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I found "I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.", a lot more cr

I found "I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.", a lot more creepy than the statements about privacy. I'm not so worried about what they know about me, but I am very concerned that Schmidt thinks Google should try to tell me what to do next.

tkahnoski 16y ago
Google Maps already tells me what roads to drive on, Amazon tells me what things I should buy, and Facebook tells me who I should be friends with. I would say I am fine with these things since I understand the nature of these algorithms, but there are some very fuzzy situations that occur. Is there a moral dilemma for a recommendation algorithm to suggest things of political nature during an election year? i.e. recommending "Going Rogue" or "The Audacity of Hope" during in the months leading up to a presidential election?
- rbarooah 16y ago
  I like your examples. Google Maps tells me the whole route, not just 'what to do next'. I can understand how the route was produced, and because it's shown on a map, I can see whether it matches my intentions before I follow it. Amazon is less transparent, but they usually do show things like 'we recommended this because you bought that, and 40% of people who bought that liked this" I'd hardly say that Facebook tells me who to I should be friends with - they mostly suggest people I might already be friends with to make it easier to connect with them. I don't know what algorithm they use, but I guess it's based on mutual friends and their scrape of my email box from ages ago. I wish they would tell me more. Google on the other hand is completely secretive about how they generate their recommendations (i.e. the search results). How do I know the results I see are aligned with my interests? Since Google's customers are advertisers, it wouldn't be unreasonable to guess that the search results are at least to some extent tuned to maximize advertising revenue for Google, as opposed to my needs for quality, breadth of coverage, historically significant results etc. The algorithm may not be tuned to favor specific interests, but it clearly has a structural bias that favors certain kinds of information over other kinds. I think that having so much of the web's information flow governed by secret algorithms is very much a cause for concern.
  - tkahnoski 16y ago
    Agreed. I wanted to make the point that computers are providing more direct feedback into our lives beyond simulators and data stores. I did use stronger language on purpose. It is a bit of a leap to say a computer told you what to do, but it is not that far from the status quo of suggestions. Facebook example was a bit more of a stretch. I don't think dating sites have very sophisticated automatic algorithms, but something like a game opponent matching system might be a better example of an autonomous system that directly results in a social interaction.
  - kjksf 16y ago
    Is any other search engine is or was transparent about their algorithm to your liking? Bing? Yahoo? DuckDuckGo? If google published the definitive spec of their algorithm (i.e. source code to their search engine), would you read hundreds of thousands lines of code? Would you be able to comprehend it? Would you re-read it every week to make sure that hundreds of commits made by google engineers didn't change it in a way you don't like? It's preposterous to think that you could comprehend their algorithm in a way that allows you to make an informed decision about whether to use or not. Let's assume you understand it and don't like how it works, what you gonna do? Use Bing? You don't need reassurance that Google's algorithm is aligned with your interests. It isn't. Neither is Bing's algorithm or anyone else's. BMW doesn't make cars that are aligned with your interests. Apple doesn't make phones that are aligned with your interests. They all make products that are aligned with their interest to make money, they put them in the market and you decided with your money whether you think they serve you or not. That system works pretty well. You have a choice to use any web search engine you like. You can decide whether you like their results or not by making queries and inspecting the results. You are free to create a competing search engine. Those are your rights. You don't have a right to require google to disclose how their products work. There's a name for it: trade secret. It's protected by law and it's google's right to keep it to themselves.
    - rbarooah 16y ago
      I don't think I said I had a right to require google to disclose how their products work. I do want reassurance that Google's algorithm is aligned with my interests. I want that from everyone who provides me with a service, and every corporation I've worked for has wanted that from their suppliers. If I have evidence that a company is going to work against me in the future, or is doing so now, then I'll choose not to buy their products. Understanding what you're buying is a key part of making markets performing well. I think BMW does actually try to make cars that are aligned with their customers interests, that's why their customers pay for them them. One part of my point was that I'm not Google's customer - the advertisers are. I can't choose a car solely by inspection from the outside or even with a test drive. I wouldn't be able to know whether a vehicle was safe, efficient, or reliable over a reasonable lifetime. Fortunately, I don't need to know determine these things for myself for two reasons - we have legally mandated safety and efficiency standards, and the workings of cars are not secret, so other people who know more about cars than I do can examine them and publish their findings. I wouldn't have to understand the complete search algorithm on my own. Just as with encryption protocols which are also hard to understand, openness would allow a large number of people to participate in the scrutiny. Nobody argues that security protocols should be kept secret because it would be preposterous to try to understand them. The fact that you suggest that if I don't like Google, my only option is to use Bing as if that isn't much of a choice undermines your argument that the market is working well here. And no, no other search engine is transparent to my liking. That doesn't make transparency into an unreasonable request - quite the opposite. Frankly I find your position somewhat strange. Markets work well when we place demands on them, because then suppliers know what to make. If people demand a more open search engine, then perhaps Google will provide one, or maybe a competitor will produce one. Your argument seems to be that I should not publicly articulate my needs, but instead only choose from what is already on the market and not complain about the aspects I find inadequate. I don't understand what good that's supposed to do.

tkahnoski 16y ago

Google Maps already tells me what roads to drive on, Amazon tells me what things I should buy, and Facebook tells me who I should be friends with. I would say I am fine with these things since I understand the nature of these algorithms, but there are some very fuzzy situations that occur. Is there a moral dilemma for a recommendation algorithm to suggest things of political nature during an election year? i.e. recommending "Going Rogue" or "The Audacity of Hope" during in the months leading up to a presidential election?

rbarooah 16y ago
I like your examples. Google Maps tells me the whole route, not just 'what to do next'. I can understand how the route was produced, and because it's shown on a map, I can see whether it matches my intentions before I follow it. Amazon is less transparent, but they usually do show things like 'we recommended this because you bought that, and 40% of people who bought that liked this" I'd hardly say that Facebook tells me who to I should be friends with - they mostly suggest people I might already be friends with to make it easier to connect with them. I don't know what algorithm they use, but I guess it's based on mutual friends and their scrape of my email box from ages ago. I wish they would tell me more. Google on the other hand is completely secretive about how they generate their recommendations (i.e. the search results). How do I know the results I see are aligned with my interests? Since Google's customers are advertisers, it wouldn't be unreasonable to guess that the search results are at least to some extent tuned to maximize advertising revenue for Google, as opposed to my needs for quality, breadth of coverage, historically significant results etc. The algorithm may not be tuned to favor specific interests, but it clearly has a structural bias that favors certain kinds of information over other kinds. I think that having so much of the web's information flow governed by secret algorithms is very much a cause for concern.
- tkahnoski 16y ago
  Agreed. I wanted to make the point that computers are providing more direct feedback into our lives beyond simulators and data stores. I did use stronger language on purpose. It is a bit of a leap to say a computer told you what to do, but it is not that far from the status quo of suggestions. Facebook example was a bit more of a stretch. I don't think dating sites have very sophisticated automatic algorithms, but something like a game opponent matching system might be a better example of an autonomous system that directly results in a social interaction.
- kjksf 16y ago
  Is any other search engine is or was transparent about their algorithm to your liking? Bing? Yahoo? DuckDuckGo? If google published the definitive spec of their algorithm (i.e. source code to their search engine), would you read hundreds of thousands lines of code? Would you be able to comprehend it? Would you re-read it every week to make sure that hundreds of commits made by google engineers didn't change it in a way you don't like? It's preposterous to think that you could comprehend their algorithm in a way that allows you to make an informed decision about whether to use or not. Let's assume you understand it and don't like how it works, what you gonna do? Use Bing? You don't need reassurance that Google's algorithm is aligned with your interests. It isn't. Neither is Bing's algorithm or anyone else's. BMW doesn't make cars that are aligned with your interests. Apple doesn't make phones that are aligned with your interests. They all make products that are aligned with their interest to make money, they put them in the market and you decided with your money whether you think they serve you or not. That system works pretty well. You have a choice to use any web search engine you like. You can decide whether you like their results or not by making queries and inspecting the results. You are free to create a competing search engine. Those are your rights. You don't have a right to require google to disclose how their products work. There's a name for it: trade secret. It's protected by law and it's google's right to keep it to themselves.
  - rbarooah 16y ago
    I don't think I said I had a right to require google to disclose how their products work. I do want reassurance that Google's algorithm is aligned with my interests. I want that from everyone who provides me with a service, and every corporation I've worked for has wanted that from their suppliers. If I have evidence that a company is going to work against me in the future, or is doing so now, then I'll choose not to buy their products. Understanding what you're buying is a key part of making markets performing well. I think BMW does actually try to make cars that are aligned with their customers interests, that's why their customers pay for them them. One part of my point was that I'm not Google's customer - the advertisers are. I can't choose a car solely by inspection from the outside or even with a test drive. I wouldn't be able to know whether a vehicle was safe, efficient, or reliable over a reasonable lifetime. Fortunately, I don't need to know determine these things for myself for two reasons - we have legally mandated safety and efficiency standards, and the workings of cars are not secret, so other people who know more about cars than I do can examine them and publish their findings. I wouldn't have to understand the complete search algorithm on my own. Just as with encryption protocols which are also hard to understand, openness would allow a large number of people to participate in the scrutiny. Nobody argues that security protocols should be kept secret because it would be preposterous to try to understand them. The fact that you suggest that if I don't like Google, my only option is to use Bing as if that isn't much of a choice undermines your argument that the market is working well here. And no, no other search engine is transparent to my liking. That doesn't make transparency into an unreasonable request - quite the opposite. Frankly I find your position somewhat strange. Markets work well when we place demands on them, because then suppliers know what to make. If people demand a more open search engine, then perhaps Google will provide one, or maybe a competitor will produce one. Your argument seems to be that I should not publicly articulate my needs, but instead only choose from what is already on the market and not complain about the aspects I find inadequate. I don't understand what good that's supposed to do.