Google Experiences a Kangaroo Punch
June 6, 2022
When I was in Australia giving a talk, I did see red kangaroo. The critters did not seem to pack much of a punch, but there were quite a few of them on the road to Canberra. I knew that some in Australia use the kangaroo as a symbol in some sporting venues. I asked about the punch. The roo uses its forelegs to hold a humanoid or other creature. Then the hind legs slash away at the victim’s under belly. Those skilled in the art of kangaroo behavior point out that the animals don’t box. They disembowel. Who knew?
Google may have an opportunity to learn about roo behavior. “Google Told to Pay Australian Politician $515,000 for Defamation” reports:
Judge Steven Rares said the videos, which were posted by political commentator Jordan Shanks amounted to a “relentless, racist, vilificatory, abusive and defamatory campaign” against Barilaro. The videos questioned the former legislator’s integrity, including labelling him “corrupt” without evidence, and called him racist names that were “nothing less than hate speech”, the judge said. He found that Alphabet Inc’s Google, which owns content-sharing website YouTube, earned thousands of dollars by hosting the two videos but failed to apply its own policies to prevent hate speech, cyber bullying and harassment. The videos were viewed nearly 800,000 times between them since being posted in late 2020.
A half million US is more like a paper cut, if that.
The Vice report “Google Will Pay Massive Damages for Hosting YouTuber’s ‘Racist’ Anti-Italian ‘Abuse’” uses the word “massive” which is a bit overblown. That story includes this statement:
“Google cannot hide behind the use of its Californian head office or American understandings of the English language as being the same as in Australia,” Rares [an Australian Federal Court Justice] said. “It operates a very large business in Australia, has Australian staff and lawyers and could not suggest that it was somehow ignorant of how hurtful and bullying the ‘bruz’ video was in its use of the slurs and venomous hate speech that Mr Shanks directed avowedly, deliberately at Mr Barilaro, for criticising Mr Shanks’ earlier racist behaviour.
Interesting, particularly the reference to understanding, a notion popular among some artificial intelligence professionals at the Google .
One kangaroo scrape makes not difference. As I saw firsthand in Australia, there are lots of kangaroos. What if these use their hind quarters in a coordinated dust up with the Google. But Australia is a mere country. Google is the Alphabet with Chrome trim and a fascinating management method.
Stephen E Arnold, June 6, 2022
Alphabet Google and the Caste Bias Cook Out
June 3, 2022
The headline in the Bezosish Washington Post caught my attention. Here it is: “Google’s Plan to Talk about Caste Bias Led to Division and Rancor.” First off, I had zero idea what caste bias means, connotes, denotes, whatever.
Why not check with the Delphic Oracle of Advertising aka Google? The Alphabet search system provides this page of results to the query “caste bias”:
Look no ads. Gee, I wonder why? Okay, not particularly helpful info.
I tried the query “caste bias Google” on Mr. Pichai’s answer machine and received this result:
Again no ads? What? Why? How?
Are there no airlines advertising flights to a premier vacation destination? What about hotels located in sunny Mumbai? No car rental agencies? (Yeah, renting a car in Delhi is probably not a good idea for someone from Tulsa, Oklahoma.) And the references to “casteist” baffled me. (I would have spelled casteist as castist, but what do I know?)
Let’s try Swisscows.com “caste bias Google”:
Nice results, but I still have zero idea about caste bias.
I knew about the International Dalit Solidarity Network. I navigated the IDSN site. Now we’re cooking with street trash and tree branches in the gutter next to a sidewalk where some unfortunate people sleep in Bengaluru:
“Caste discrimination” means if one is born to a high caste, that caste rank is inherited. If one is born to a low caste, well, someone has to sweep the train stations and clean the facilities, right? (I am paraphrasing, thank you.)
Now back to the Bezoish article cited above. I can now put this passage in the context of Discrimination World, an employment theme park, in my opinion:
Soundararajan [born low caste] appealed directly to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who comes from an upper-caste family in India, to allow her presentation to go forward. But the talk was canceled, leading some employees to conclude that Google was willfully ignoring caste bias. Tanuja Gupta, a senior manager at Google News who invited Soundararajan to speak, resigned over the incident, according to a copy of her goodbye email posted internally Wednesday [June 1, 2022] and viewed by The Washington Post. India’s engineers have thrived in Silicon Valley. So has its caste system. [Emphasis added.]
Does this strike you as slightly anti” Land of the Free and Home of the Brave””? The article makes it pretty clear that a low caste person appealing to a high caste person for permission to speak. That permission was denied. No revealing attire at Discrimination World. Then another person who judging by that entity’s name might be Indian, quits in protest.
Then the killer: Google hires Indian professionals and those professionals find themselves working in a version of India’s own Discrimination World theme park. And, it seems, that theme park has rules. Remember when Disney opened a theme park in France and would not serve wine? Yeah, that cultural export thing works really well. But Disney’s management wizards relented. Alphabet is spelling out confusion in my opinion.
Putting this in the context of Google’s approach to regulating what one can say and not say about Snorkel wearing smart software people, the company has a knack for sending signals about equality. Googlers are not sitting around the digital camp fire singing Joan Baez’s Kumbaya.
Googlers send signals about caste behavior described by the International Dalit Solidarity Network this way:
Untouchables’ – known in South Asia as Dalits – are often forcibly assigned the most dirty, menial and hazardous jobs, [emphasis added] and many are subjected to forced and bonded labour. Due to exclusion practiced by both state and non-state actors, they have limited access to resources, services and development, keeping most Dalits in severe poverty. They are often de facto excluded from decision making and meaningful participation in public and civil life.
Several observations:
- Is the alleged caste behavior crashing into some of the precepts of life in the US?
- Is Google’s management reacting like a cow stunned by a slaughter house’s captive bolt pistols?
- Should the bias allegations raised by Dr. Timnit Gebru be viewed in the context of management behaviors AND algorithmic functions focused on speed and efficiency for ad-related purposes be revisited? (Maybe academics without financial ties to Google, experts from the Netherlands, and maybe a couple of European Union lawyers? US regulators and Congressional representatives would be able to review the findings after the data are gathered?)
- In the alleged Google caste system, where do engineers from certain schools rank? What about females from “good” schools versus females from “less good” schools? What about other criteria designed to separate the herd into tidy buckets? None of this 60 percent threshold methodology. Let’s have nice tidy buckets, shall we? No Drs. Gebru and Mitchell gnawing at Dr. Jeff Dean’s snorkeling outfit.
I wonder what will be roasted in the Googley fire pit in celebration of Father’s Day? Goat pete and makka rotis? Zero sacred cow burgers.
Stephen E Arnold, June 3, 2022
Google and Assertions of Control: Google, Too Much Control? Never
June 3, 2022
Technically Google does not own the Internet, but we know the search engine giant controls it. Google wants to keep the status quo in its favor, but Vox via Recode explains that a new antitrust bill could ruin it: “How Much Longer Can Google Own The Internet?” US lawmakers led by Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah introduced the Competition Transparency in Digital Advertising Act. The bill is bipartisan and bicameral and it would prevent any company that has more than $20 billion in digital ad revenue from owning multiple parts of the advertising network. This bill would primarily target Meta and Google.
Google would be forced to choose between the roles of buyer, seller, and running the ad exchange between the pair. Google owns all three and denies allegations that it manipulates the market to its advantage. Lee claims Google’s control forces American consumers and businesses to pay monopoly taxes. Google retaliated by saying the bill is aiming at the wrong target and comes at the wrong time.
This would not be the only antitrust bill Google and other Big Tech companies are facing. Google, however, is in the biggest trouble. Google is facing two anti-competitive lawsuits filed by state attorneys general in all fifty states except Alabama and US territories DC, Guam, and Puerto Rico. Thirty-seven more state attorneys general filed another lawsuit about the Google Play mobile app store, seventeen attorneys general are suing about the content in Lee’s bill, and cases are coming from Epic Games and Match Group about Google’s app store. The US Department of Justice probably will file more lawsuits along with other countries. Two antitrust bills are likely to be ratified by the end of summer:
“It’s too early to say how likely it is that Lee’s bill will go anywhere. But we do know that two bipartisan antitrust bills are very close to becoming law, likely by the end of the summer. Both of them would forbid Google from giving its own products preference on the platforms it owns and operates: The Open App Markets Act would force the Google Play app store to follow certain rules, while the American Innovation and Choice Online Act bans self-preferencing on platforms that Big Tech companies own and operate. Google wouldn’t be allowed to give its own products prominent placement in Google search results, for instance, unless those products organically earned that spot.”
Over the past decade, Google has grown its market dominance and its minuscule competition attempted to prevail upon the US government that it was forming a monopoly and harming competition. Monopolies are not illegal in the United States, except when competition and consumers are hurt.
One of the DOJ lawsuits investigates Google’s exclusionary agreements with Apple and Mozilla. Google paid these companies to make Google the default search engine on their browsers. Apple and Mozilla extremely benefit from the exclusionary agreement with Google.
Users are forced to use Google as the default search engine and are not given a choice for anything else. Default search engines can be changed in a browser’s settings, but most users do not know how to find the option. Google counters that no one is forced to use their search engine.
The Google Play store lawsuit argues that even though Google allows alternatives for its app store, the company does not make it easy to find alternatives. The search engine giant claims that it allows for more app openness than other companies like Apple and its commission rate is about the same.
The ad revenue lawsuit claims to be harmful to consumers, because if Google controls the ad platform then it can charge businesses whatever they want. Businesses retain a smaller net profit and consumers are forced to pay higher prices.
Amazon is the only other company that controls as much ad space as Google. Amazon controls retail and Google controls search. Both Tech Giants own the Internet, although Google owns more.
Whitney Grace, June 3, 2022
A Balloon Fetish?
June 2, 2022
Years ago as I drove down and up the 101 I noted the big hanger. I thought, “Hindenberg?” A couple of years later, the Google inflated the Loon balloons. I loved the name and the idea that balloons could remain in a semi stationary location providing Internet access to those in need. Maybe Sri Lanka or a storm-devastated island? Yeah.
I was interested in “Largest Airship Built in United States Since 1930s to Take Shape Soon Inside Akron Airdock.” The write up reported:
“LTA is standing on the shoulders of its predecessors here at the airdock,” said Alan Weston, the company’s chief executive officer. LTA – as in Lighter Than Air – was founded in California by billionaire Google co-founder Sergey Brin. “Because of their efforts, we are going to be able to build airships that are faster, that are safer, more environmentally friendly and have greater capabilities than any airship built before.”
Yep, another balloon and a big one.
The dollar stores in the rust belt are reporting shortages of helium. Is there a connection? Who knows.
What I do know:
- A certain Xoogler has an interest in balloons
- Previous balloon projects did not remain aloft
- A display of dozens of these big balloons would make a heck of a kids’ birthday party unicorn display just on a Google-like scale.
The big floater is an ideal advertising platform, right?
Stephen E Arnold, June 2, 2022
Google AI: Works Like a Champ
May 30, 2022
Google claims its Play Store allows users to download apps that are not exclusive to its software and systems, unlike the Apple App Store. Play Store detractors say Google makes it hard to locate apps outside the Play Store and that a “warning” alerts users when they are downloading software not housed in the store. The warning makes it seem the software is dangerous. Google kills competition and the Android Police shares the story of another victim: “Google’s Automated Play Store Enforcement Just Killed A Popular Open Source App.”
Because the Play Store needs to monitor the good apps from the bad, Google automated the process. Google’s monitoring algorithm deletes most of the bad apps from its platform, but sometimes innocent apps are removed too. Developers are rarely granted appeals and Google never explains how developers can prevent banning. FairMail, the popular open source Gmail alternative, was recently banned from the Play Store. FairMail’s developer decided to stop uploading his apps, because he is sick and tired of dealing with Google.
Google’s Play Store monitoring algorithm thought FairMail was spyware:
“…Google recently flagged FairEmail as spyware because it is presumably uploading contact lists from phones, with Google supposedly giving out no details as to what exactly the problem is. Developer M66B, as he calls himself on the XDA Forums and Github, believes that the Play Store could take issue with FairEmail’s automated favicon service, which only uses the domain info from email addresses to create fitting icons for senders and addressees. However, based on previous comments in the XDA thread, it’s clear that the developer tried to add optional Gravatar and Libravatar integration in earlier versions of the app that Google did not accept. Both services are uploading email addresses to their servers in order to match them with existing profile pictures attached to these email addresses, so the use of these would have to be indicated in the app’s privacy policy. From what we can gather, this never happened.”
Google is not clearly explaining why FreeMail was removed. It states that FreeMail did not have a privacy policy, however, it did. The privacy policy did not specifically mention Gravatar and Libravatar. Google only issues blanket statements to developers over app removal, but the company needs to have better communication with developers. Most of FreeMail’s downloads came from the Play Store that used to host the paid pro version. FreeMail’s developer does not want to work with Google anymore, cited personal problems, and lack of appreciation for his work as another reason why they are quitting. FreeMail is still available on Github and F-Droid, but the Play Store version should continue to work.
Whitney Grace, May 30, 2022
Google: Quantumly Supreme in PR That Is
May 26, 2022
It looks like Google PR department is working overtime. An article at The Independent declares: “‘The Game Is Over’: Google’s DeepMind Says It Is on Verge of Achieving Human-Level AI.” The lofty claim comes from DeepMind’s lead researcher, but is he getting ahead of himself? Writer Anthony Cuthbertson reveals:
“Dr Nando de Freitas said ‘the game is over’ in the decades-long quest to realise artificial general intelligence (AGI) after DeepMind unveiled an AI system capable of completing a wide range of complex tasks, from stacking blocks to writing poetry. Described as a ‘generalist agent’, DeepMind’s new Gato AI needs to just be scaled up in order to create an AI capable of rivaling human intelligence, Dr de Freitas said. Responding to an opinion piece written in The Next Web that claimed ‘humans will never achieve AGI’, DeepMind’s research director wrote that it was his opinion that such an outcome is an inevitability. ‘It’s all about scale now! The Game is Over!’ he wrote on Twitter. ‘It’s all about making these models bigger, safer, compute efficient, faster at sampling, smarter memory, more modalities, innovative data, on/offline… Solving these challenges is what will deliver AGI.’ When asked by machine learning researcher Alex Dimikas how far he believed the Gato AI was from passing a real Turing test – a measure of computer intelligence that requires a human to be unable to distinguish a machine from another human – Dr de Freitas replied: ‘Far still.'”
So… not quite there yet after all. A reality we are keenly aware of as we ponder standing in front of a Google self-driving car surrounded by traffic cones and temporary lane dividers. Or, on a less perilous but annoying note, consider those oh-so-relevant YouTube ads. But sure, general AI is right around the corner.
Cynthia Murrell, May 26, 2022
Google Can Now Auto Summarize Content With AI: Accurate? Probably Close Enough for Horseshoes
May 26, 2022
Technology has not yet advanced to the point where computers can write decent novels or hold detailed conversations with humans, but AI is getting better at summarizing, translating foreign languages, text to speech, and natural language processing. Google’s I/O 2022 conference was still low-key because it was not in person. Google announced the Pixel 6a and Pixel Watch, but for some, it was not as exciting as the new auto summarization announcement. Android Police details the low-grade but key advancement in: “Auto-Generated Summaries Might Be The Most Important I/0 2022 Announcement.”
Google spent years advancing its AI through machine learning to understand human sentiment, content, and meaning. We see the development of this technology through digital assistants, but when it comes to reading and writing technology is still in the development phase:
“The lineage of Google AI summaries reaches back to the “transformer” model devised by its researchers in 2017, which led to language processing and generation systems like GPT-2 that are capable of self-supervised pre-training. That means much of the early AI training happens without human oversight, so it’s faster and more adaptable than older methods like recurrent neural networks. More recently, Google refined these techniques for the Pegasus text summarization model in 2020.”
Transformers paired with Pegasus provided AI with data in the form of news articles and documents to train it on how to fill in information gaps. It took years to achieve the current model that will debut in Google Docs, but the AI got smarter and smarter with the more data it processed 24/7.
Google wants to use its auto summarization for Google Chat, Google Meet, and other applications. The tool has many uses across Google’s technology domain. However, it is kind of scary imagining Google summarizing everything without checks and balances.
Whitney Grace May 26, 2022
Google: Embrace, Control, and Sell Advertising?
May 25, 2022
Google claims to support open source technology and contributes some of its code libraries and projects, except for the black box search algorithm, to the public. The Verge shares Google’s new open source initiative in the article, “Google Will Start Distributing A Security-Vetted Collection Of Open-Source Software Libraries.” Google wants to add its branding and stamp of approval to open source software.
Google wants to control its portion of the open source community by curating and distributing security-vetted software to Google Cloud customers. The new initiative is called Assured Open Source Software. Andy Chang is a Google Cloud Group Produce Manager for Security and Privacy and he said there were challenges to secure open source software:
“ ‘There has been an increasing awareness in the developer community, enterprises, and governments of software supply chain risks,’ Chang wrote, citing last year’s major log4j vulnerability as an example. ‘Google continues to be one of the largest maintainers, contributors, and users of open source and is deeply involved in helping make the open source software ecosystem more secure.’”
The Assured Open Source Software will allow Google Cloud customers to use the same software auditing process as Alphabet Inc. The open source packages are the same ones the company uses and are managed by regular scanning and vulnerability analysis. Currently, there are 550 libraries Google monitors on GitHub and can be downloaded independently of Google. These same libraries will be available via Google Cloud later in 2022.
Google’s Assured Open Source Software is an industry-wide pull to secure the open source software supply chain. The Biden administration supports the endeavor.
Open source does need to be secure, but is putting a tech giant, notorious for collecting and selling user data, the right way to go? Sure it is, it is Google approved!
Whitney Grace May 25, 2022
Does Google Have Search Fear?
May 16, 2022
I can hear the Googlers at an search engine optimization conference saying this:
Our recent investments in search are designed to provide a better experience for our users. Our engineers are always seeking interesting, new, and useful ways to make the world’s information more accessible.
What these code words mean to me is:
Yep, the ancient Larry and Sergey thing. Not working. Oh, my goodness. What are we going to do? Buy Neeva, Kagi, Seekr, and Wecript? Let’s let Alphabet invest and we can learn and maybe earn before more people figure out our results are not as good as Bing and DuckDuckGo’s.
Even Slashdot is running items which make clear that Google and search do not warrant the title of “search giant.”
Source: Slashdot at https://bit.ly/3PkBOGt
I crafted this imaginary dialog when I read “This Germany-based AI Startup is Developing the Next Enterprise Search Engine Fueled by NLP and Open-Source.” That write up said:
Deepset, a German startup, is working to add to Natural Language Processing by integrating a language awareness layer into the business tech stack, allowing users to access and interact with data using language. Its flagship product, Haystack, is an open-source NLP framework that enables developers to create pipelines for a variety of search use-cases.
But here’s the snappy part of the article:
The Haystack-based NLP is typically implemented over a text database like Elasticsearch or Amazon’s OpenSearch branch and then connects directly with the end-user application through a REST API. It already has thousands of users and over 100 contributors. It uses transformer models to let developers create a variety of applications, such as production-ready question answering (QA), semantic document search, and summarization. The company has also introduced Deepset Cloud, an end-to-end platform for integrating customized and high-performing NLP-powered search systems into your application.
In theory, this is an open source, cloud centric super app, a meta play, a roll up of what’s needed to make finding information sort of work.
The kicker in the story is this statement:
The Berlin-based company has raised $14M in Series A funding led by GV, Alphabet’s venture capital arm.
Yep, the Google is investing. Why? Check that which applies:
( ) Its own innovation engines are the equivalent of a Ford Pinto racing a Tesla Model S Plaid? Google search is no longer the world’s largest Web site?
( ) Amazon gets more product searches than Google does?
( ) Users are starting to complain about how Google ignores what users key in the search box?
( ) Large sites are not being spidered in a comprehensive or timely manner?
( ) All of the above.
Stephen E Arnold, May 16, 2022
Google and Skin Color: What Is AI Unable to Learn?
May 12, 2022
In the wake of high school science club management innovations, the Google has turned its attention to skin color. “Google Adopts 10-Step Skin Tone Scale to Teach Diversity to Its AI” reports:
Google has adopted a 10-grade scale to help it better judge and present skin tones, a change that highlights the tech giant’s efforts to better reflect the range of people who use Google Photos, search and other products.
Interesting. Pantone (the color for printers people) has a YouTube video with more than 100 skin tones. Not to be outdone, , I recall seeing on Creativa Fabrica a chart with 180 skin colors.
Will 10 do the trick? I assume that Google’s smart software was not able to identify human skin color using the “learning while processing” methods of some AI wizards. But 10? That seems like a modest number when a cosmetic outfit requires 60 to move its products.
Why would a consumer products company waste money on unneeded skin hues? Maybe L’Oral is just not Googley?
Stephen E Arnold, May 12, 2022
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