Speak Using Our Words, Or Do Not Speak
May 14, 2021
Google has learned from legal misfortune, both its own and other companies’. That is why, “To Head Off Regulators, Google Makes Certain Words Taboo.” The Next Web post outlines several of the major antitrust investigations the company currently faces at home and abroad. It also describes the role language played in past lawsuits brought against Google and, notably, Microsoft. We learn employees are given specific instructions on their language and other parts of communication both inside and outside the company. Having acquired some internal documents, the journalist known as The Markup writes:
“The taboo words include ‘market,’ ‘barriers to entry,’ and ‘network effects,’ which is when products such as social networks become more valuable as more people use them. ‘Words matter. Especially in antitrust law,’ reads one document titled Five Rules of Thumb for Written Communications. ‘Alphabet gets sued a lot, and we have our fair share of regulatory investigations,’ reads another. ‘Assume every document will become public.’ The internal documents appear to be part of a self-guided training session for a wide range of the company’s more than 100,000 employees, from engineers to salespeople. One document, titled ‘Global Competition Policy,’ says it applies not only to interns and employees but also to temps, vendors, and contractors. The documents explain the basics of antitrust law and caution against loose talk that could have implications for government regulators or private lawsuits. In one of the documents, which appear to be written by the legal team, employees are advised to choose their words carefully and use only third-party data when referencing Google’s ‘position in search’ in sales pitches. They are further cautioned never to print or hand out their slides.”
The documents helpfully suggest alternative words, including “industry,” “space,” “area,” or the name of a region instead of “market;” “valuable to users” rather than “network effects;” and “challenges” instead of “barriers to entry.” Though employees may (mis)use terms innocently, history tells us lawyers and regulators can and will seize upon certain definitions to build their cases. The higher in the company one is, the riskier careless language becomes. Especially sensitive are phrasings that suggest Google dominates any market, intends to “crush” its competition, or makes any choice for its own advantage rather than for the benefit of users. Because, of course, Google would never do that.
Cynthia Murrell, May 14, 2021
Why Are AI Wizards Fessing Up?
May 10, 2021
I asked myself, “What’s up with the wizards explaining some of the information about the limitations of today’s artificial intelligence systems and methods?”
Why?
I noticed several write ups which are different from the greed infused marketing presentations about smart software.
The first article is an apologia. This term means, “a defense especially of one’s opinions, position, or actions,” as Merriam Webster asserts.”Fighting Algorithmic Bias in Artificial Intelligence” allows the title to indicate that algorithmic bias is indeed an issue. The algorithms are not narrowed to machine learning. Instead the title pops up to the umbrella term. Interesting. Here’s a passage which caught my attention:
From Black individuals being mislabeled as gorillas or a Google search for “Black girls” or “Latina girls” leading to adult content to medical devices working poorly for people with darker skin, it is evident that algorithms can be inherently discriminatory…
Okay, reasonably convincing. But what went wrong in the university courses providing the intellectual underpinnings for smart software? That’s a question that the write up emphasizes in a pull quote:
It’s not just that we need to change the algorithms or the systems; we need to change institutions and social structures. — Joy Lisi Rankin
How quickly do institutions and social structures change? Not too quickly where tenure and student employment goals are intertwined with judgment, ethics, and accountability I surmise.
The second article I noted contains the musings of an AI pioneer (Andrew Ng) as related to an IEEE writer. “Andrew Ng X Rays the Hype” seems to assert that “machine learning may work on test sets, but that’s a long way from real world use.” We’re not talking about AI. Andrew Ng is focusing on machine learning, the go to method for the Google-type company. The truth is presented this way:
“Those of us in machine learning are really good at doing well on a test set,” says machine learning pioneer Andrew Ng, “but unfortunately deploying a system takes more than doing well on a test set.”
The point is that a test is just that, an experiment. MBAs engage in spreadsheet fever behavior in order to generate numbers which flow or deliver what’s needed to get a bonus. The ML crowd gets a test set working and then, it seems, leaps into the real world of marketing and fund raising. With cash, those test sets become enshrined and provide the company’s secret sauce. What if the sauce is poisoned? Yeah, ethics, right?
The third write up is appears in an online information service which has done its share of AI cheerleading. “What I Learned from 25 Years of Machine Learning” is a life lessons-type write up. What did the TechTarget Data Science Central article learn?
“Learn” is not the word I would use to characterize a listicle. There are 11 “pieces of advice.” Okay, these must be the lessons. Please, navigate to the source document to review the Full Monty. I want to highlight three “learnings” expressed as “advice.”
The first gem I will highlight is “be friend with the IT department.” Maybe be friendly or be a friend of the IT department. The learning I gleaned from this “piece of advice” is use Grammarly or find an English major to proofread. Let’s consider the advice “be a friend of the IT department” and ask “Why?” The answer is that smart software can be computationally expensive, tough to set up, and a drain on existing on premises or cloud computing resources. The IT departments with which I am familiar are not friendly to non IT people who want to take time away from keeping the VP of sales’ laptop working. Data wizards are outsiders and the IT department may practice passive aggression to cause the smart software initiative to move slowly or not at all.
The second advice I want to flag is document. Yeah. The way the world of mathy things works is to try stuff. Try more stuff. Then try stuff suggested by a blogger. Once the process or numerical recipe works, the focus is not on documenting a journey. The laser beam of attention goes to hitting a deadline and hopefully getting a bonus, a promotion, or one of those Also Participated ribbons popular in the 1980s’ middle schools. As one of my long time tech wizards said, “Document? You wish.”
The third “module” of these learnings is “get precise metrics”. Okay but precision requires specific information. Who has specific information about the errors, gaps, timeliness, and statistical validity of the data one must use? Yep, good luck with that. Quick example: Due to my research for my National Cyber Crime Conference lectures, Google is now displaying ads for weapons, female bikini hauls, fried chicken sandwiches, and mega yachts. Why? Google’s method of determining what data to use from my online queries struggles because we were using one computer to research cyber crime (weapons), pornography stars on social media sites and the Dark Web, lunch (hence the chicken fetish), and money laundering. I mean how many mega yachts does one honest business person need with one new wife and handful of former spetsnaz professionals? Yeah, data and precise metrics. If the Google can’t do it, what are your chances, gentle reader.
Now back to the question: Why are AI wizards confessing their digital sins?” My answer:
- The increased scrutiny of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, et al bodes ill for these firms and their use of smart software to generate money. This is a variant of the MBAs’ spreadsheet fever.
- High profile AI “experts” want to put some space between them and the improvised roadside Congressional investigations. Bias is a heck of a lot easier to tie to math particularly when high profile ethics issues are making headlines in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader.
- The wizards want to be in the group of wizards who can say, “Look. I explained what should be done. Not my personal problem.”
Net net: AI has bought the mid tier consultant-speak, frothy financial confections, and behavior of a smart person who is one step ahead of an ATM user.
Stephen E Arnold, May 10. 2021
A Field of Data Silos: No Problem
May 5, 2021
The hype about silos has followed data to the cloud. IT Brief grumbles, “How Cloud Silos Are Holding Organisations Back.” Although the brief write-up acknowledges that silos can be desirable, it issues the familiar call to unify the data therein. PureStorage CTO Mark Jobbins writes:
“Overcoming the challenges presented by having cloud silos requires organisations to develop a robust data architecture. Having a common data platform should form the foundation of the data architecture, one that decouples applications and their data from their underlying infrastructure, preventing organizations from being locked into a single delivery model. Working with a multi-cloud architecture is valuable because it helps organizations utilize best-in-breed services from the various cloud service providers. It also reduces vendor lock-in, improves redundancy, and lets businesses choose the ideal features they need for their operations. It’s important to have a strong multi-cloud strategy to ensure the business gets the right mix of security, performance, and cost. The strategy should include the tools and technologies that consolidate cloud resources into a single, cohesive interface for managing cloud infrastructure. Hybrid clouds bring public and private clouds together.”
Such “hybrid clouds” allow an organization to retain those advantages of that multi-cloud architecture with the blessed unified platform. Of course, this is no simple task, so we are told one must recruit a gifted storage specialist to help. We presume this is where Jobbins’ company comes in.
Cynthia Murrell, May 5, 2021
Alphabet: Another PR Hit Related to Raising Prices and Changing the Google Rules?
April 23, 2021
Here in Harrod’s Creek, everyone — and I mean everyone, including my phat, phaux phrench bulldog — loves Google. After reading “Why I Distrust Google Cloud More Than AWS or Azure” it is quite clear that the post in iAsylum.net is authored by someone who would find our Harrod’s Creek perception off base.
The write up contains some salty language. On the other hand, there are a number of links to information supportive of the argument that Google cannot be trusted. Now trust, like ethics, is a slippery fish. In fact, I am not sure my trust checkbook has much value today.
The main point of the iAsylum write up is that Alphabet Google cannot be trusted. The principal reasons are that Google changes prices and acts in capricious ways. Examples range from Google Map fees to the GOOG’s approach to developers.
The most painful point for us lovers of all things Google was the question in the essay:
Will Google Cloud even exist a decade from now?
That’s a difficult question to answer. Some companies are predictable. Amazon’s Bezos bulldozer moves in quite specific directions. True, it can swerve to avoid a large rock, but for the most part, the Bezos bulldozer’s actions are not much of a surprise. Got a hot product? Amazon may just happen to have one too. No surprises.
Google is unpredictable. There’s the HR and ethics mess in the AI unit. There’s the spate of legal challenges about the firm’s approach to advertising. There’s the search service which returns some darned interesting results, often not related to the query the user submitted.
For those of us in Harrod’s Creek, worries about the future should be factored into our lives. But for now, we love those Google mouse pads. Our last remaining mouse pad is now yellowed and cracking. But it once was a spiffy thing.
Let me rephrase the iAsylum question:
Will Google Cloud evolve like my Google mouse pad?
Stephen E Arnold, April 23, 2021
TikTok: A Good Point about Data Collection
April 21, 2021
I wish I could recall which addled Silicon Valley podcaster explained that TikTok was not a problem. I would urge this individual to read in the British paper the article “Case Launched Against TikTok over Collection of Children’s Data.” The essay explains:
Despite a minimum age requirement of 13, Ofcom found last year that 42% of UK eight to 12-year-olds used TikTok. As with other social media companies such as Facebook, there have long been concerns about data collection and the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office is investigating TikTok’s handling of children’s personal information. Longfield said: “We’re not trying to say that it’s not fun. Families like it. It’s been something that’s been really important over lockdown, it’s helped people keep in touch, they’ve had lots of enjoyment. But my view is that the price to pay for that shouldn’t be there – for their personal information to be illegally collected en masse, and passed on to others, most probably for financial gain, without them even knowing about it. “And the excessive nature of that collection is something which drove us to [challenge] TikTok rather than others.
The cloud of unknowing swirling around individuals who insist that data collection from children is no big deal is large and possibly impenetrable.
TikTok says it is an outfit staying within the bright white lines. Nevertheless, according to the write up:
In February last year, ByteDance, the Chinese company legally domiciled in the Cayman Islands that owns TikTok, was fined a record £4.2m ($5.7m) in the US for illegally collecting personal information from children under 13.
Add to the actions which triggered the fine, TikTok is an outfit associated with China. The data from TikTok might add some useful insights about user predilections if those data flow into a Chinese aggregation system.
To the cheerleaders for TikTok, I would suggest a rethink of your position. However, it is possible that funding for some cheerleading squads may be coming from interesting sources and carry along some other agendas. Bad actors can operate within a regulation lax environment. That’s a reality.
Stephen E Arnold, April 21, 2021
Oracle Matches One Amazon AWS Capability: Bringing Order to Chaos
April 19, 2021
In 2018, I started noticing more Amazon AWS support for ServiceNow. ServiceNow is a company which uses cloud technology to help its customers manage digital workflows for enterprise operations. Amazon revealed in 2018 “How to install and configure the AWS Service Management Connector for ServiceNow,” the procedure which some AWS customers had mastered before the blog post gave its stamp of approval.
“Oracle Integrates ServiceNow into its Cloud Infrastructure” makes it clear that the much loved database vendor is doing what AWS did in 2018. The article reports:
Oracle has announced the integration of ServiceNow into its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. The integration means enterprise customers have the ability to access and manage OCI (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure) resources via their existing ServiceNow service portal and the ITOM (ServiceNow IT Operations Management) Visibility application, which will give them a single dashboard to manage their public cloud resources from Oracle and other cloud providers.
Legacy Oracle customers like government agencies are likely to find the integration helpful. At one time, the likes of Amazon itself and Google might have been over the moon. Both of these cloud giants jettisoned Oracle technology and have moved in other directions.
A ServiceNow VP spins the Oracle move this way:
“With this integration, ServiceNow and Oracle are making it seamless for enterprises to unlock productivity for distributed teams to deliver products and services faster, access powerful business insights and create great experiences for employees, wherever they may be,” says ServiceNow’s vice president & general manager of Operations Management & Data Foundations, Jeff Hausman. Joint customers leveraging the Now Platform and OCI will get the best of both worlds, a seamless experience that maximizes the value of cloud investments and the ability to harness the power of artificial intelligence for proactive operations.”
Many buzzwords like seamless, unlock productivity, business insights, experiences which are “great”, value, proactive, and of course artificial intelligence.
The winner may be ServiceNow. For Oracle, I am not sure yet. Maybe on deck to enter the cross cloud de-chaosizing work now going on in many organizations.
Stephen E Arnold, April 19, 2021
Amazon Tactics: Entanglement at a Distance or the New Physics of Ecommerce?
April 15, 2021
Just a thought: Are two distant, seemingly unrelated events entangled? It depends on which physicist one believes and what one knows about the forces exerted by the Bezos bulldozer. I will talk about one facet of this strange influence in my Amazon lecture at the National Cyber Crime Conference. There are some attendance requirements, but I want to outline what I call the Bezos bulldozer’s strange force. This is hypothetical because like Dark Matter, no one knows exactly how to monetize it beyond snagging tenure. Nevertheless, it is an amusing notion to explore.
Here’s the first allegedly true factoid: The Wall Street Journal reports what to its intrepid “real” journalists is news. What is the nub of “How Amazon Strong-Arms Partners Using Its Power Across Multiple Businesses.” You will have to snag a dead tree version of the newspaper or pay Mr. Murdoch for some “real news.” The friendly mom and pop bookstore are allegedly using the collective presence of multiple Amazon businesses to alter the behavior of some vendors, partners, and other mostly unconnected pools of people bouncing off the blade of the Bezos bulldozer. As Mr. Murdoch’s stellar professionals have discerned:
A heavyweight in retail, cloud computing, digital advertising, streaming and smart speakers, the tech giant [Amazon] compels vendors in one market to engage with it in others.
Now shift to chilly Canada. This story is about a company touted by a media personality, NYU professor, and podcaster. “Senior Execs Forsyth, Frasca and Lemieux leaving Shopify” reports:
The departures will leave a significant gap in Shopify’s C-suite as the Ottawa firm ?– which surpassed RBC last year to become Canada’s most valuable publicly traded company ?– continues to stake its claim as a global e-commerce software leader.
What’s the connection between these two stories? One possibility is:
“Each one of them has their individual reasons but what was unanimous with all three was that this was the best for them and the best for Shopify,” Lütke said in the announcement obtained by OBJ.
Another possibility is that the vibrations or the Dark Force of the Bezos bulldozer has been sensed by those who recognize a power greater than themselves.
Connection or not? My thought is that one doesn’t need a yoda with French bulldog ears and nose to sense strange action at a distance.
As Yoda noted:
When you look at the dark side, careful you must be. For the dark side looks back.
Words to ponder?
Stephen E Arnold, April 15, 2021
Federating Domains: Advancing a Tiny Google Agenda?
April 14, 2021
Years ago I documented some of Google’s aspirations in my monograph Google Version 2.0: The Calculating Predator. The research was funded by commercial enterprises, but I was given the green light to publish some of the data my team and I gathered. One of the findings was that Google’s founders had an image of Google as the Internet. The idea was that a user would come to Google, and Google would serve “answers” without having to send the user to the source Web site. No one paid much attention to my diagram of how this would work (included in my first Google monograph) the Google Legacy and then in word form in Google Version 2.
A harmonic response occurred when I read “W3C Technical Architecture Group Slaps Down Google’s Proposal to Treat Multiple Domains as Same Origin.” The write up explains the Googley approach. I noted this statement in the source article:
The proposal suggests that where multiple domains owned by the same entity – such as google.com, google.co.uk, and youtube.com – they could be grouped into sets which “allow related domain names to declare themselves as the same first-party.” The idea allows for sites to declare their own sets by means of a manifest in a known location. It also states that “the browser vendor could maintain a list of domains which meet its UA [User Agent] policy, and ship it in the browser.”
Why?
I have no great intuition for the 2021 Google. It seems to me that this notion of using a “”virtual domain” for multiple domains is a useful functionality. User tracking, advertising applications, and making the Google infrastructure the central authority for named virtual hosts, and other operations is a good one. By that I mean “good” for Google.
The notion of efficiency is central to Google business model. Due to the scale of the company, consolidating, federating, and controlling deliver both business and technical payoffs. Speeding up Web site response or reducing the time required for DNS operations translates to money savings for the Google. When coupled with tasks such as streamlined monitoring, there are probably additional benefits.
Will the rejection of the Google idea cause the idea to go away? In my view, this type of virtualization which is semi-possible within WordPress (a Google fave at the moment) is in operation in some Googley test set ups. Cross domain tracking is more efficient when the federated targets pipe data into the monitoring subsystem.
Rejection is irrelevant in my experience. Google does what Google does with or without permission or the blessings of committees. Azure and IBM are poking around the same functionality. Amazon AWS may be ahead by two years, an estimate offered by a senior AWS manager a couple of years ago.
Each of these outfits have one thing in mind: Control, revenue, and data collection.
Will anyone care? Sure, the Google competitors, but to users and advertisers my hunch is that the play is irrelevant until it is not.
Stephen E Arnold, April 14, 2021
virtual parking
domain mapping (Cloud Run)
named virtual hosts
Search and the Bezos Bulldozer
April 13, 2021
For the last three years, I have been giving lectures about the lock in methods implemented by Amazon. I refer to the company as the online bookstore in order to remind those in my audiences that Amazon has a friendly facet. That’s exemplified by the smile logo. Amazon also has a Wall Street persona which is built upon the precepts of MBAism.
I will be talking about Amazon and its policeware strategy at the 2021 National Cyber Crime Conference. If you want a similar presentation tailored to commercial interests, let me know. I can be reached via benkent2020 at yahoo dot com. My LE and intel work are pro bono; commercial works incurs a fee.
I want to mention a subject I won’t be addressing directly in my upcoming lecture later this month. The subject is an Amazon blog post titled “Introducing OpenSearch.” I would also direct your attention to the comments submitted to the Ycombinator discussion of the announcement. You can find those interesting and varied remarks from hundreds of people at this link.
The news is that Amazon is taking quite predictable steps to recast search and retrieval so that it becomes another of the hundreds of functions, services, and features of Amazon Web Services. AWS hired people from Lucid Imagination (now LucidWorks) years ago. Many have forgotten that Amazon operated A9, a Web search system with a street view function, as well. There are other findability functions embedded in Amazon as well; for example, the “search” function in Amazon’s blockchain inventions. (Yes, I have a for fee lecture about that technology as well. Because money laundering is a growing problem, the Amazon methods are likely to become increasingly important to certain government agencies in the future.)
The little secret about open source software, which many overlook, is that the strongest supporters of FOSS and community supported code are large companies. I did a series of reports for the IDC outfit, and I am not sure what that now dismantled organization did with the data. A couple of chapters were sold on Amazon for $3,000, but the topic was not a magnet when we assembled the information six or seven years ago.
Since Amazon is engaged in a battle for one part of the “enterprise” with Microsoft, the online bookstore is actively seeking ways to attract large organizations as customers, lock them in, and then implement the tactics which benefit from Amazon’s knowledge of its customers’ behavior. The use of the “retail” tactic watch, duplicate, and leverage house brands is documented in the reports from vendors who have had their toes nipped by the bulldozer’s steel caterpillar traction system.
Why’s this germane to “search”? Here are the reasons:
- Search and retrieval is an essential utility for modern work. Amazon wants to generate revenue and other business benefits by having a “better” and (if possible) community supported software base. Search will become part of the lubricant for other Amazon enterprise services; for example, locating tax avoiders.
- Search becomes the glue and the circulatory system for information analysis and use. No search; no high value outputs. Machine learning is little more than a supporting technology to finding needed information. Many disagree with me, but marketing clouds many experts’ thinking. Search is a core function and requires many subsystems and technical methods.
- Once users become habituated to search, change is difficult. Amazon is one of the few outfits to have undermined Google search. Product searches are increasingly under Amazon’s control. The ElasticSearch “play” is going to become the vehicle for a broader utility attack.
I have quipped that Amazon has targeted Elastic and the ElasticSearch “system” because it has the same name as some of Amazon’s services. If Amazon is successful in its search maneuver, Shay Banon’s findability play will be marginalized.
There are larger implications quite beyond a comment made to elicit a laugh at a reception at an enterprise search conference. These include:
- Seamless integration with SageMaker and other advanced functionalities available from Amazon
- A lever for technical and financial leverage for innovators who use Amazon as the plumbing for their start ups, not Microsoft technology
- A model for Amazon and maybe other companies to use for shifting open source software into a variation on the FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) approach to closing deals. The mantra could become “Nobody ever got fired for buying AWS.”
For the companies generating scorecards for enterprise search vendors, significant change is likely. The numerous vendors of proprietary enterprise search will have to make some changes in their approach to Amazon. Many of these Elastic alternatives use AWS for certain functions. What happens if the pricing structure, the legalese, or the access to certain AWS services “evolve”? What will start ups and Amazon partners do if access to search functions becomes free or requires contributions to the AWS version of open source?
Worth watching, right? The answer is, “Nah, you are way off base.” Yep, just as I was in my analysis of Google for BearStearns many years ago. I have a track record of getting thrown out as I head for second base.
Stephen E Arnold, April 13, 2021
Microsoft Adds Semantic Search to Azure Cognitive Search: Is That Fast?
April 9, 2021
Microsoft is adding new capabilities to its cloud-based enterprise search platform Azure Cognitive Search, we learn from “Microsoft Debuts AI-Based Semantic Search on Azure” at Datanami. We’re told the service offers improved development tools. There is also a “semantic caption” function that identifies and displays a document’s most relevant section. Reporter George Leopold writes:
“The new semantic search framework builds on Microsoft’s AI at Scale effort that addresses machine learning models and the infrastructure required to develop new AI applications. Semantic search is among them. The cognitive search engine is based on the BM25 algorithm, (as in ‘best match’), an industry standard for information retrieval via full-text, keyword-based searches. This week, Microsoft released semantic search features in public preview, including semantic ranking. The approach replaces traditional keyword-based retrieval and ranking frameworks with a ranking algorithm using deep neural networks. The algorithm prioritizes search results based on how ‘meaningful’ they are based on query relevance. Semantics-based ranking ‘is applied on top of the results returned by the BM25-based ranker,’ Luis Cabrera-Cordon, group program manager for Azure Cognitive Search, explained in a blog post. The resulting ‘semantic answers’ are generated using an AI model that extracts key passages from the most relevant documents, then ranks them as the sought-after answer to a query. A passage deemed by the model to be the most likely to answer a question is promoted as a semantic answer, according to Cabrera-Cordon.”
By Microsoft’s reckoning, the semantic search feature represents hundreds of development years and millions of dollars in compute time by the Bing search team. We’re told recent developments in transformer-based language models have also played a role, and that this framework is among the first to apply the approach to semantic search. There is one caveat—right now the only language the platform supports is US English. We’re told that others will be added “soon.” Readers who are interested in the public preview of the semantic search engine can register here.
Cynthia Murrell, April 9, 2021
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