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How Ray Kurzweil Plans To Revolutionize Search At Google

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Re: How Ray Kurzweil Plans To Revolutionize Search At Google

#51

Post by nostrademons »

Sven7 wrote: post #40
rgrieselhuber wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that more than just a couple people work on search at Google. ;)

More than a couple work at Apple too. But the 50 billion app downloads came from an ecosystem of millions of developers around the world.

What would "extensions" to search look like? Google had "Subscribed Links" from roughly 2006 to 2009, which would let users opt in to receiving links from third parties for certain queries (eg. I added a Javadoc extension that would show me the official Javadoc when I searched for a Java class). Nobody used them. Search isn't a market like mobile phones: it serves an immediate, well-defined need, and there doesn't seem to be a need for third parties to jump in.

Re: How Ray Kurzweil Plans To Revolutionize Search At Google

#52

Post by DanBC »

threeseed wrote: post #19
rsync wrote: post #11

All grand plans indeed ... but a higher priority should be making search even work at all. Google search returns approximate results, related results, results with your words split (or joined) and other nonsense to drive ad views. Even using the so-called "power tools" like allinsite: and the (barely functional) quotation marks, you still get very shoddy results. Anyone who ever searches for very specific groups of t…

It is just me or is it a recent change ? I find Google Search to be incredibly frustrating to use because it chooses to ignore search terms even when pages exist with those terms. Google better be really careful because crippling the experience in order to sell more advertising reminds me why I switched away from Altavista.

> Google better be really careful because

Sadly, you are in a minority. Google's results are excellent for most people.

I used to use + often. We know that the + operator was rarely used, and most of those times it wasn't used correctly. (Of all searches, only 1 in 600 were correctly using the + operator.)

Being outside Google (and not able to see their data) is frustrating, but they have a lot of numbers and they do this stuff because they can show it helps most people.

Re: How Ray Kurzweil Plans To Revolutionize Search At Google

#53

Post by AnthonyMouse »

coldtea wrote: post #48
lukeschlather wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could anyone hope to accomplish anything halfway great without being grandiose, obsessive and deluded? Kurzweil has already done enough to prove he's not simply deluded. It seems like every week there's an article that comes across HN about how all great innovators have a capacity for self-delusion. Kurzweil has consistently shown himself to be a great innovator, and yet people dismiss him as a crank because he h…

> How could anyone hope to accomplish anything halfway great without being grandiose, obsessive and deluded? That's a Hollywood cliched idea of creativity. The "mad scientist" idea. People have created great things without being "grandiose, obsessive and deluded". Genius and/or hard work will do. Einstein wasn't either grandiose, obsessive or deluded. Maxwell too. Feynman was mostly playful and humble. Turing. The li…

Genius or hard work will get you a solution to the problem you set out to solve. You need "grandiose, obsessive and deluded" in order to set out against a sufficiently ambitious problem.

And you're listing people who have made discoveries. Kurzweil isn't trying to discover an equation or a law of nature, he's trying to build strong AI. That's a different category of endeavor. It's the work of Henry Ford or Steve Jobs rather than Einstein or Feynman.

Re: How Ray Kurzweil Plans To Revolutionize Search At Google

#54

Post by saraid216 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #53
coldtea wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How could anyone hope to accomplish anything halfway great without being grandiose, obsessive and deluded? That's a Hollywood cliched idea of creativity. The "mad scientist" idea. People have created great things without being "grandiose, obsessive and deluded". Genius and/or hard work will do. Einstein wasn't either grandiose, obsessive or deluded. Maxwell too. Feynman was mostly playful and humble. Turing. The li…

Genius or hard work will get you a solution to the problem you set out to solve. You need "grandiose, obsessive and deluded" in order to set out against a sufficiently ambitious problem. And you're listing people who have made discoveries. Kurzweil isn't trying to discover an equation or a law of nature, he's trying to build strong AI. That's a different category of endeavor. It's the work of Henry Ford or Steve Jobs…

Well, I suppose it's nice to know that anyone who actually tries anything hard is, in fact, insane and probably should be kept away from real people.

Re: How Ray Kurzweil Plans To Revolutionize Search At Google

#55

Post by nrlucas »

Lost_BiomedE wrote: post #22
ot wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is that you could say the exact same thing about Douglas Hofstadter himself.

He may have noticed this in himself first, then applied it to others. In fact, he may consider it a limitation of genius and part of the current human condition.

I haven't read his new book, but "I am a strange loop" sure as hell didn't acknowledge it.

Re: How Ray Kurzweil Plans To Revolutionize Search At Google

#56

Post by DanBC »

nostrademons wrote: post #51
Sven7 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than a couple work at Apple too. But the 50 billion app downloads came from an ecosystem of millions of developers around the world.

What would "extensions" to search look like? Google had "Subscribed Links" from roughly 2006 to 2009, which would let users opt in to receiving links from third parties for certain queries (eg. I added a Javadoc extension that would show me the official Javadoc when I searched for a Java class). Nobody used them. Search isn't a market like mobile phones: it serves an immediate, well-defined need, and there doesn't se…

I want a search that works for Usenet news. Yes, I understand that Usenet news is dead, but still, effective searching would be nice and Usenet search has been broken for ages and ages.

Another example is targeted search. For example, if I'm searching about mental health stuff I do want good quality sources, I don't want tabloid gossip about celebrities going into rehab.

Or sometimes I want to break out of the SEO trash, and have a bit of serendipity. Search for a term like [spectacles cases]. You get a lot of shops selling pretty much identical cases. What you want is a nicer way to preview those shops (because often the websites are god-awful and their own site searches are much worse than anything Google provides.) WAIT: I just tried this to make sure I was right, and Google have changed the way they show results like this. You get the same ads at the top, with heavily SEOd content links below, but now at top right there's a "shopping" section with links to different cases in different shops. So, that's much better now than it used to be.

Still, serendipity is fun. I remember when you used to be able to use Google to noodle around and find cool stuff. Now? Not so much. That's not Google's fault. The modern web is very different to what it used to be, but it'd be great if there was some way to get access to those smaller sites.

Re: How Ray Kurzweil Plans To Revolutionize Search At Google

#57

Post by Sven7 »

nostrademons wrote: post #51
Sven7 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than a couple work at Apple too. But the 50 billion app downloads came from an ecosystem of millions of developers around the world.

What would "extensions" to search look like? Google had "Subscribed Links" from roughly 2006 to 2009, which would let users opt in to receiving links from third parties for certain queries (eg. I added a Javadoc extension that would show me the official Javadoc when I searched for a Java class). Nobody used them. Search isn't a market like mobile phones: it serves an immediate, well-defined need, and there doesn't se…

Your comment highlights the problem. When people think search they think Google. Search is bigger than that and Google is in a way through its success and utility, limiting people's imagination when they think about search.

Just look at their menu bar...images, videos, flights, blogs, shopping, books, patents, apps.

Is that it?

Not to mention random. So we just sit around waiting for some benevolent god in Mountain View to say, you know what now let the mortals have...recipes.

If they want to expand that list to the infinite domains it should be covering, it is never going to happen with the resources they have. They need to open the index to tap into its full potential.

Re: How Ray Kurzweil Plans To Revolutionize Search At Google

#58

Post by Kekeli »

samstave wrote: post #28
Lost_BiomedE wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He may have noticed this in himself first, then applied it to others. In fact, he may consider it a limitation of genius and part of the current human condition.

This is an interesting point. One thing about good ideas - is not so much the novelty, but more-so ideas that are far enough out there that they are semi-novel, but based on an extrapolation of the current state of things such that a path to getting the idea implementable is possible. Sometimes, this means that you're able to foresee the trajectory of industries and technology that others miss or can't. However - its…

I am going to insert this piece into my pitch. It touches on the basic and salient rationale that access to resources is a given to derive inertia for for certain ideas

Re: How Ray Kurzweil Plans To Revolutionize Search At Google

#59

Post by hdxuyx »

coldtea wrote: post #49
esahione wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that Hofstadter, other than writing about his ideas and theories, has accomplished jack shit. Pragmatically speaking, Kurzweil is miles ahead of Hofstadter in terms of putting his theories and ideas to practice. It's very easy to criticize visionaries, until they achieve something. Then nobody holds the critics accountable for their negative attitudes towards the visions, and the critics probably would claim t…

> Except that Hofstadter, other than writing about his ideas and theories, has accomplished jack shit. Why would he have to accomplish anything else? He is not an inventor, he is a writer. > Pragmatically speaking, Kurzweil is miles ahead of Hofstadter in terms of putting his theories and ideas to practice. I don't think so. He merely invented some low hanging fruit in early computer science, like OCR and text recogn…

>>I don't think so. He merely invented some low hanging fruit in early computer science, like OCR and text recognition. Things on which other people worked and had results too.

It only looks like low hanging fruit after it is done.

>>And it's equally easy to be a "visionary", if you don't have to also achieve those visions. Visionaries are a dime a dozen, especially in California.

What exactly is your overall point? Most visionaries will fail because that is just how things are. Leonardo da vinci was a great visionary that could not fulfill any of his visions. Visions that were fulfilled hundreds of years latter. Eventually somebody will fulfilled those visions. Again, I don't understand what you are bitching about.

All this irrational hate against the guy for daring to dream what would be one of the greatest achievements of human history is unnerving. Eventually we WILL have strong AI, we are living proof that it is possible just as birds were living proof that things could fly.

Re: How Ray Kurzweil Plans To Revolutionize Search At Google

#60

Post by aswanson »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #53
coldtea wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How could anyone hope to accomplish anything halfway great without being grandiose, obsessive and deluded? That's a Hollywood cliched idea of creativity. The "mad scientist" idea. People have created great things without being "grandiose, obsessive and deluded". Genius and/or hard work will do. Einstein wasn't either grandiose, obsessive or deluded. Maxwell too. Feynman was mostly playful and humble. Turing. The li…

Genius or hard work will get you a solution to the problem you set out to solve. You need "grandiose, obsessive and deluded" in order to set out against a sufficiently ambitious problem. And you're listing people who have made discoveries. Kurzweil isn't trying to discover an equation or a law of nature, he's trying to build strong AI. That's a different category of endeavor. It's the work of Henry Ford or Steve Jobs…

Wow. Henry Ford or Steve Jobs. So, the discovery of the nature of cognition, a scientific endeavor that has stumped tens of thousands of the most brilliant people who ever lived for thousands of years, is on the order of setting up assembly lines and setting up shiny packaging for other people's engineering work. I learn new things here everyday.
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