Big Data, Search, and Artificial Intelligence: Quite a Mash Up

January 29, 2018

I read a consultant-technology mash up marketing essay. The write up is “Big Data and Search: The Time for Artificial Intelligence Is Now.” The write up is mostly jargon. I wonder if the engineer driving the word processing train pushed the wrong button.

Here are the “keywords” I noted in the write up:

Analytics
Artificial intelligence
Big Data
Blockchain
Business action and business use cases
Chatbots
Cognitive (presumably not the IBM which maybe doesn’t work as advertised)
Consumer services
Customer / citizen facing (some government speak too)
Digital assistants
False or biased results (yes, fake news)
Keywords
Machine learning
Natural language processing
Platforms
Real time results
Resources
SQL databases
Search
Transparency
Trust
Video

Were there definitions, case examples other than references to consultants, and facts? Not that I could discern.

As I pointed out in CyberOSINT: Next Generation Information Access, search is little more than plumbing. Trying to make search into the headline act is likely to cost money and lead the the types of mistakes that Convera, Delphes Technology, Entopia, Fast Search & Transfer, Verity, and dozens of other vendors pitched aggressively before open source search “won” the game. (Case histories of some of the more unusual search and retrieval vendors are available without charge at www.xenky.com/vendor-profiles.)

The next generation systems are platforms which combine content processing activities into a workflow which produces an outcome a human or other smart system can use to accomplish a task, either operational, physical, or mental.

The next generation approach to search and Big Data for that matter are embodied in software which is smart and fits into a work process and does not skew into “cognitive craziness.”

In short, the game has changed and the consulting techno jargon makes clear the gap between the search-centric approach from the 1990s to the next generation information methods of the most forward leaning companies. Jargon burns brightly but quickly.

Stephen E Arnold, January 29, 2018

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Consulting, Content processing, Feature, Search

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.