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The semantic web is now widely adopted

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Re: The semantic web is now widely adopted

#91

Post by dspillett »

rapsey wrote: post #12
mg wrote: post #8

The author gives two reasons why AI won't replace the need for metadata: 1: LLMs "routinely get stuff wrong" 2: "pricy GPU time" 1: I make a lot of tests on how well LLMs get categorization and data extraction right or wrong for my Product Chart ( https://www.productchart.com ) project. And they get pretty hard stuff right 99% of the time already. This will only improve. 2: Loading the frontpage of Reddit takes hundr…

GPU compute price is dropping fast and will continue to do so.

The cost of GPU time isn't just the cost that you see (buying them initially, paying for service if they are not yours, paying for electricity if they are) but the cost to the environment. Data centre power draws are increasing significantly and the recent explosion in LLM model creation is part of that.

Yes, things are getting better per unit (GPUs get more efficient, better yet AI-optimised chipsets are an order more efficient than using GPUs, etc.) but are they getting better per unit of compute faster than the number of compute units being used is increasing ATM?

Re: The semantic web is now widely adopted

#92

Post by mandmandam »

atoav wrote: post #38
npunt wrote: post #11

The argument about LLMs is wrong, not because of reasons stated but because semantic meaning shouldn't solely be defined by the publisher. The real question is whether the average publisher is better than an LLM at accurately classifying their content. My guess is, when it comes to categorization and summarization, an LLM is going to handily win. An easy test is: are publishers experts on topics they talk about? The…

Yet LLMS fail to make these simple but sometimes meaningful differentiation. See for example this case in which a court reporter is described as being all the things he reported about by Copilot: a child molester, a psychatric escapee, a widow cheat. Presumably because his name was in a lot of articles about said things and LLMS simply associate his name with the crimes without making the connection that he could in…

Humans do something very similar, fwiw. It's called spontaneous trait association: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00221...

Re: The semantic web is now widely adopted

#93

Post by Terr_ »

kqr wrote: post #60
atoav wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's hope you never write articles about court cases then: https://www.heise.de/en/news/Copilot-turns-a-court-reporter-... The alleged low error rate of 1% can ruin your day/life/company, if it hits the wrong person, regards the wrong problem, etc. And that risk is not adequately addressed by hand-waving and pointing people to low error rates. In fact, if anything such claims would make me less confident in your pro…

This is the thing with errors and automation. A 1 % error rate in a human process is basically fine. A 1 % error rate in an automated process is hundreds of thousands of errors per day. (See also why automated face recognition in public surveillance cameras might be a bad idea.)

Another part is that artificial systems can screw up in fundamentally different ways and modes compared to a human baseline, even if the raw count of errors is lower.

A human might fail to recognize another person in a photo, but at least they won't insist the person is definitely a cartoon character, or blindly follow "I am John Doe" written on someone's cheek in pen.

Re: The semantic web is now widely adopted

#94

Post by dspillett »

throwme_123 wrote: post #79
ashkankiani wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who stopped getting involved in blockchain "tech" 12 years ago because of the prevalence of scams and bad actors and lack of interesting tech beyond the merkle tree, what's great about it? FWIW I am genuinely asking. I don't know anything about the current tech. There's something about "zero knowledge proofs" but I don't understand how much of that is used in practice for real blockchain things vs just bei…

Scams and bad actors haven't changed sadly. But zk-based really decentralized consensus now does 400 tps and it's extraordinary when you think about it and all the safety and security properties it brings. And that's with proof-of-stake of course with decentralized sequencers for L2. But I get that people here prefer centralized databases, managed by admins and censorship-empowering platforms. Your bank stack looks l…

> But I get that people here prefer

For many of us it isn't that we think the status quo is the RightWay™ - we just aren't convinced that crypto as it currently is presents a better answer. It fixes some problems, but adds a number of its own that many of us don't think are currently worth the compromise for our needs.

As you said yourself:

> The crypto ecosystem is shady, I know, but the tech is great

That but is not enough for me to want to take part. Yes the tech is useful, heck I use it for other things (blockchains existed as auditing mechanisms long before crypto-currencies), but I'm not going to encourage others to take part in an ecosystem that is as shady as crypto is.

> Thanks everyone for all the downvotes.

I don't think you are getting downvoted for supporting crypto, more likely because you basically said “you know that article you are all discussing?, well I think you'll want to know that I didn't bother to read it”, then without a hint of irony made assertions of “angst and negativity”.

And if I might make a mental health suggestion: caring about online downvotes is seldom part of a path to happiness :)

Re: The semantic web is now widely adopted

#95

Post by WolfOliver »

openrisk wrote: post #64

The semantic web standards are sorely lacking (for decades now) a killer application. Not in a theoretical universe of decentralized philosopher-computer-scientists but in the dumbed down, swipe-the-next-30sec-video, adtech oligopolized digital landscape of walled gardens. Providing better search metadata is hardly that killer app. Not in 2024. The lack of adoption has, imho, two components. 1. bad luck: the Web got…

Graph Based RAG systems look promising https://www.ontotext.com/knowledgehub/fundamentals/what-is-g...

Re: The semantic web is now widely adopted

#96

Post by jsdwarf »

debarshri wrote: post #82
openrisk wrote: post #64

The semantic web standards are sorely lacking (for decades now) a killer application. Not in a theoretical universe of decentralized philosopher-computer-scientists but in the dumbed down, swipe-the-next-30sec-video, adtech oligopolized digital landscape of walled gardens. Providing better search metadata is hardly that killer app. Not in 2024. The lack of adoption has, imho, two components. 1. bad luck: the Web got…

At TU delft, I was supposed to do my PhD in semantic web especially in the shipping logistics. It was funded by port of Rotterdam 10 years ago. Idea was to theorize and build various concepts around discrete data sharing, data discovery, classification, building ontology, query optimizations, automation and similar usecases. I decided not to pursue phd a month into it. I believe in semantic web. The biggest problem i…

Funny you bring up logistics and (data) ontologies. I'm a PM at a logistics software company and I'd say the lack of proper ontologies and standardized data exchange formats is the biggest effort driver for integrating 3rd party carrier/delivery services such as DHL, Fedex etc.

It starts with the lack of a common terminology. For tool A a "booking" might be a reservation e.g. of a dock at a warehouse. For tool B the same word means a movement of goods between two accounts.

In terms of data integration things have gotten A LOT worse since EDIFACT is de facto deprecated. Every carrier in the parcel business is cooking their own API, but with insufficient means. I've come across things like Polish endpoint names/error messages or country organisations of big Parcel couriers using different APIs.

IMHO the EU has to step in here because integration costs skyrocket. They forced cellphone manufacturers to use USB-Cs for charging, why can't they force carriers to use a common API?

Re: The semantic web is now widely adopted

#97

Post by Lutger »

Everyone is optimizing for their own local use-case. Even open-source. Standards get adopted sometimes, but only if they solve a specific problem.

There is an additional cost to making or using ontologies, making them available and publishing open data on the semantic web. The cost is quite high, the returns aren't immediate, obvious or guaranteed at all.

The vision of the semantic web is still valid. The incentives to get there are just not in place.

Re: The semantic web is now widely adopted

#98

Post by openrisk »

jsdwarf wrote: post #96
debarshri wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At TU delft, I was supposed to do my PhD in semantic web especially in the shipping logistics. It was funded by port of Rotterdam 10 years ago. Idea was to theorize and build various concepts around discrete data sharing, data discovery, classification, building ontology, query optimizations, automation and similar usecases. I decided not to pursue phd a month into it. I believe in semantic web. The biggest problem i…

Funny you bring up logistics and (data) ontologies. I'm a PM at a logistics software company and I'd say the lack of proper ontologies and standardized data exchange formats is the biggest effort driver for integrating 3rd party carrier/delivery services such as DHL, Fedex etc. It starts with the lack of a common terminology. For tool A a "booking" might be a reservation e.g. of a dock at a warehouse. For tool B the…

The EU is doing its part in some domains. There is e.g., the eProcurement ontology [1] that aims to harmonize public procurement data flows. But I suppose it helped alot that (by EU law) everybody is obliged to submit to a central repository.

[1] https://docs.ted.europa.eu/epo-home/index.html

Re: The semantic web is now widely adopted

#99

Post by Retr0id »

kqr wrote: post #60
atoav wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's hope you never write articles about court cases then: https://www.heise.de/en/news/Copilot-turns-a-court-reporter-... The alleged low error rate of 1% can ruin your day/life/company, if it hits the wrong person, regards the wrong problem, etc. And that risk is not adequately addressed by hand-waving and pointing people to low error rates. In fact, if anything such claims would make me less confident in your pro…

This is the thing with errors and automation. A 1 % error rate in a human process is basically fine. A 1 % error rate in an automated process is hundreds of thousands of errors per day. (See also why automated face recognition in public surveillance cameras might be a bad idea.)

Human error rates are also not a constant.

If you're about to publish a career-ending allegation, you're going to spend some extra time fact-checking it.

Re: The semantic web is now widely adopted

#100

Post by nottorp »

dspillett wrote: post #94
throwme_123 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scams and bad actors haven't changed sadly. But zk-based really decentralized consensus now does 400 tps and it's extraordinary when you think about it and all the safety and security properties it brings. And that's with proof-of-stake of course with decentralized sequencers for L2. But I get that people here prefer centralized databases, managed by admins and censorship-empowering platforms. Your bank stack looks l…

> But I get that people here prefer For many of us it isn't that we think the status quo is the RightWay™ - we just aren't convinced that crypto as it currently is presents a better answer. It fixes some problems, but adds a number of its own that many of us don't think are currently worth the compromise for our needs. As you said yourself: > The crypto ecosystem is shady, I know, but the tech is great That but is no…

The main problem with blockchain is identical to the one with LLMs. When snake oil salesmen try to apply the same solution to every problem, you stop wasting your time with those salesmen.

Both can be useful now and then, but the legit uses are lost in the noise.

And for blockchain... it was launched with the promise of decentralized currency. But we've had decentralized currency before in the physical world. Until the past few hundred years. Then we abandoned it in favor of centralized currency for some reason. I don't know, reliability perhaps?

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