Online Gambling Has a Downside, Says Captain Obvious
September 13, 2024
People love gambling, especially when they’re betting on the results of sports. Online has made sports betting very easy and fun. Unfortunately some people who bet on sports are addicted to the activity. Business Insider reveals the underbelly of online gambling and paints a familiar picture of addiction: “It’s Official: Legalized Sports Betting Is Destroying Young Men’s Financial Futures.” The University of California, Los Angeles shared a working paper about the negative effects of legalized sports gambling:
“…takes a look at what’s happened to consumer financial health in the 38 states that have greenlighted sports betting since the Supreme Court in 2018 struck down a federal law prohibiting it. The findings are, well, rough. The researchers found that the average credit score in states that legalized any form of sports gambling decreased by 0.3% after about four years and that the negative impact was stronger where online sports gambling is allowed, with credit scores dipping in those areas by 1%. They also found an 8% increase in debt-collection amounts and a 28% increase in bankruptcies where online sports betting was given the go-ahead. By their estimation, that translates to about 100,000 extra bankruptcies each year in the states that have legalized sports betting. The number of people who fell dangerously behind on their car loans went up, too. Oddly enough, credit-card delinquencies fell, but the researchers believe that’s because banks wind up lowering credit limits to try to compensate for the rise in risky consumer behavior.”
The researchers discovered that legalized gambling leads to more gambling addictions. They also found if a person lives near a casino or is from a poor region, they’ll more prone to gambling. This isn’t anything new! The paper restates information people have known for centuries about gambling and other addictions: hurts finances, leads to destroyed relationships, job loss, increased in illegal activities, etc.
A good idea is to teach people to restraint. The sports betting Web sites can program limits and even assist their users to manage their money without going bankrupt. It’s better for people to be taught restraint so they can roll the dice one more time.
Whitney Grace, September 13, 2024
Need Help, Students? AI Is Here
September 13, 2024
Here is a resource for, well, for those who would cheat maybe? The site Pisi.ee shares information on a course called, “How to Use AI to Write a Research Paper.” Hosted by Fikper.com, the course is designed for “high school, college, and university students who are eager to improve their research and writing skills through the use of artificial intelligence.” Research, right. Wink, wink. The course description specifies:
“Whether you’re a high school student tackling your first research project, a college student refining your academic skills, or a university scholar pursuing advanced studies, understanding how to leverage AI can significantly enhance your efficiency and effectiveness. This course offers a comprehensive guide to integrating AI tools into your research process, providing you with the knowledge and skills to excel. Many students struggle with the task of conducting research and writing about it. Identifying a research problem, creating clear questions, looking for other literature, and keeping your academic integrity are a challenge, especially with all the information available. This course addresses these challenges head-on, providing step-by-step guidance and practical exercises that lead you through the research process. What sets this course apart from others is its practical, hands-on approach combined with a strong emphasis on academic integrity.”
A strong emphasis on integrity, you say? Well that is different then. All the tools one may need to generate, er, research papers are covered:
“Tools like Zotero, Mendeley, Grammarly, Hemingway App, IBM Watson, Google Scholar, Turnitin, Copyscape, EndNote, and QuillBot can be used at different stages of the research process. Our goal is to give you a toolkit of resources that you can choose to apply, making your research and writing tasks more efficient and effective.”
Yep, just what aspiring students need to gain that “competitive edge,” as the description puts it. With integrity, of course.
Cynthia Murrell, September 13, 2024
US Government Procurement: Long Live Silos
September 12, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I read “Defense AI Models A Risk to Life Alleges Spurned Tech Firm.” Frankly , the headline made little sense to me so I worked through what is a story about a contractor who believes it was shafted by a large consulting firm. In my experience, the situation is neither unusual nor particularly newsworthy. The write up does a reasonable job of presenting a story which could have been titled “Naive Start Up Smoked by Big Consulting Firm.” A small high technology contractor with smart software hooks up with a project in the Department of Defense. The high tech outfit is not able to meet the requirements to get the job. The little AI high tech outfit scouts around and brings a big consulting firm to get the deal done. After some bureaucratic cycles, the small high tech outfit is benched. If you are not familiar with how US government contracting works, the write up provides some insight.
The work product of AI projects will be digital silos. That is the key message of this procurement story. I don’t feel sorry for the smaller company. It did not prepare itself to deal with the big time government contractor. Outfits are big for a reason. They exploit opportunities and rarely emulate Mother Theresa-type behavior. Thanks, MSFT Copilot. Good enough illustration although the robots look stupid.
For me, the article is a stellar example of how information or or AI silos are created within the US government. Smart software is hot right now. Each agency, each department, and each unit wants to deploy an AI enabled service. Then that AI infused service becomes (one hopes) an afterburner for more money with which one can add headcount and more AI technology. AI is a rare opportunity to become recognized as a high-performance operator.
As a result, each AI service is constructed within a silo. Think about a structure designed to hold that specific service. The design is purpose built to keep rats and other vermin from benefiting from the goodies within the AI silo. Despite the talk about breaking down information silos, silos in a high profile, high potential technical are like artificial intelligence are the principal product of each agency, each department, and each unit. The payoff could be a promotion which might result in a cushy job in the commercial AI sector or a golden ring; that is, the senior executive service.
I understand the frustration of the small, high tech AI outfit. It knows it has been played by the big consulting firm and the procurement process. But, hey, there is a reason the big consulting firm generates billions of dollars in government contracts. The smaller outfit failed to lock down its role, retain the key to the know how it developed, and allowed its “must have cachè” to slip away.
Welcome, AI company, to the world of the big time Beltway Bandit. Were you expecting the big time consulting firm to do what you wanted? Did you enter the deal with a lack of knowledge, management sophistication, and a couple of false assumptions? And what about the notion of “algorithmic warfare”? Yeah, autonomous weapons systems are the future. Furthermore, when autonomous systems are deployed, the only way they can be neutralized is to use more capable autonomous weapons. Does this sound like a reply of the logic of Cold War thinking and everyone’s favorite bedtime read On Thermonuclear War still available on Amazon and as of September 6, 2024, on the Internet Archive at this link.
Several observations are warranted:
- Small outfits need to be informed about how big consulting companies with billions in government contracts work the system before exchanging substantive information
- The US government procurement processes are slow to change, and the Federal Acquisition Regulations and related government documents provide the rules of the road. Learn them before getting too excited about a request for a proposal or Federal Register announcement
- In a fight with a big time government contractor make sure you bring money, not a chip on your shoulder, to the meeting with attorneys. The entity with the most money typically wins because legal fees are more likely to kill a smaller firm than any judicial or tribunal ruling.
Net net: Silos are inherent in the work process of any government even those run by different rules. But what about the small AI firm’s loss of the contract? Happens so often, I view it as a normal part of the success workflow. Winners and losers are inevitable. Be smarter to avoid losing.
Stephen E Arnold, September 12, 2024
More Push Back Against US Wild West Tech
September 12, 2024
I spotted another example of a European nation state expressing some concern with American high-technology companies. There is not wind blown corral on Leidsestraat. No Sergio Leone music creeps out the observers. What dominates the scene is a judicial judgment firing a US$35 million fine at Clearview AI. The company has a database of faces, and the information is licensed to law enforcement agencies. What’s interesting is that Clearview does not do business in the Netherlands; nevertheless, the European Union’s data protection act, according to Dutch authorities, has been violated. Ergo: Pay up.
“The Dutch Are Having None of Clearview AI Harvesting Your Photos” reports:
“Following investigation, the DPA confirmed that photos of Dutch citizens are included in the database. It also found that Clearview is accountable for two GDPR breaches. The first is the collection and use of photos….The second is the lack of transparency. According to the DPA, the startup doesn’t offer sufficient information to individuals whose photos are used, nor does it provide access to which data the company has about them.”
Clearview is apparently unhappy with the judgment.
Several observations:
First, the decision is part of what might be called US technology pushback. The Wild West approach to user privacy has to get out of Dodge.
Second, Clearview may be on the receiving end of more fines. The charges may appear to be inappropriate because Clearview does not operate in the Netherlands. Other countries may decide to go after the company too.
Third, the Dutch action may be the first of actions against US high-technology companies.
Net net: If the US won’t curtail the Wild West activities of its technology-centric companies, the Dutch will.
Stephen E Arnold, September 12, 2024
Telcos Lobby to Eliminate Consumer Protection
September 12, 2024
Now this sounds like a promising plan for the telcos. We learn from TechDirt, “Big Telecom Asks the Corrupt Supreme Court to Declare All State and Federal Broadband Consumer Protection Illegal. They Might Get their Wish.” Companies lie AT&T and Comcast have been persuading right-leaning courts, including SCOTUS, to side with them against net neutrality rules and broadband protections generally. To make matters worse, the FCC’s consumer-protection authority was hollowed out during the Trump administration.
Fortunately, states have the authority to step in and act when the federal government does not. But that could soon change. Writer Karl Bode explains:
“For every state whose legislature telecoms have completely captured (Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee), there’s several that have, often imperfectly, tried to protect broadband consumers, either in the form of (California, Oregon, Washington, Maine), crackdowns on lies about speeds or prices (Arizona, Indiana, Michigan), or requiring affordable low income broadband (New York). In 2021 at the peak of COVID problems, New York passed a law mandating that heavily taxpayer subsidized telecoms provide a relatively slow (25 Mbps), $15 broadband tier only for low-income families that qualified. ISPs have sued (unsuccessfully so far) to kill the law, which was upheld last April by the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, reversing a 2021 District Court ruling. … Telecoms like AT&T are frightened of states doing their jobs to protect consumers and market competition from their bad behavior. So a group of telecom trade groups this week petitioned the Supreme Court with a very specific ask. They want the court to first destroy FCC broadband consumer protection oversight and net neutrality, then kill New York’s effort, in that precise order, in two different cases.”
The companies argue that, if we want consumer broadband protections, it is up to Congress to pass specific legislation that provides them. The same Congress they reportedly lobby with about $320,000 daily. This is why we cannot have nice things. Bode believes the telcos are likely to get their way. He also warns the Chevron decision means other industries are sure to follow suit, meaning an end to consumer protections in every sphere: Banking, food safety, pollution, worker safeguards… the list goes on. Is this what it means to make the nation great?
Cynthia Murrell, September 12, 2024
Brin Is Back and Working Every Day at Google: Will He Be Summoned to Appear and Testify?
September 11, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb humanoid. No smart software required.
I read some “real” news in the article “Sergey Brin Says He’s Working on AI at Google Pretty Much Every Day.” The write up does not provide specifics of his employment agreement, but the headline say “every day.” Does this mean that those dragging the Google into court will add him to their witness list? I am not an attorney, but I would be interested in finding out about the mechanisms for the alleged monopolistic lock in in the Google advertising system. Oh, well. I am equally intrigued to know if Mr. Brin will wear his roller blades to big meetings as he did with Viacom’s Big Dog.
My question is, “Can Mr. Brin go home again?” As Thomas Wolfe noted in his novel You Can’t Go Home Again”:
Every corner of our home has a story to tell.
I wonder if those dragging Alphabet Google YouTube into court will want to dig into that “story”?
Now what does the “real” news report other than Mr. Brin’s working every day? These items jumped off my screen and into my dinobaby mind:
- AI has tremendous value to humanity. I am not sure what this means when VCs, users, and assorted poohbahs point out that AI is burning cash, not generating it.
- AI is big and fast moving. Okay, but since the Microsoft AI marketing play with OpenAI, the flurry of activity has not translated to rapid fire next big things. In fact, progress on consumer-facing AI services has stalled. Even Google is reluctant to glue pizza to a crust if you know what I mean.
- The algorithms are demanding more “compute.” I think this means power, CPUs, and data. But Google is buying carbon credits, you say. Yeah, those are useful for PR, not for providing what Mr. Brin seems to suggest are needed to do AI.
Several thoughts crossed my mind:
First, most of the algorithms for smart software were presented in patent document form by Banjo, a Softbank company that ran into some headwinds. But the algorithms and numerical recipes were known and explained in Banjo’s patent documents. The missing piece was Google’s “transformer” method, which the company released as open source. Well, so what? The reason that large language models are becoming the same old same old. The Big Dogs of AI are using the same plumbing. Not much is new other than the hyperbole, right?
Second, where does Mr. Brin fit into the Google leadership set up. I am not sure he is in the cast of the Sundar & Prabhakar Comedy Show. What happens when he makes a suggestion? Who “approves” something he puts “wood” behind? Does his presence deliver entropy or chaos? Does he exist on the boundary, working his magic as he did with the Clever technology developed at IBM Almaden?
Third, how quickly will his working “pretty much every day” move him onto witness lists? Perhaps he will be asked to contribute to EU, US House, and US Senate hearings? How will Google work out the lingo of one of the original Googlers and the current “leadership”? The answer is meetings, scripting, and practicing. Aren’t these the things that motivated Mr. Brin to leave the company to pursue other interests. Now he wants
To sum up, just when I thought Google had reached peak dysfunction, I was wrong again.
Stephen E Arnold, September 11, 2024
How Will Smart Cars Navigate Crowded Cityscapes When People Do Humanoid Things?
September 11, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
Who collided in San Francisco on July 6, 2024? (No, not the February 2024 incident. Yes, I know it is easy to forget such trivial incidents) Did the Googley Waymo vehicle (self driving and smart, of course) bump into the cyclist? Did the cyclist decide to pull an European Union type stunt and run into the self driving car?
If the legal outcome of this San Francisco autonomous car – bicycle incident goes in favor of the bicyclist, autonomous vehicles will have to be smart enough to avoid situations like the one shown in the ChatGPT cartoon. Microsoft Copilot would not render the image. When I responded, “What?” the Copilot hung. Great stuff.
The question is important for insurance, publicity, and other monetary reasons. A good offense is the best defense, someone said. “Waymo Cites Possible Intentional Contact by a Bicyclist to Robotaxi in S.F.” reports:
While the robotaxi was stopped, the cyclist passed in front of it and appeared to dismount, according to the documents. “The cyclist then reached out a hand and made contact with the front passenger side of the stationary Waymo AV (autonomous vehicle), backed the bicycle up slightly, dropped the bicycle, then fell to the ground,” the documents said. The cyclist received medical treatment at the scene and was transported to the hospital, according to the documents. The Waymo vehicle was not damaged during the incident.
In my view, this is the key phrase in the news report:
In the documents, Waymo said it was submitting the report because of the alleged crash and because the cyclist influenced the driving task of the AV and was transported to the hospital, even though the incident “may involve intentional contact by the bicyclist with the Waymo AV and the occurrence of actual impact between the Waymo AV and cycle is not clear.”
We have doubt, reasonable doubt obviously. Googley Waymo is definitely into reasoning. And we have the word pair “intentional contact.” Okay, to me this means, the smart Waymo vehicle did nothing wrong. A human — chock full of possibly malicious if not criminal intent — created a TikTok moment. It is too bad there is no video of the incident. Even my low ball Hyundai records what’s in front of it. Doesn’t the Googley Waymo do that with its array of Star Wars adornments, sensors, probes, and other accoutrements of Googley Waymo vehicles? Guess not.) But the autonomous vehicle had something that could act in an intelligent manner: A human test driver.
What was that person’s recollection of the incident? The news story reports that the Googley Waymo outfit “did not immediately respond to a request for further comment on the incident.”
Several observations:
- The bike riding human created the accident with a parked Waymo super intelligent vehicle and test driver in command
- The Waymo outfit did not want to talk to the San Francisco Chronicle reporter or editor. (I used to work at a newspaper, and I did not like to talk to the editors and news professionals either.)
- Autonomous cars are going to have to be equipped with sufficiently expert AI systems to avoid humans who are acting in a way to convert Googley Waymo services into a source of revenue. Failing that, I anticipate more kinetic interactions between Googley smart cars and humanoids not getting paid to ride shotgun on smart software.
Net net: How long have big time technology companies trying to get autonomous vehicles to produce cash, not liabilities?
Stephen E Arnold, September 11, 2024
See How Clever OSINT Lovers Can Be. Impressed? Not Me
September 11, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
See the dancing dinosaur. I am a dinobaby, and I have some precepts that are different from those younger than I. I was working on a PhD at the University of Illinois in Chambana and fiddling with my indexing software. The original professor with the big fat grant had died, but I kept talking to those with an interest in concordances about a machine approach to producing these “indexes.” No one cared. I was asked to give a talk at a conference called the Allerton House not far from the main campus. The “house” had a number of events going on week in and week out. I delivered my lecture about indexing medieval sermons in Latin to a small group. In 1972, my area of interest was not a particularly hot topic. After my lecture, a fellow named James K. Rice waited for me to pack up my view graphs and head to the exit. He looked me in the eye and asked, “How quickly can you be in Washington, DC?
An old-time secure system with a reminder appropriate today. Thanks, MSFT Copilot. Good enough.
I will eliminate the intermediary steps and cut to the chase. I went to work for a company located in the Maryland technology corridor, a five minute drive from the Beltway, home of the Beltway bandits. The company operated under the three letter acronym NUS. After I started work, I learned that the “N” meant nuclear and that the firm’s special pal was Halliburton Industries. The little-known outfit was involved in some sensitive projects. In fact, when I arrived in 1972, there were more than 400 nuclear engineers on the payroll and more ring knockers than I had ever heard doing their weird bonding ritual at random times.
I learned three things:
- “Nuclear” was something one did not talk about… ever to anyone except those in the “business” like Admiral Craig Hosmer, then chair of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy
- “Nuclear” information was permanently secret
- Revealing information about anything “nuclear” was a one-way ticket to trouble.
I understood. That was in 1972 in my first day or two at NUS. I have never forgotten the rule because my friend Dr. James Terwilliger, a nuclear engineer originally trained at Virginia Tech said to me when we first met in the cafeteria: “I don’t know you. I can’t talk to you. Sit somewhere else.”
Jim and I became friends, but we knew the rules. The other NUS professionals did too. I stayed at the company for five years, learned a great deal, and never forgot the basic rule: Don’t talk nuclear to those not in the business. When I was recruited by Booz Allen & Hamilton, my boss and the fellow who hired me asked me, “What did you do at that little engineering firm?” I told him I worked on technical publications and some indexing projects. He bit on indexing and I distracted him by talking about medieval religious literature. In spite of that, I got hired, a fact other Booz Allen professionals in the soon-to-be-formed Technology Management Group could not believe. Imagine. Poetry and a shallow background at a little bitty, unknown engineering company with a meaningless name and zero profile in the Blue Chip Consulting world. Arrogance takes many forms.
Why this biographical background?
I read “Did Sandia Use a Thermonuclear Secondary in a Product Logo?” I have zero comment about the information in the write up. Read the document if you want. Most people will not understand it and be unable to judge its accuracy.
I do have some observations.
First, when the first index of US government servers was created using Inktomi and some old-fashioned manual labor, my team made sure certain information was not exposed to the public via the new portal designed to support citizen services. Even today, I worry that some information on public facing US government servers may have sensitive information exposed. This happens because of interns given jobs but not training, government professionals working with insufficient time to vet digital content, or the weird “flow” nature of digital information which allows a content object to be where it should not. Because I had worked at the little-known company with the meaningless acronym name, I was able to move some content from public-facing to inward-facing systems. When people present nuclear-related information, knowledge and good judgment are important. Acting like a jazzed up Google-type employee is not going to be something to which I relate.
Second, the open source information used to explain the seemingly meaningless graphic illustrates a problem with too much information in too many public facing places. Also, it underscores the importance of keeping interns, graphic artists, and people assembling reports from making decisions. The review process within the US government needs to be rethought and consequences applied to those who make really bad decisions. The role of intelligence is to obtain information, filter it, deconstruct it, analyze it, and then assemble the interesting items into a pattern. The process is okay, but nuclear information should not be open source in my opinion. Remember that I am a dinobaby. I have strong opinions about nuclear, and those opinions support my anti-open source stance for this technical field.
Third, the present technical and political environment frightens me. There is a reason that second- and third-tier nation states want nuclear technology. These entities may yip yap about green energy, but the intent, in my view, is to create kinetic devices. Therefore, this is the wrong time and the Internet is the wrong place to present information about “nuclear.” There are mechanisms in place to research, discuss, develop models, create snappy engineering drawings, and talk at the water cooler about certain topics. Period.
Net net: I know that I can do nothing about this penchant many have to yip yap about certain topics. If you read my blog posts, my articles which are still in print or online, or my monographs — you know that I never discuss nuclear anything. It is a shame that more people have not learned that certain topics are inappropriate for public disclosure. This dinobaby is really not happy. The “news” is all over a Russian guy. Therefore, “nuclear” is not a popular topic for the TikTok crowd. Believe me: Anything that offers nuclear related information is of keen interest to certain nation states. But some clever individuals are not happy unless they have something really intelligent to say and probably know they should not. Why not send a personal, informative email to someone at LANL, ORNL, or Argonne?
Stephen E Arnold, September 11, 2024
The Fixed Network Lawful Interception Business is Booming
September 11, 2024
It is not just bad actors who profit from an increase in cybercrime. Makers of software designed to catch them are cashing in, too. The Market Research Report 224 blog shares “Fixed Network Lawful Interception Market Region Insights.” Lawful interception is the process by which law enforcement agencies, after obtaining the proper warrants of course, surveil circuit and packet-mode communications. The report shares findings from a study by Data Bridge Market Research on this growing sector. Between 2021 and 2028, this market is expected to grow by nearly 20% annually and hit an estimated value of $5,340 million. We learn:
“Increase in cybercrimes in the era of digitalization is a crucial factor accelerating the market growth, also increase in number of criminal activities, significant increase in interception warrants, rising surge in volume of data traffic and security threats, rise in the popularity of social media communications, rising deployment of 5G networks in all developed and developing economies, increasing number of interception warrants and rising government of both emerging and developed nations are progressively adopting lawful interception for decrypting and monitoring digital and analog information, which in turn increases the product demand and rising virtualization of advanced data centers to enhance security in virtual networks enabling vendors to offer cloud-based interception solutions are the major factors among others boosting the fixed network lawful interception market.”
Furthermore, the pace of these developments will likely increase over the next few years. The write-up specifies key industry players, a list we found particularly useful:
“The major players covered in fixed network lawful interception market report are Utimaco GmbH, VOCAL TECHNOLOGIES, AQSACOM, Inc, Verint, BAE Systems., Cisco Systems, Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, Atos SE, SS8 Networks, Inc, Trovicor, Matison is a subsidiary of Sedam IT Ltd, Shoghi Communications Ltd, Comint Systems and Solutions Pvt Ltd – Corp Office, Signalogic, IPS S.p.A, ZephyrTel, EVE compliancy solutions and Squire Technologies Ltd among other domestic and global players.”
See the press release for notes on Data Bridge’s methodology. It promises 350 pages of information, complete with tables and charts, for those who purchase a license. Formed in 2014, Data Bridge is based in Haryana, India.
Cynthia Murrell, September 11, 2024
Too Bad Google and OpenAI. Perplexity Is a Game Changer, Says Web Pro News!
September 10, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I have tested a number of smart software systems. I can say, based on my personal experience, none is particularly suited to my information needs. Keep in mind that I am a dinobaby, more at home in a research library or the now-forgotten Dialog command line. ss cc=7900, thank you very much.
I worked through the write up “Why Perplexity AI Is (Way) Better Than Google: A Deep Dive into the Future of Search.” The phrase “Deep Dive’ reminded me of a less-than-overwhelming search service called Deepdyve. (I just checked and, much to my surprise, the for-fee service is online at https://www.deepdyve.com/. Kudos, Deepdyve, which someone told me was a tire kicker or maybe more with the Snorkle system. (I could look it up using a smart software system, but performance is crappy today, and I don’t want to get distracted from the Web Pro News pronouncement. But that smart software output requires a lot of friction; that is, verifying that the outputs are accurate.)
A dinobaby (the author of this blog post) works in a library. Thanks, MSFT Copilot, good enough.
Here’s the subtitle to the article. Its verbosity smacks of that good old and mostly useless search engine optimization tinkering:
Perplexity AI is not just a new contender; it’s a game-changer that could very well dethrone Google in the years to come. But what exactly makes Perplexity AI better than Google? Let’s explore the…
No, I didn’t truncate the subtitle. That’s it.
The write up explains what differentiates Perplexity from the other smart software, question-answering marvels. Here’s a list:
- Speed and Precision at Its Core
- Specialized Search Experience for Enterprise Needs
- Tailored Results and User Interaction
- Innovations in Data Privacy
- Ad-Free Experience: A Breath of Fresh Air
- Standardized Interface and High Accuracy
- The Potential to Revolutionize Search
In my experience, I am not sure about the speed of Perplexity or any smart search and retrieval system. Speed must be compared to something. I can obtain results from my installation of Everything search pretty darned quick. None of the cloud search solutions comes close. My Mistal installation grunts and sweats on a corpus of 550 patent documents. How about some benchmarks, WebProNews?
Precision means that the query returns documents matching a query. There is a formula (which is okay as formulae go) which is, as I recall, Relevant retrieved instances divided by All retrieved instances. To calculate this, one must take a bounded corpus, run queries, and develop an understanding of what is in the corpus by reading documents and comparing outputs from test queries. Then one uses another system and repeats the queries, comparing the results. The process can be embellished, particularly by graduate students working on an advanced degree. But something more than generalizations are needed to convince me of anything related to “precision.” Determining precision is impossible when vendors do not disclose sources and make the data sets available. Subjective impressions are okay for messy water lilies, but in the dinobaby world of precision and its sidekick recall, a bit of work is necessary.
The “specialized search experience” means what? To me, I like to think about computational chemists. The interface has to support chemical structures, weird CAS registry numbers, words (mostly ones unknown to a normal human), and other assorted identifiers. As far as I know, none of the smart software I have examined does this for computational chemists or most of the other “specialized” experiences engineers, mathematicians, or physicists, among others, use in their routine work processes. I simply don’t know what Web Pro News wants me to understand. I am baffled, a normal condition for dinobabies.
I like the idea of tailored results. That’s what Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube try to deliver in order to increase stickiness. I think in terms of citations to relevant documents relevant to my query. I don’t like smart software which tries to predict what I want or need. I determine that based on the information I obtain, read, and write down in a notebook. Web Pro News and I are not on the same page in my paper notebook. Dinobabies are a pain, aren’t they?
I like the idea of “data privacy.” However, I need evidence that Perplexity’s innovations actually work. No data, no trust: Is that difficult for a younger person to understand?
The standardized interface makes life easy for the vendor. Think about the computational chemist. The interface must match her specific work processes. A standard interface is likely to be wide of the mark for some enterprise professionals. The phrase “high accuracy” means nothing without one’s knowing the corpus from which the index is constructed. Furthermore the notion of probability means “close enough for horseshoes.” Hallucination refers to outputs from smart software which are wide of the mark. More insidious are errors which cannot be easily identified. A standard interface and accuracy don’t go together like peanut butter and jelly or bread and butter. The interface is separate from the underlying system. The interface might be “accurate” if the term were defined in the write up, but it is not. Therefore, accuracy is like “love,” “mom,” and “ethics.” Anything goes just not for me, however.
The “potential to revolutionize search” is marketing baloney. Search today is more problematic than anytime in my more than half century of work in information retrieval. The only thing “revolutionary” are the ways to monetize users’ belief that the outputs are better, faster, cheaper than other available options. When one thinks about better, faster, and cheaper, I must add the caveat to pick two.
What’s the conclusion to this content marketing essay? Here it is:
As we move further into the digital age, the way we search for information is changing. Perplexity AI represents a significant step forward, offering a faster, more accurate, and more user-centric alternative to traditional search engines like Google. With its advanced AI technologies, ad-free experience, and commitment to data privacy, Perplexity AI is well-positioned to lead the next wave of innovation in search. For enterprise users, in particular, the benefits of Perplexity AI are clear. The platform’s ability to deliver precise, context-aware insights makes it an invaluable tool for research-intensive tasks, while its user-friendly interface and robust privacy measures ensure a seamless and secure search experience. As more organizations recognize the potential of Perplexity AI, we may well see a shift away from Google and towards a new era of search, one that prioritizes speed, precision, and user satisfaction above all else.
I know one thing the stakeholders and backers of the smart software hope that one of the AI players generates tons of cash and dump trucks of profit sharing checks. That day is, I think, lies in the future. Perplexity hopes it will be the winner; hence, content marketing is money well spent. If I were not a dinobaby, I might be excited. So far I am just perplexed.
Stephen E Arnold, September 10, 2024
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
