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This is not a technological issue. This is a policy issue. The total size of Wikipedia text is 12 GB. The total size of a state-sized chunk of maps.me is under

by pacala 9y ago

This is not a technological issue. This is a policy issue. The total size of Wikipedia text is 12 GB. The total size of a state-sized chunk of maps.me is under a GB. The total memory of an iPhone is 32GB - 256GB. I can store the entirety of Wikipedia + the entire geographical data of my state and neighbouring states on my mobile phone and have a Star Trek-esque voice-activated computer interaction without ever uploading a single byte into the cloud. It won't have pretty pictures. I'm happy with that.

fixermark 9y ago
It is a technological issue. Without the real-world audio samples to use as training data, the system cannot be improved enough to work reliably.
- pacala 9y ago
  "We need real-world audio samples" does not entail "let's collect audio [and behavioral] data from one billion users". There are less intrusive ways to collect data. How about paying specific individuals for their data. For example, there are about 5000 Nielsen families, http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/question433.htm http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/question433.htm. For a company that supposedly is employing the best minds in statistics, the inability to effectively use statistical samples is, uhm, intriguing.
  - fixermark 9y ago
    With the inception of digital cable boxes, many cable providers no longer need the Nielsen data because the cable box tells the provider what channel it's tuned to (a technical necessity if the box is using switched digital video). It's much easier (and safer for the end user) to passively collect usage data via the application you provide than to trust some third-party to (a) collect a statistical sample unbiasedly and (b) collect the sample securely while protecting user privacy. Even if Google is using statistical sampling, it's still something they'd want to collect directly through the app, not via a third-party. As for paying individuals for their data, Google does that too. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.paidtasks&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and.... But if your argument is "They should be paying everyone they collect passive samples from during use of their products," that's an argument over price-point, not over whether the collection itself is right. The rightness question seems to me to look a lot more like "If you can collect data from a billion users without doing any harm to the users, and that data is going to be more useful than a statistical subset of that data, why should you not collect it?"
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      > The rightness question seems to me to look a lot more like "If you can collect data from a billion users without doing any harm to the users, and that data is going to be more useful than a statistical subset of that data, why should you not collect it?" In this particular case (speech recognition), one harm done to the users is tying the product to the Internet, and thus requiring what should be closed-loop tasks to go through vendor's servers.
      - fixermark 9y ago
        "Should be closed-loop" is an interesting assumption that I'm not convinced aligns with the reality of the technology. To what extent has speech recognition been improved by being able to feed it through a constantly-updated set of open-loop ML infrastructure?
        TeMPOraL 9y ago
        Probably a lot; open-ended voice recognition with no prior training is hard (though I'm not convinced it can't be made to work off-line now that the models are there). Still, a lot of devices don't need open-ended voice recognition (structured grammars greatly simplify the problem), and if you allow for users having to pre-train their devices for few minutes, off-line processing becomes easier. My impression is that the main driver behind cloud-first voice processing is business, not technology.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  I built an off-line voice recognition system 10 years ago using Microsoft Speech API and I guarantee you it worked quite well. There's nothing in base voice recognition that would require uploading everything to the cloud. You only have to be willing to read out some text for few minutes, once, to train the model.
  - euyyn 9y ago
    > You only have to be willing to read out some text for few minutes, once, to train the model. I guess that's what kills it as practical in the real world.
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      Laziness is competitive advantage. There are costs to it though - in this case, we pay for it with our data. Small bits of our souls, if you will.
      - fixermark 9y ago
        I don't expect these technologies to appeal to people who think of the data their behavior generates as "small bits of their souls." For everyone else though, there are some neat families of features in all the major tech stacks.
euyyn 9y ago
Good luck asking Wikipedia what's the weather today, what's your first meeting in the morning, and which route of your commute has less traffic at the moment.
- marssaxman 9y ago
  I don't ask for those things anyway, precisely because I don't want Google to have that much information about me. I'd love to have a local-only, offline map system.
  - fixermark 9y ago
    You can pretty much get that right now by buying any one of the fine Garmin navigational products on the market, right?
  - euyyn 9y ago
    Well, that makes it not a "Star Trek-esque voice-activated computer interaction", which is the point of it.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Asking for weather is an API issue, it totally does not require uploading your voice.
  - euyyn 9y ago
    It requires uploading where you are. And it requires uploading the voice for processing if you want it to distinguish "what's the weather today" from "tonight", "tomorrow", "this weekend at <place X>", or "back at home".
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      In theory, voice processing could be done locally, and then you'd only have to upload coordinates and/or place name, just as every non-voice weather app.

by pacala 9y ago

fixermark 9y ago

It is a technological issue. Without the real-world audio samples to use as training data, the system cannot be improved enough to work reliably.

pacala 9y ago
"We need real-world audio samples" does not entail "let's collect audio [and behavioral] data from one billion users". There are less intrusive ways to collect data. How about paying specific individuals for their data. For example, there are about 5000 Nielsen families, http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/question433.htm http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/question433.htm. For a company that supposedly is employing the best minds in statistics, the inability to effectively use statistical samples is, uhm, intriguing.
- fixermark 9y ago
  With the inception of digital cable boxes, many cable providers no longer need the Nielsen data because the cable box tells the provider what channel it's tuned to (a technical necessity if the box is using switched digital video). It's much easier (and safer for the end user) to passively collect usage data via the application you provide than to trust some third-party to (a) collect a statistical sample unbiasedly and (b) collect the sample securely while protecting user privacy. Even if Google is using statistical sampling, it's still something they'd want to collect directly through the app, not via a third-party. As for paying individuals for their data, Google does that too. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.paidtasks&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and.... But if your argument is "They should be paying everyone they collect passive samples from during use of their products," that's an argument over price-point, not over whether the collection itself is right. The rightness question seems to me to look a lot more like "If you can collect data from a billion users without doing any harm to the users, and that data is going to be more useful than a statistical subset of that data, why should you not collect it?"
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    > The rightness question seems to me to look a lot more like "If you can collect data from a billion users without doing any harm to the users, and that data is going to be more useful than a statistical subset of that data, why should you not collect it?" In this particular case (speech recognition), one harm done to the users is tying the product to the Internet, and thus requiring what should be closed-loop tasks to go through vendor's servers.
    - fixermark 9y ago
      "Should be closed-loop" is an interesting assumption that I'm not convinced aligns with the reality of the technology. To what extent has speech recognition been improved by being able to feed it through a constantly-updated set of open-loop ML infrastructure?
      - TeMPOraL 9y ago
        Probably a lot; open-ended voice recognition with no prior training is hard (though I'm not convinced it can't be made to work off-line now that the models are there). Still, a lot of devices don't need open-ended voice recognition (structured grammars greatly simplify the problem), and if you allow for users having to pre-train their devices for few minutes, off-line processing becomes easier. My impression is that the main driver behind cloud-first voice processing is business, not technology.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
I built an off-line voice recognition system 10 years ago using Microsoft Speech API and I guarantee you it worked quite well. There's nothing in base voice recognition that would require uploading everything to the cloud. You only have to be willing to read out some text for few minutes, once, to train the model.
- euyyn 9y ago
  > You only have to be willing to read out some text for few minutes, once, to train the model. I guess that's what kills it as practical in the real world.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Laziness is competitive advantage. There are costs to it though - in this case, we pay for it with our data. Small bits of our souls, if you will.
    - fixermark 9y ago
      I don't expect these technologies to appeal to people who think of the data their behavior generates as "small bits of their souls." For everyone else though, there are some neat families of features in all the major tech stacks.

euyyn 9y ago

Good luck asking Wikipedia what's the weather today, what's your first meeting in the morning, and which route of your commute has less traffic at the moment.

marssaxman 9y ago
I don't ask for those things anyway, precisely because I don't want Google to have that much information about me. I'd love to have a local-only, offline map system.
- fixermark 9y ago
  You can pretty much get that right now by buying any one of the fine Garmin navigational products on the market, right?
- euyyn 9y ago
  Well, that makes it not a "Star Trek-esque voice-activated computer interaction", which is the point of it.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
Asking for weather is an API issue, it totally does not require uploading your voice.
- euyyn 9y ago
  It requires uploading where you are. And it requires uploading the voice for processing if you want it to distinguish "what's the weather today" from "tonight", "tomorrow", "this weekend at <place X>", or "back at home".
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    In theory, voice processing could be done locally, and then you'd only have to upload coordinates and/or place name, just as every non-voice weather app.