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Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

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Re: Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

#381

Post by dilemma »

taneq wrote: post #249
drewrv wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI is whatever hasn't been done yet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect#AI_is_whatever_hasn....

Precisely. The image recognition and natural language processing that's "just a deep learning algorithm" today would have blown the socks off anyone ten years ago. Chess playing programs were AI until they could decisively beat all humans, and then we decided that chess doesn't require intelligence. Self-driving cars were AI until they got close to market and now apparently driving a car doesn't require intelligence.…

A computer running a chess program isn't intelligent because it isn't sentient. It is just doing what it's been told to.

Re: Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

#382

Post by deciplex »

ubernostrum wrote: post #368
deciplex wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even within the last six months I've seen very confident posts here to the effect of "an AI that is worth a damn at go is still at least 10 years off".

And yet Google's Go-playing approach still doesn't seem to involve fundamentally novel techniques. Most of the advance seems to come in refinements to existing techniques, and being able to throw resources at the problem on a scale nobody had managed before.

> And yet Google's Go-playing approach still doesn't seem to involve fundamentally novel techniques.

So? The fact that it is worth a damn at playing go was unexpected to most people afaict. What do you mean "fundamentally novel", are you expecting the field to advance from cars that barely avoid accidents, to Ava in one fell swoop?

Frankly I would prefer that advancement in AI not occur in sudden unexpected bursts of progress, thanks.

Re: Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

#383

Post by johnchristopher »

shimon wrote: post #110
jonesb6 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely agree that comparing Google and apple is silly. But calling Google an "artificial intelligence" company is just feeding another buzzword into the fire.

Google's flagship product is a box that you can type words into, and get relevant texts/references/facts in response. It seems like a textbook example of AI.

Apple's flagship product is a box that you can type words into, and get relevant texts/references/facts in response. It seems like a textbook example of AI.

Re: Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

#384

Post by tim333 »

arikrak wrote: post #320
bane wrote: post #312

As an American I think it's pretty badass that something like 8 or 9 of the top 10 most valuable companies in the world are all American. I'm not sure if that means we're doing something right, but it's still pretty cool for a moment.

All 10 of the 10 most valuable publicly traded companies are American (multinational) companies. #11 is Chinese and #20 is Swiss [1]. (Not that the largest 4 companies are tech companies, so that explains part of it...) [1] http://www.dogsofthedow.com/largest-companies-by-market-cap....

America does companies well. If you're going to base a global corporation somewhere it's not a bad choice.

Re: Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

#385

Post by tim333 »

jcsnv wrote: post #151
aqzman wrote: post #86

Very impressive. I remember being a young teenager when Google first went public, and around the same time my parents were looking at investing a moderate amount of money (around 10K, if I remember correctly) in the stock market. I suggested they buy stocks in Google, they didn't take my advice, which I don't blame them for as taking investment advice from a 14 year old typically doesn't end well. It will be very int…

I remember being in a situation similar to that! Google's $100 IPO price looks like a steal now.

The IPO price was $42.50 per share split adjusted. Which I brilliantly passed on. I mean how could some search software be worth that much?

Re: Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

#386

Post by rplnt »

dcw303 wrote: post #259
scarmig wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure this is pretty proprietary information, but I do wonder what the value add of the AI-targeting is. Is it a relatively small bonus on top of a solid platform and audience for ads? Or is it the killer feature?

Recently I searched Amazon to read reviews of a book I bought on Kindle a few years ago. Now every website with Amazon affiliate advertising is showing me ads for that book. Considering that Amazon could have run a simple account search to determine that I am definitely not interested in seeing ads for a product that I already own, I think that the AI-targeting ad revolution is a while off yet. That is unrelated to G…

Yep, Google does this exact same thing. I search, I buy, and only then I see ads for a product I already own.

Re: Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

#387

Post by taneq »

ubernostrum wrote: post #368
deciplex wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even within the last six months I've seen very confident posts here to the effect of "an AI that is worth a damn at go is still at least 10 years off".

And yet Google's Go-playing approach still doesn't seem to involve fundamentally novel techniques. Most of the advance seems to come in refinements to existing techniques, and being able to throw resources at the problem on a scale nobody had managed before.

And here is the exact phenomenon we're talking about, in action!

Back when neural nets were "fundamentally novel" we didn't have the understanding or computing power to tap their potential. So they "weren't really AI" because they couldn't do much that was interesting.

Now, we have a better understanding of how to use them, and we have enough computing grunt to make them do really interesting things. But they're "not really AI" because they're "not fundamentally novel."

Re: Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

#389

Post by yunti »

pjbrunet wrote: post #358
taneq wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. The image recognition and natural language processing that's "just a deep learning algorithm" today would have blown the socks off anyone ten years ago. Chess playing programs were AI until they could decisively beat all humans, and then we decided that chess doesn't require intelligence. Self-driving cars were AI until they got close to market and now apparently driving a car doesn't require intelligence.…

"The game of chess, is like a swordfight. You must think first, before you move." -Wu-Tang Clan

:)

Re: Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

#390

Post by yunti »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #218
shimon wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's flagship product is a box that you can type words into, and get relevant texts/references/facts in response. It seems like a textbook example of AI.

Google's flagship product is an advertising platform, not a search box.

No the product is search, it's monetised by advertising.
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