Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

calpaterson.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 427 posts

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#71

Post by criddell »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #45
pea wrote: post #29

An annoying example which has gotten worse recently is recipes. I generally trawl through 5k words of someone's life story and product promotions to get to the piece of information I need, and they often rewrite the recipe 5 different times in different levels of detail -- is this because to make the first page rank on Google you need to pad out the SEO? I too always find myself doing site:reddit.com.

Google page ranking depends on how long people spend on the webpage, so if you have to wade through longform text, it mistakenly assumes that the content is quality. Note that most recipe blogs are fake. Someone wrote the original content long ago. Then, someone else hired a copywriter off a freelancing platform to change the words of the text just enough to avoid copyright violation, then put up a new copycat websit…

> Google page ranking depends on how long people spend on the webpage, so if you have to wade through longform text, it mistakenly assumes that the content is quality.

Is this true? I have a hard time believing it because it's a pretty naive assumption. A site that lets me get what I'm after quickly is generally going to be what I want.

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#72

Post by cptskippy »

arbitrage wrote: post #66
ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That worked for awhile. But even Reddit has been overrun with coordinated marketing efforts to make sure you can't really get an honest review without checking every comments post history.

> even Reddit no, reddit? i'm shocked /s your implication seems to be that reddit should somehow be resistant to parasitic capitalism. reddit has been compromised and on the side of the advertisers since the beginning.

> reddit has been compromised and on the side of the advertisers since the beginning.

reddit today is very different from reddit of early days, its practically unrecognizable.

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#73

Post by carrozo »

soarfourmore wrote: post #49

The following quotes are fairly interesting and ironic: > Larry Page and Sergey Brin were originally pretty negative about search engines that sold ads. Appendix A in their original paper says: >> "we expect that advertising-funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers" > and that >> "we believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives…

Everybody’s got a plan until they’re punched in the face (with hundreds of billions of dollars).

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#74

Post by bagacrap »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #53
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interested to know how this process looked like. I'd imagine it was very gradual and consisted of little steps each leading to the next one, and when they finally started to serve ads they were probably thinking it's not that bad. I believe crossing that line made paved the way for considering things like tracking the whole web morally acceptable, maybe even positive.

For one, when they started ads, they were not inline with the search results, and in brightly highlighted boxes. So it was easy to say, you know, we have ads, but they don't affect search results. Today they say the same thing, but nontechnical users can no longer distinguish ads from their organic search results.

Non-technical users can't read the bolded "Ad" in the top left? Ok, it's more subtle than before but it doesn't prey on the less sophisticated among us.

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#75

Post by fsflover »

hajile wrote: post #3

The commercial opinion bit is incredibly annoying. Ask for an opinion and you’ll get 5 pages of custom built “review” sites that offer nothing useful besides copious ads and paid click-through to Amazon. Even when Google knows where I go with my searches, they still refuse to show those sites for anything that might have commercial interest. So much for customized search. I get tired of being the product. Can we get…

How about p2p FLOSS search engine: https://yacy.net?

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#76

Post by tolbish »

emptyfile wrote: post #42
tolbish wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google modified the algorithm a while back to ignore such flags at times.

They did a bad job then, since they still work.

They still use the flags, just not in every instance. I recall the quotes for inclusion of strings and the "-site" flag failing for me as early as last year.

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#77

Post by topspin »

Tarsul wrote: post #60

I really like the expression "metadata analysis". It's very succinct, describes very much what AI/ML often boils down to in 2 (rather) simple words. I will try to remember this. The marketing guys in cooperation with journalists won the battle for now but words will be replaced by others again and again and even change their meaning, so maybe next time the shiny new technology will get more adequate wording? (well, m…

The minute 'AI' solves a problem the problem is removed from that class of problems that require 'AI'. If the problem is difficult enough we might award the new solution its own name.

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#78

Post by mistrial9 »

Borrible wrote: post #12

Since Dartmouth AI looks like a story of naive visions, exaggerated promises, massive disappointment, recurrent divisionary tactics, rebranding and snak oil sale. Until finally a light on the horizon became visible and academically camouflaged wishful thinking could be materialized into usable products. A groping in the dark, nothing more. There are probably good reasons why the blind watchmaker needed billions of ye…

The blind Watchmaker -> creator of the physical Universe

The seeing Watchmaker -> human engineering

"(We) wish the human some progress, obviously egotistical and delusional, on whatever the human makes next"

I believe this slightly poetic word salad references certain theological problems about the capacity of man compared to a Creator. The conclusion is that the future is uncertain and the human is flawed, but an intelligent reader can supply "hope"

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#79

Post by [deleted] »

cbm-vic-20 wrote: post #55
fouc wrote: post #2

> There are woolly intimations that self driving cars will read roadsigns to work out what the speed limit is for any stretch of road but the truth seems to be that they use the current GPS co-ordinates to access manually entered data on speedlimits. I actually didn't know Tesla cars relied on GPS + map data w/ speed limits until recently. What a disappointment, apparently it causes all sorts of issues with sudden br…

It would be cool if the signs could have a low density error correcting code on them (maybe even only using a paint that can be seen in infrared) that would let the computers have more confidence in what they're seeing.

[deleted]

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#80

Post by mortehu »

criddell wrote: post #71
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google page ranking depends on how long people spend on the webpage, so if you have to wade through longform text, it mistakenly assumes that the content is quality. Note that most recipe blogs are fake. Someone wrote the original content long ago. Then, someone else hired a copywriter off a freelancing platform to change the words of the text just enough to avoid copyright violation, then put up a new copycat websit…

> Google page ranking depends on how long people spend on the webpage, so if you have to wade through longform text, it mistakenly assumes that the content is quality. Is this true? I have a hard time believing it because it's a pretty naive assumption. A site that lets me get what I'm after quickly is generally going to be what I want.

Presumably they are using bounce rates, i.e. how often you visit result N+1 after visiting result N. I hope time spent on site N is not a large factor, because it's so easily gamed.
Post reply on HN