Google: Smart Software or Human Intervention
August 31, 2018
I mentioned in the interview that Robert Steele conducted with me the possibility of human intervention in Google search and information outputs. You can find the original interview here. I spotted an interesting factoid. The article “Google Maps Mistakenly Shows McCain Senate Office Building.” I went to grade school in Washington, DC, and later worked for years in the city. I thought that the misnamed building was named something else. But I am often wrong.
The point is that “a search for Russell Senate Office Building directed users to the same building. The error was fixed later Wednesday…. Google said in a statement Wednesday that it empowers people to contribute local knowledge to its maps, “but we recognize that there may be occasional inaccuracies or premature changes suggested by users.”
It was not clear how the error occurred.
I assume that Google’s smart software misnamed the Russell edifice for Senator McCain, and then smart software recognized the error and remediated it.
But if that assumption is incorrect, the change suggests that Google engineers can make direct changes to outputs generated by the Google system.
Worth noting.
Stephen E Arnold, August 30, 2018
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