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Google killed me

amywilentz.tumblr.com

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Re: Google killed me

#41

Post by KMag »

Kylekramer wrote: post #17
k3n wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is interesting that google almost seems to take Wikipedia bio boxes as gospel FTA, I don't believe the data was taken from a bio box: > So it’s not too surprising that my original Wikipedia entry, as conceived by Joel, was — let’s be honest — more about my father (a famous New Jersey judge) than about me. Joel began the entry with my connection to my father, and immediately mentioned my father’s birthdate and th…

Don't know what is so scary about that. I am willing to bet less than 0.01% of "name[s] on Wikipedia..followed by a birth and death date" aren't the actual birth and death date. Seems like just an oddmatch caused by an overzealous relative that happened due to the incredibly large amount of data Google processes.

You need to be much more careful in wording your bets.

I think you meant to bet that the simple solution is almost always the correct way to parse the Wikipedia article, but that's not actually what you bet. What you really bet was P(correct_parse) * P(correct_data) + (1 -P(correct_parse) ) * P(wrong_parse_accidentally_giving_correct_data) > 0.9999

A 0.01% error rate is incredibly incredibly accurate. I imagine the error rate of birthdays in Wikipedia bio boxes is higher than 0.0001. Note that, for instance, Wikipedia had a wrong birthday for Jimmy Wales. http://blog.oregonlive.com/siliconforest/2007/07/on_wikipedi...

I _might_ believe that name followed by birth date and death date are the birth and death dates is the correct parsing of the Wikipedia data over 99.99% of the time. However, I doubt your proposed bet would pay off.

Re: Google killed me

#42

Post by finnp »

bbrizzi wrote: post #36
nathanb wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the fact that a reasonably well-respected writer and English professor doesn't understand the inner workings of Google's infobox means that her blog post is terrible. This arrogant and dismissive response highlights the problem even better than her mild and humorous complaint (which, for the record, I didn't see as whining). Perhaps she did understand that editing her Wikipedia page would correct the problem but…

Well, the Wikipedia article's history shows that she edited her own article quite a few times, so that doesn't seem to be the problem. I don't see how the error detracted her in any way, and, as I highlighted it, it was a quick 2-minute fix. I also don't think the Google algorithm is to blame. If her Wikipedia entry had followed the style guidelines ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Biogr... ),…

The Google algorithm is to blame. This was probably the version, where the false data came from: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Amy_Wilentz&d.... There is no big mistake in the style, it's just that the birthday is missing.

The Google algorithm took the results from the middle of the text, even though the birthdates are always right behind the name. I guess they did something like take the first dates instead of just focusing on the part behind the name. This way the algorithm was more flexible but on the other hand as we see more likely to make mistakes.

Re: Google killed me

#44

Post by alexbilbie »

RyanZAG wrote: post #6

Natural language parsing is not 100% accurate and can make mistakes - breaking news! All kinds of automated data collection such as this will have errors that need to be fixed manually by a human. This will be taken care of if/when we eventually have real artificial intelligence. The data parsing scripts Google and others use are fairly advanced, but they still break down to a couple rules and finding words in close…

It's likely that Google is querying DBPedia.org instead of trying to manually parse plain text on WikiPedia

Re: Google killed me

#46

Post by wyclin »

craigching wrote: post #34
cm2012 wrote: post #27

This post was really well written. Just a pleasure on the eyes.

I loved it too, up until this part: "I’m reading Kafka’s Castle right now — which itself may kill me" Kafka is one of my favorite authors and The Castle is one of my favorite novels :( But a well-written essay nonetheless ;)

I was just watching this earlier. Had me in tears. http://www.theonion.com/video/pragues-franz-kafka-internatio...

Re: Google killed me

#47

Post by cromwellian »

Just wait till she finds her insurance company or local government has wrong information and see how long it'll take to get a fix. Years ago, the bank which had my car loan got sold to another bank which got sold to another bank. When I finished paying off the loan, they sent documents I needed to the wrong address. I had moved to a different state and the bank had as well, and it took weeks to correct this. I actually had to contact the DMV at my former state and get them to send a letter to the new bank, which then released records, which then allowed me to update my DMV in in CA. I won't even get into the mistakes that Sallie Mae made on my student loan records, or how many times my health insurance provider screwed up.

Machines screw up, but humans screw up too, and sometimes getting the problem fixed in a bureaucracy takes even more effort. I don't think bureaucracies "refresh" their policies/procedures (algorithms) or data as fast as software companies do.

Re: Google killed me

#48

Post by Matt_Cutts »

I believe this has been fixed for a while now. It was fixed by the time I reported this over a week ago, for example.

If you see an error in a Knowledge Panel (the box on the right-hand side), look for the "Feedback / More info" link at the bottom of the box and then you can click next to a fact to report a problem. People do review those reports, and that's the fastest way to report an issue.

Re: Google killed me

#49

Post by RyanZAG »

ajross wrote: post #29
RyanZAG wrote: post #6

Natural language parsing is not 100% accurate and can make mistakes - breaking news! All kinds of automated data collection such as this will have errors that need to be fixed manually by a human. This will be taken care of if/when we eventually have real artificial intelligence. The data parsing scripts Google and others use are fairly advanced, but they still break down to a couple rules and finding words in close…

> This will be taken care of if/when we eventually have real artificial intelligence Considering that "non-artificial intelligence" makes the same kind of mistakes, I find that an odd claim. Mistakes happen. Quite frankly far fewer of them happen in the modern world, due precisely to technology like this. What has changed is actually the converse: automation has become so good that we expect it to be flawless. No one…

You're completely correct, great points. It's very easy to fall into the trap of 'human-like intelligence will fix it' when thinking of better machines, but it's fairly clear that human-like intelligence has a lot of failings too.
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