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Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#321

Post by nullc »

Roark66 wrote: post #79

>The criticism of his former employer came as Mr Suleyman told the Telegraph about plans for a new international body to monitor AI threats. I hope they first threat they choose to monitor is the monopolisation of the AI services, all while the huge monopolies preach about "the dangers of ai" to increase the barriers to entry for the small guy (we all know disappearance of open source models and a ban on sale of hard…

Exactly. The real AI danger is the people who make the most noise about the dangers of AI.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#322

Post by huntoa »

leobg wrote: post #31

Recipe blogs are the most horrible example. The amount of BS you have to scroll through to get to the actual recipe.

There are old famous cook books that are in the public domain, digitally available for free, such as "A guide to modern cookery" (original: "Le Guide Culinaire") by renowned French chef Auguste Escoffier: English: https://archive.org/details/b21530142 German: https://digital.slub-dresden.de/id392948516 French: https://archive.org/details/leguideculinaire00esco_0

I like the illustrations from this German one, published in 1581: http://digital.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/dms/werkansicht/?P...

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#323

Post by simpaticoder »

simpaticoder wrote: post #108
Roark66 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think step 2 has been figured out a long time ago: personal not for profit blogs and sites with an rss feed and a "links" section (preferably divided by interests). Such sites still do exist, but usually around various hobbies.

Yeah but we need a name and a recognizable advocacy position. The open web, the indie web, minimalists, even luddites are related terms, but nothing really fits. Then there is the community, the scene - like a webring, but better. Dignified, driven by a simple, solid technical aesthetic, capable, self-sufficient, independent, rational, (classic) liberal, etc. Those are some adjectives I associate with these ideas. I…

Slept on it. How about "No Web". It's a pun in english (no and know) and also an oblique reference to Herbert's Dune universe "No Ships", who's interiors are invisible to prescience. A fleet of no ships on an internet with ~6 kwizatz haderachs captures a resistance element. The name is a bit strange, too, attracting the intellectually curious.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#324

Post by nsagent »

sgc wrote: post #309
nsagent wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, the title of the article is literal clickbait. The first four paragraphs (out of 21) of the article are related to the title. The majority of the article (11 paragraphs) are dedicated to AI safety. I avoid companies like Google as much as possible, but is it really their fault that so many people fall for clickbait? If that's what a majority of people click on, shouldn't users share the blame?

How can you know the link won't correspond to the title and snippet? Should we just avoid all interesting-looking content because we might have been duped? The only way to avoid clickbait working is if those who have actually seen the entire page can indicate it is not worth viewing - which brings us right back to search engine placement algorithms and curation.

Yes, but the algorithm is optimizing for clicks, not curation. Curation is a much more costly process requiring humans in the loop, which often leads to cries of censorship (e.g. my otherwise popular article is being unfairly down-weighted). Clicks are much easier to track and provide a lot of signal.

I'm not saying that Google can't do better. Clearly they have mismatched incentives with their users due to advertising. Moving organic search placements below the fold to increase ad revenue is a major issue, but isn't akin to prioritizing clickbait.

Instead what I'm saying is that due to Google's dominant market position they are under higher scrutiny if they start labeling certain media outlets as frequently generating clickbait and down-weighting them, where smaller search engines like Kagi can get away with that without being labeled a manipulator.

That said, if Google did allow block lists like Kagi, that could go a long way, but likely would still lead to complaints about bias.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#325

Post by cccbbbaaa »

MereInterest wrote: post #240
wewxjfq wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cookie law isn't stupid, it even says that giving consent should be as user-friendly as possible - a browser setting even. The problem with this (for the ad-industry, not for the users) is that there is no such thing as blanket consent, so they have to harass anyone for their rotten business model to work and to piss people off, they made these modals as obnoxious as possible out of spite.

Nitpick: this is true of the GDPR, not the earlier Cookie Directive. The GDPR is incredibly well-written, and contains all the benefits you stated. The Cookie Directive was (1) much more limited in its scope, applying only to cookies and not to any other method of tracking, (2) much more limited in its compliance, requiring an explicit notice even for strictly-necessary uses, and (3) much more limited in its consumer…

No. Please read the ePrivacy directive (the so-called “cookie law”), especially article 5(3):

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

>3. Member States shall ensure that the storing of information, or the gaining of access to information already stored, in the terminal equipment of a subscriber or user is only allowed on condition that the subscriber or user concerned has given his or her consent, having been provided with clear and comprehensive information, in accordance with Directive 95/46/EC, inter alia, about the purposes of the processing. This shall not prevent any technical storage or access for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network, or as strictly necessary in order for the provider of an information society service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user to provide the service.

The directive:

(1) does not target cookies, but methods to store information, or gain access to information stored;

(2) allows strictly necessary purposes without consent or popups;

(3) requires consent for other purposes.

The directive talks about cookies in recital 25, but only as an example.

The GDPR replaces the Data Protection Directive (Directive 95/46/EC), and along that, references made to it in ePrivacy. But it does not bring anything new about cookies.

Though, I agree with you: the GDPR is well made–apart from the litigation part, but that's going to change with the GDPR Procedural Regulation. ePrivacy is good too, but 5(3) aged poorly, unfortunately.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#326

Post by donatj »

brucethemoose2 wrote: post #241
donatj wrote: post #52

I wrote a not-very-coherent in retrospect article about 12 years ago while working for an SEO firm about how SEO was killing the internet. The basis being companies were creating pages and blog posts specifically to target keywords without actually having coherent things to say on the topic. Moreover people within Google like Matt Cutts seemed to be at the time if not outright encouraging it, at the very least giving…

Do you have a link? Twelve years ago, this wasn't even a thought in the back of my head, and I bet those in the SEO industry never thought Google would let things deteriorate to such an extreme.

I do but it's not worth reading. It's rambling and unfocused. I made my point here far more clearly than there.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#328

Post by jabradoodle »

NL807 wrote: post #205
jabradoodle wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I crawl your site today, encounter article A, and crawl it again in a year and again encounter article A, I am sure that article A is a year old (Well, techcnically, what I am certain of, is that I encountered the exact same article two times a year apart). You cannot game that. And what if I change a tiny amount of the article, or post it on a second domain I own? Do you think you can match up all the near dupl…

Perhaps that's ok, because it's about persistence of information, not where it lives. I suppose you could view this as longer some information lives somewhere (doesn't matter where) the higher ranking it gets. If that information gets relocated, not a problem, it was seen somewhere else before, therefore it could be still regarded as high ranking.

That is my point, unless the content is identical, any tiny change and I don't see how your going to know it is the same page as another when you have billions/trillions of pages to compare against.

I also don't think this makes sense on a fundamental level, if I write some excellent content it shouldn't be harder to find because I wrote it recently. We would be making it harder for new entrants and encouraging people to rush out low quality content/ even report on things before they happen and delete the incorrect guesses later (not that the current system isn't full of perverse incentives.)

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#330

Post by dalbasal »

dartos wrote: post #318
likeabbas wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, Jesse Michels posts videos so infrequently (he just did the first one in a year) and he still got 2 million views instantly..

I think the algorithm is geared now towards higher production value videos that encourage viewers to click on other videos That’s why there are so many collabs now

Maybe at the margin. Broadly though, the way to do YouTube professionally is high frequency.

Most channels these days attract pretty consistent views per vid. The most straightforward way to increase revenue is frequency.

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