:40 PM UTC

> "The remaining search results themselves are increasingly troubled. My own personal experience is that they are now often comprised of superficial commercial "content" from sites that are experts in setting their page metadata correctly and the other dark arts required to exploit the latest revision of Google's algorithm. There's also a huge number of adverts."

I wanted to get some images of strawberries to help improve image model for recycling. I wanted normal pictures of strawberries, so I did a google image search. its almost all adds and stock photo attempts to sell images.

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

#216

Post by loosetypes » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 4:43 PM UTC

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

They might be getting better but I don’t think they’re anywhere near good enough to warrant how common they’ve become.

At times I feel like they’re among the most inhumane technology that we suffer through because it can save their deployer a buck.

I see zero reason Apple can’t afford to have a person answer the phone.

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

#217

Post by dheera » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 4:43 PM UTC

GCA10 wrote: post #212

dheera wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article > 12-moth plan > 6-month plan Why would a dating site have a 12-month plan, and why would a user of a dating site want a 12-month plan? Not only would you hopefully want to be off the site within 12 months, as soon as you found someone compatible, you would hopefully delete the app, but you've unnecessarily paid for months you will (hopefully) never use. I don't understand why anything but month-to-m…

But wait! Yes, aspiring monogamists will fit your bill of people who "want to be off the site in 12 months" or sooner. That's one segment of your users, but it really isn't everyone by a long shot. Plenty of users are signing up for the chance to meet ("get to know") a steady stream of people. We don't stigmatize people who subscribe to Netflix for many years so that they can keep watching different movies and shows.…

> There's some segment of the dating-site world that has more of a Netflix model in mind

Although I'm sure those users exist, I'm sure they aren't the majority of the world, who would rather just be happily married and get on with life? And even if not, these users who have different expectations should not be matching with the former.

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

#218

Post by zinok » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 4:44 PM UTC

fouc wrote: post #2

> There are woolly intimations that self driving cars will read roadsigns to work out what the speed limit is for any stretch of road but the truth seems to be that they use the current GPS co-ordinates to access manually entered data on speedlimits. I actually didn't know Tesla cars relied on GPS + map data w/ speed limits until recently. What a disappointment, apparently it causes all sorts of issues with sudden br…

However, as far as I can tell, the GPS data, in at least some cases, comes from Streetview-type camera cars which drive along the roads and capture the roadsigns.

On French highways there are context-dependent speed limit signs which look exactly like normal signs but with a small additional panel below which tells you when they apply. Eg, big 70 in a round red circle, with a small picture of a car towing a trailer below. Eg https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F... which obviously only applies to cars with trailers.

Google maps (on my phone, not built-in to the car in any way) would constantly tell me that the speed limit of the road was that of the last such sign regardless of the specificity.

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

#219

Post by behnamoh » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 4:44 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #177

dheera wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article > 12-moth plan > 6-month plan Why would a dating site have a 12-month plan, and why would a user of a dating site want a 12-month plan? Not only would you hopefully want to be off the site within 12 months, as soon as you found someone compatible, you would hopefully delete the app, but you've unnecessarily paid for months you will (hopefully) never use. I don't understand why anything but month-to-m…

Month-to-month is just as bad. The ideal business model for a dating site, from the users' perspective, is a one-time advance payment. This puts the business into the situation where they have an incentive to get you satisfied as quickly as possible, so that they can spend as little time/money on you as possible, so that your value to them doesn't go negative from allowing you to spend too much of their time/money. T…

IMO the ideal business model from users' perspective could be pay-as-you-go, where you pay for each individual you want to send message to (e.g. $1.99).

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

#220

Post by zinok » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 4:46 PM UTC

ipython wrote: post #44

fouc wrote: post #2

> There are woolly intimations that self driving cars will read roadsigns to work out what the speed limit is for any stretch of road but the truth seems to be that they use the current GPS co-ordinates to access manually entered data on speedlimits. I actually didn't know Tesla cars relied on GPS + map data w/ speed limits until recently. What a disappointment, apparently it causes all sorts of issues with sudden br…

I have an Audi that has both speed limit info and stop light info in the dash. I know for a fact that it uses the camera for the speed limit signs as it will interpret school zone areas. Sometimes it misses the “end school zone” sign or not recognize the yellow border around the school zone begin sign. You can see the display become out of sync with the road conditions until the next speed limit sign appears. As far…

Are you sure it's not using static data generated by a car which has driven the same roads and then has had speed limit sign detection run on the captured video?