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The Grid: Certainly Misguided, Probably a Scam

benhorrix.com

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Re: The Grid: Certainly Misguided, Probably a Scam

#71

Post by tariqali34 »

titfn wrote: post #64
tariqali34 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a distinction between misleading marketing and scamming. If you promise "revolutionary AI" and only give the customer templates and algorithms, well, at least the customer have a program that can make websites. That's useful. A scam, on the other hand, would not deliver anything at all...period. That is because, no matter how easy it is to produce the templates and algorithms, it's just cheaper to ta…

Send me $10 and I promise that I'll send you back $20 shortly... I might change my mind and only send you back $5 but it's definitely not a scam because I sent something back

Yeah, okay, that's a fair enough point. I will need to probably figure out a better dividing line between "false advertising" and "outright scam".

Re: The Grid: Certainly Misguided, Probably a Scam

#72

Post by Animats »

tomadi wrote: post #70
Animats wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking about it, I like the idea of using automated A/B testing to automatically drive layout optimization. That would be fascinating to watch. Provide the system with a supply of images and copy, maybe 5x as much content as the site shows, and let it optimize for maximum clicks. Someone could probably get VC funding for that.

You just described exactly how the Amazon.com homepage works. I think they even published a paper about it.

That's how most ad placement works, but it hasn't been applied to general layout.

Re: The Grid: Certainly Misguided, Probably a Scam

#73

Post by astine »

tariqali34 wrote: post #71
titfn wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Send me $10 and I promise that I'll send you back $20 shortly... I might change my mind and only send you back $5 but it's definitely not a scam because I sent something back

Yeah, okay, that's a fair enough point. I will need to probably figure out a better dividing line between "false advertising" and "outright scam".

False advertising is a scam, it's just one that lots of established companies get away with. I guess there is a difference between that and one of those confidence schemes where the entire organization is a fraud, but it's still a scam.

Re: The Grid: Certainly Misguided, Probably a Scam

#74

Post by abhgh »

merb wrote: post #44

btw. you don't need any knowledge of machine learning today to do machine learning. most clouds provide that feature. you only need to feed data to it.

Thats a sweeping statement which, in many contexts, is in error. A given ML algorithm is not effective with any kind of data or problem. Typically you need to understand the domain to pick the right algorithm and/or features and to tweak it right.

Of course, a case could be made for a product where prediction is just one not-so-significant feature, and here you can use something off-the-shelf without worrying too much about performance. But where predictions are the driver, you would need to put in some serious work to get good results. (not talking about Grid here - this is a general statement)

Re: The Grid: Certainly Misguided, Probably a Scam

#75

Post by nailer »

pavlov wrote: post #8
nailer wrote: post #4

I don't use the grid, but got intrigued by their ads, and it's tech that exists now applied well. Add a photo? They'll crop it unevenly to keep the subject in the picture. Using it as a background? They'll make it less attention gathering using filters. Yes, the term AI is overused, but they're not say, Redding University lying about the turing test. They're describing computers anticipating a need and taking measure…

Add a photo? They'll crop it unevenly to keep the subject in the picture. Using it as a background? They'll make it less attention gathering using filters. Aren't these usually called "presets" rather than "artificial intelligence"?

I don't think they're called anything right now because other websites haven't done them before.

Re: The Grid: Certainly Misguided, Probably a Scam

#76

Post by nailer »

x1798DE wrote: post #60
gavinh wrote: post #58

Currently, the absolute pinnacle of AI technology are programs which, in the highly specific contexts for which they were explicitly programmed, trick 33% of people into thinking they have the language skills of a 13 year old. No.

Yeah, anyone describing anything that Kevin Warrick is involved in as the pinnacle of anything* obviously wouldn't know a scam if it bit them on the face. *Other than possibly hype generation

For anyone else reading 'Kevin Warwick' is Captain Cyborg's real name.

Re: The Grid: Certainly Misguided, Probably a Scam

#77

Post by porker »

reilly3000 wrote: post #55

It seems to me that reacting to their marketing and reacting to their implementation approach are two different transactions. I'm a backer and am very impressed with their tech: noflo and constraint based style sheets and not only novel, they are very functional. And the idea that web publishing should abstract presentation away from content isn't new, but their implementation is very clean and emphasizes minimal fri…

> Take out the AI for color processing and you really have just a nifty publishing workflow that has built-in imagemagick support.

If that's the case - why don't we have any open source content management systems that will do what The Grid does already?

Re: The Grid: Certainly Misguided, Probably a Scam

#78

Post by sago »

p8952 wrote: post #62
sago wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is a joke. It is classic AI marketing. From what I can tell their 'AI' chooses colors, and fonts and does some basic layout. All three bits can be done very simply. So you choose a template, it stores a few basic qualities, then uses those qualities later to choose how to parameterise its tools for adding new content to your site. It's not strong AI, you might want to claim it isn't AI at all. But ev…

> So you choose a template "It's called The Grid. No templates, no coding."

Language is so very flexible.

Saying 'no templates' could mean 'no fixed templates' or 'we use styles not templates, a style is a general set of rules for how things are laid out, not a rigid structure'.

Not in websites, but I've build procedural content creation systems using hierarchical planners. To get really good effects they still run on what I'd call templates, they just are templates designed to work with the algorithm.

No coding, definitely, for the end user. They're not suggesting this isn't coded by someone. Just not coded afresh for each output: you build a parameterised algorithm that can generate a class of different outputs. The end user only deals with the parameters.

Re: The Grid: Certainly Misguided, Probably a Scam

#79

Post by sago »

plorkyeran wrote: post #61
sago wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is a joke. It is classic AI marketing. From what I can tell their 'AI' chooses colors, and fonts and does some basic layout. All three bits can be done very simply. So you choose a template, it stores a few basic qualities, then uses those qualities later to choose how to parameterise its tools for adding new content to your site. It's not strong AI, you might want to claim it isn't AI at all. But ev…

> So you choose a template They explicitly say that it doesn't use templates in the video. If you assume that part's bullshit then everything else is plausible, but if one of the first things they say about the produce is a lie...

Define 'template'. I'm sure there is a definition of 'template' such that they aren't using them. They're not, for example, using templates in the Wordpress sense of 'here is where blog post goes'. The video shows a selection of 'styles' which have clearly been designed, and shows the user selecting one. If you want to s/template/style in my comment, I'm fine with that.

In marketing, things are very rarely true or false. You use words in a particular sense to convey a message. You might say 'no templates', meaning 'no fixed structure templates', to convey the idea that it is very dynamic. That doesn't mean 'there is no hand-authored structure at any point', or 'the user does not chose from a range of design styles'.

So no, I don't assume 'no templates' is bullshit.

Re: The Grid: Certainly Misguided, Probably a Scam

#80

Post by d4tocchini »

segphault wrote: post #12
rstupek wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the OP is saying he can't evaluate the actual technology in question because there is nothing to see. You are asked to take the word of thegrid folks that they have something and that they have 100 people testing it.

Yes, but OP is wrong when he says that there is nothing to see. He just didn't take the time to even look. The source code of the underlying layout engine is published on GitHub: https://github.com/gss/engine

Much of our platform is still closed-source. GSS is one of many libs we've open-sourced & there are many more to come... We're also the guys behind http://noflojs.org/ http://www.imgflo.org/ & flowhub.io. You can see some of our open repos here: https://github.com/the-grid/
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