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

calpaterson.com

241–250 of 427 posts

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

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working example needed.

Socialism, like capitalism, also has a zero day vulnerability by the name of mundane old “human corruption” that undermines its goals. Capitalism just works better because it pits people against each other, keeping the focus off authority and top level control.

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

#242

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…

Anything you measure gets destroyed at scale.

Anything your measure for the purposes of providing a benefit...

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

#243
post #126

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…

At this point, the snide dismissal of all things advertising is nothing short of boring. To be sure there are many forms of advertising annoyance: auto-playing sound/video, remarketing (or what I like to call advertising a product I've already bought), interstitials, popups (to be fair, there are many non-advertising forms of these eg "sign up to our newsletter" dialogs) and so on. But what made Google a money-printi…

> Imagine I search for "how do I sleep on an airplane". Isn't a neck travel pillow an appropriate result here?

Yes, but advertising doesn't do that. They do retargeting and only show you the most valuable ad for what they know about you. Sometimes that ad is just what the advertiser has paid to show you in particular, like "you left something in your Amazon cart".

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

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed something similar (garbage in, garbage out, essentially) with translation services by google and co. People use these services to translate their sites, which then get fed into these models. There are a bunch of translation errors of terms of trade that are endemic in the german/english translations and apparently originate from these wrongly-trained models, which are then used to build new translations.

And then people learn to speak the language from that, and the errors become part of the language.

Translation errors have a long history of getting incorporated into language, but now we can do it at scale!

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

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I literally append "site:reddit.com" Stop saying that! The more people repeat that on HN, the more we risk advertisers realizing it and doing reddit-targeted SEO and reddit will be useless too! (I'm only half joking) Also, it's funny, I was just reading the thread about malaria eradication and DDT-resistant mosquitoes; the problem of SEO is eerily similar (any countermeasure is eventually defeated by evolution).

You are 10 years too late for that concern. I often wonder if there are any real people commenting, submitting, or upvoting left on Reddit.

10 years later

Users: Now if I want good results, I append site:news.ycombinator.com before every query.

Advertisers: Hmmm...

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

#246
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure there is. I don't know which motivation you'd have to bribe someone to promite your product, though. Would also be hard to sustain if intellectual property was decommodified. Other, more pressing concerns have to be addressed, though.

>your product In a hypothetical world where I don't benefit from a competitive advantage, in what sense do I own the product / company?

In the sense first and foremost that you may produce and design it, especially if production is structured in a co-op way, in the sense that you use it, especially if it's a consumer/worker co-op but also in a worker co-op, and to a lesser extent in that you are part of the society which produces it.

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

#247
post #126

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…

At this point, the snide dismissal of all things advertising is nothing short of boring. To be sure there are many forms of advertising annoyance: auto-playing sound/video, remarketing (or what I like to call advertising a product I've already bought), interstitials, popups (to be fair, there are many non-advertising forms of these eg "sign up to our newsletter" dialogs) and so on. But what made Google a money-printi…

[deleted]

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

#248
post #134

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…

The big spenders on dating sites are the ones there just to screw around. That's why they all mostly become toxic hell holes, because the economics incentivize catering to those assholes

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

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a patch thanks to contributor Marx but everyone keeps pressing "remind me later".

Let me know when we reach post scarcity and no longer need a rationing device such as money.

People thought of this issue since 1870 and the solution they came up with is simply non-transferable rationing devices. In traditional Marxist terms this was labour vouchers but nowadays there are much better solutions. Marx himself wrote about this, in terms of primitive accumulation in socialism.

For sure there are a lot of issues, but this isn't one of them.

You could in theory have bribery in material terms, but this is much easier to trace than in money terms.

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

#250
post #21

I wonder if anyone has tried to make a search engine that explicitly refuses to index any page that has a third party advertising thing anywhere on it. Ignoring the (interesting) technical implementation of such a thing, what would the results look like?

https://wiby.me/

That does allow adds. It isn't quite clear what the value add is, is it the manual listing process?
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