Google Quote to Note: Search and Smart Software

May 24, 2016

I saw a Quora post by Peter Norvig, one of Alphabet Google’s wizards. [You m ay have to log in to view the statement. Also, the Quora search result for you may require some fiddling. Hey, life in the fast search lane is exciting.]

Novig’s subject is search. I highlighted these statements from the most viewed writer in artificial intelligence:

“Modern” Google, as Sundar has set out the vision, is based not just on suggestions of relevant information, but on informing and assisting.

In short, Google will figure out what “you” really want. But what if I want to locate specific words and phrases? Well, too bad for me.

How about that precision and recall stuff? It seems Google has admitted the 80 percent ceiling for precision and recall. I circled:

With information retrieval, anything over 80% recall and precision is pretty good—not every suggestion has to be perfect, since the user can ignore the bad suggestions. With assistance, there is a much higher barrier.

Really? A glass ceiling which has been evident in the TREC results for what? A decade?

Does this suggest that when Google cannot solve a problem, it punts? What about that solving death thing?

Stephen E Arnold, May 24, 2016

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