Short Honk: Contracting Newbies
June 4, 2018
I read “As Google Quits Controversial Project Maven, Mystery Deepens over Role of Other Tech Firms.”
Google has employees who do not want Google to do certain types of work.
I find this darned interesting. I circled this statement from the write up:
Google has also reportedly pledged to unveil new principles guiding its ethical use of artificial intelligence technology. That promise has already been met with skepticism by the Tech Workers Coalition, a group calling for Silicon Valley companies “to stay out of the business of war” and develop ethics standards for AI.
There are companies doing work from the US government and other countries’ governments as well. How does one handle work which is tagged “secret”?
The management approach which Google is using is almost as interesting as having employees create a situation which, in effect, is quite different from those within which I worked before I retired.
I noted a reference to a company for which I happily labored. That firm? Booz, Allen. The write up points out that Booz, Allen declined to comment for the write up.
Partitions, need to know, separate facilities, and other mechanisms exist to provide technology, engineering services, support, and products to governments.
This is a surprise or somehow improper now?
I suppose a company could allow its employees to vote on which tender offers to bid. I am not sure how that approach would match up with requirements for secure facilities, employees with clearances, and expertise in the specific task with which a government seeks assistance.
This management by squeaky wheel will be interesting to track as the management wagon is pulled by workers who agree to providing motive force. Contracting newbies at work methinks.
Stephen E Arnold, June 4, 2018
x
Fake News May Be a Forever Feature
June 4, 2018
While the world’s big names in social media go on tour to tout the ways in which they are snuffing out fake news, the fake news machine keeps rolling along. Mark Zuckerberg and company can do all the testifying in Washington they want, but that does not mean the criminal element will just curl up and go away. They certainly aren’t going anywhere when there is money to be made and there is plenty of that, according to a surprising BoingBoing story, “It’s Laughably Simple to Buy Thousands of Cheap, Plausible Facebook Identities.”
According to the story:
“[F]or $13, a Buzzfeed reporter was able to buy the longstanding Facebook profile of a fake 23 year old British woman living in London with 921 friends and a deep, plausible dossier of activities, likes and messages. The reporter’s contact said they could supply 5,000 more Facebook identities at any time.”
The danger is that there is essentially no way to really stop this as bot makers get more sophisticated and adjust to Facebook and other social media outlets’ algorithm changes. Some experts even fear that this unstoppable tide of bots will have deadly consequences. We’ll keep watching this story, but don’t have a lot of faith things will get better any time soon.
Patrick Roland, June 4, 2018
Coveo Positions Itself to Fend off Enemies
June 4, 2018
Coveo, one of the numerous players in the race for AI supremacy, took a massive leap forward recently. By securing some substantial investments, the company is poised to make a big splash in the field. However, we are not certain money is the answer to all their concerns, after reading a recent press release on their site, “Coveo Announces $100 Million Investment Led By Evergreen Coast Capital.”
According to the story:
“Coveo, a recognized leader in AI-powered insight, recommendations and search engines, has secured a $100 million investment from Elliott Management for a 27% stake in the company. The investment was led by Elliott’s Menlo Park, California-based private equity affiliate, Evergreen Coast Capital.”
Nice work if you can get it, to be sure. However, we will be curious whether or not this money makes much of a dent in the market. For instance, competition like Elastic have been gaining ground and Algolia are actually acquiring other companies in an effort to better position themselves. Keep an eye on this fight, because we suspect the company that comes out on top will begin making a major impact on our daily lives through their AI offerings.
One final thought: Will Coveo and companies like Attivio and LucidWorks be able to generate sufficient revenue to pay off the investors and generate a sustainable revenue stream? From our vantage point 45 minutes from Churchill Downs where gambling is a way of life, we think the odds are long, very long.
Perhaps a larger company will buy one of these three firms, allowing the senior managers to have a big payday and retire. Dassault Systèmes, Hewlett Packard, IBM, and Oracle have expensive search stallions in their stable. We assume there will be other prospects if the revenue race stumbles.
Patrick Roland, June 1, 2018
Are Auto Suggestions Inherently Problematic?
June 3, 2018
Politics is a dangerous subject to bring up in any social situation. My advice is to keep quiet and nod, then you can avoid loudmouths trying to press their agendas down your throat. Despite attempts to remain polite, the Internet always brings out the worst in people and The Sun shares how with a simple search engine function, “‘Trump Should Be Shot’ Google And Bing Searches For ‘Trump’ And ‘Conservatives’ Offer Disgusting Auto-Suggestions.”
Auto-complete is notorious for making hilarious mistakes and the same is with auto-suggest on search engines, but these end up to be more gruesome than a misspelling.
If you want to see some interesting suggestions, type “Trump should be…” into a blank search bar and the results are endless, including: shot, arrested, killed, in jail, arrested banned from Twitter (okay, the last one might be a little funny).
Typing in “conservatives need…” results in less derogatory terms, but the auto-suggestions include: to die, to go, a new party, and not apply.
Hmmm.
What creates these auto-suggestions?
“These are based on a number of factors including real-time searches, trending results, your location, and previous activity.The intuitive predictions change in “response to new characters being entered into the search box” explains Google. And the company also has its own set of “autocomplete policies” in case something untoward should pop up.Along with prohibiting predictions that contain sexually explicit, violent, and harmful terms, Google says it also removes hateful suggestions against groups and individuals. ‘We remove predictions that include graphic descriptions of violence or advocate violence generally,’ states the firm.”
Google and Bing deserve some credit for removing the slander from auto-complete, but sometimes they only do it when they are pushed. Trolls and bigots create these terms and it would be nice to see them scrubbed from auto-suggest, but it is near impossible. Hey, Bing and Google try scrubbing 4chan!
Whitney Grace, June 3, 2018
Why Is Amazon Chasing DoD Work?
June 2, 2018
Next week I will describe some of our findings from what has been our Amazon “policeware” research. On June 5, 2018, I will post a video snippet from my presentation and issue a short article in this blog.
Yesterday I had a call with a person who explained that I was in the dark about Amazon’s reasons for chasing a Department of Defense cloud services contract. The person explaining my intellectual shortcomings was articulating a viewpoint which from my research team’s point of view was at odds with reality.
I declined to engage in what I interpreted as a lure to get me to explain our principal Amazon findings.
The purpose of this short blog post is to provide a bit of color about why US government cloud contracts are catnip to the Internet lions and tigers.
The information surfaced in the story “Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Lucrative Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially.” The write up states:
The [leaked Google] September emails show that Google’s business development arm expected the military drone artificial intelligence revenue to ramp up from an initial $15 million to an eventual $250 million per year.
There’s the answer revenue. Greed and desire override many other factors, particularly when the Internet lions and tigers want to find ways to pump up revenues using the government’s need for technology.
There are opportunities to propose new work. There are support contracts. There are multi-year deals. And for savvy government capture professionals other options from revolving doors to deals with insider integrators.
You can read the story which reveals the details and some of the projections for future Goggle government work. But the headline for the story sums up the factoids in the article in two words: Grow and Exponentially.
Now back to Amazon. For those who think of Amazon as a digital Wal-Mart with a back office cloud services business, the idea that the US government could see Amazon as the next big thing seems silly.
Perhaps the information I will share on June 5, 2018, will allow a different view of the wonky outfit which sells avocados at a discount and provides video entertainment to those who prefer the kick back approach to data gathering.
On the other hand, I’m wrong. Google’s technology will not find its way into DoD hardware, software, and systems. And, obviously, Amazon just sells books.
Maybe Google will bring back the “evil” catchphrase and become a management maestro? Maybe.
Stephen E Arnold, June 2, 2018
Google Solves Management Problem: Okay, Employees, You Win
June 2, 2018
I find it amusing when large corporate entities demonstrate that aircraft carriers can turn like a Smart Car. Remember Hewlett Packard when it bought Autonomy and then HP decided that Autonomy was not a great buy. Flip flow. Remarkable.
Now Alphabet Google has demonstrated its flexibility. I read “Google Plans Not to Renew Its Contract for Project Maven, a Controversial Pentagon Drone AI Imaging Program.” The main idea is that Alphabet Google responded to an RFP, invested tens of thousands of dollars in crafting a proposal, spent significant time in meetings with Googlers and US government professionals, paid lawyers to finalize the deal, discuss potential revenue from a fairly modest government contract, had some employees complain about the use of smart software for purposes the employees deemed inappropriate, read about the schism inside Alphabet Google in the “real” newspaper, learned that employees provided some information to an online information service, and then announced that it would not renew the US government contract.
There you go.
From government contract with follow on sales potential to an outfit which has probably evoked some annoyance in Washington. How long for this aircraft carrier to turn? About four days.
Remarkable.
The Gizmodo article referenced above stated:
Google will not seek another contract for its controversial work providing artificial intelligence to the U.S. Department of Defense for analyzing drone footage after its current contract expires.
I also highlighted this statement:
Google’s decision to provide artificial intelligence to the Defense Department for the analysis of drone footage has prompted backlash from Google employees and academics. Thousands of employees have signed a petition asking Google to cancel its contract for the project, nicknamed Project Maven, and dozens of employees have resigned in protest.
I assume the COTR and the team government team working on this Alphabet Google job were thrilled to learn that “the contract is of relatively little value.” Yep, “little value.”
Management agility in action.
Several questions:
- Is Google serving shareholders, customers, or employees?
- What signal does this send to companies like Amazon which are now competing for DoD work?
- What are the lawyers at the Department of Defense thinking?
- What does this change of direction say about Alphabet Google’s management approach?
- Is this decision comparable to the purchase of Motorola by Google?
My hunch is that other questions can be raised.
Net net: Alphabet Google, like Yahoo, is now generating business school case studies which are more like Hollywood movie scripts than real life.
Reality is indeed surprising.
Stephen E Arnold, June 2, 2018
Google DoubleClick Lowers Ad Revenue
June 2, 2018
Power outages happen, so you wait for them to be fixed. In the digital age, however, when there is a power outage a day’s entire profits can be lost. ZDNet shares a story about a recent outage with Google’s ad stack: “Google’s DoubleClick Outage Should Force Marketers To Ask Some Hard Questions.”
DoubleClick went dark in March 2018 and it demonstrated how much publishers rely on Google. The search giant did not really care, though. Google simply shrugged its shoulders and said to limit tracking and change over to text ads. As a result, publishers are probably going to depend on more transparency. Here are the reasons why, according to the write up:
- DoubleClick is the dominant display ad serving platform and there aren’t other options.
- Google is a near monopoly with DoubleClick and already struggling Web publishers get punched in the head again.
- The ad stack on the Web is integrated so DoubleClick’s reliability woes are enough to make sites crawl.
- Google has rightly been focused on mobile and its core search ad business. That reality makes you wonder how much Google has invested in DoubleClick over the years.
The bug was eventually fixed, but it does not offer much of a resolution for future problems. DoubleClick advertises itself as a reliable company that runs on Google Cloud, but it was not reliable in March. Google can takes its sweet time to fix the bug, but what are publishers supposed to do when they are not making a profit?
Next up for Google DoubleClick?
GDPR.
Whitney Grace, June 2, 2018
Facebook Versus YouTube: Understanding 13 to 17 Year olds
June 1, 2018
I read “Teens Have Abandoned Facebook”. The source is the Daily Mail, and I believe everything I read in the British tabloid. What caught my attention was the big usage gap, if the data are accurate. A couple of highlights:
- In 2014, more than 70 percent of those 13 to 17 used Facebook. Today that usage figure is 51 percent. (Like most surveys, the nuts and bolts of the method are not provided.)
- Also, teens in the sample voted with their eyeballs. More than 80 percent use Alphabet Google’s YouTube.
- Finally, I learned that more than 90 percent of the 13 to 17 crowd own or have access to a smartphone, not a plain vanilla cheapo device. A smartphone.
The source of the data is the Pew outfit. Since I am not too interested in teenagers and their “usage patterns,” check out the write up.
Stephen E Arnold, June 1, 2018
Search Bias a Big Topic Across the Board
June 1, 2018
Manipulating bias in search is a tricky business that is often left in the hands of contractors or third parties. While that may be good enough for others, you need search results manipulated the way they were intended. Luckily, those options are becoming more common than ever as we discovered when we saw the Thunderstone blog that “Thunderstone releases Version 20” and that includes some beefy upgrades.
According to the post:
“Parametric profiles gain new capabilities to set a bias on a per document field using data from field rules. This allow documents to be biased up or down in the search results, for example PDF results could be biased down, or documents with “Important” in a meta tag could be ranked higher.”
Ranking PDFs isn’t the only way in which search bias is a tricky business. Often, we are hearing about this factor for al the wrong reasons, like when Google’s search results are biased one way or another. However, the search giant uses similar technology, but on a much more grand scale, to eliminate these issues as they recently pointed out: “Google is committed to making products that work well for everyone, and are actively researching unintended bias and mitigation strategies.” Clearly, bias is an issue on the high and low end of everyone’s spectrum.
Patrick Roland, June 1, 2018
Enterprise Search: Not Even a Bridesmaid Now
June 1, 2018
By this point in our history, you would think that most enterprise search would be created equally. However, there are still some stalwarts that are only now stepping into the golden age of search, as it were. One odd entry into this club was discovered after reading a white paper by Hyland on “Enterprise Search”.
According to the paper on Hyland’s new product:
“Enterprise Search allows you to provide access to the right information even if users don’t know exactly where to find it. Enable anyone to build powerful queries without expertise using intuitive, menu-assisted and natural language search options. You can also find answers when there are misspelled search terms, inexact queries, substandard data, document errors and other faults.”
Seems a little elementary, right? We suspect this has a little to do with playing catchup in the field. Hyland recently acquired Lexmark’s enterprise software arm, which itself was never exactly leading the field. (Lexmark bought ISYS Search Software, an outfit with technology from the mid 1980s if the founder spoke the truth when I interviewed him in 2008.) This will be interesting to see where Hyland takes this technology, though. The company has been around for a while and seems intent on wedging itself into the enterprise data conversation. However, it’ll have to make some light speed advances in order to go toe-to-toe with the big dogs in this battle.
Patrick Roland, June 1, 2018
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
