4 ms·

Cokeheads slip AI onto Yahoo front page

26 points by nickb 18y ago

t0pj 18y ago
And when the speech was over, McCarthy spoke up from the auditorium's front row. "I'm a little puzzled," he said. "What does this have to do with AI?" I love you, John!
- jimbokun 18y ago
  Anyone know what the reply was?
  - shaunxcode 18y ago
    The article didn't give the direct response but quoted another speaker at the conference who said "Over the past 50 years, we've lowered the bar for what we consider AI," -Stephan Nusser, senior manager of the User-Focused Systems research group.
    - apathy 18y ago
      Which is long for "not much, but it sounds good". Maybe they can tack an '-omics' on to the end of it somehow.
    - henning 18y ago
      The essential defining component of AI to me is an explicit attempt to model or study human cognition/neural processes. A lot of the learning/search stuff being published is a mix of traditional engineering tools (like Kalman filters, used for decades for state estimation) with some kind of search/learning metaheuristic and does not give a flying hoot about being "intelligent".
- apathy 18y ago
  Damn, beat me to it. That was a hell of a punch line, too. True pioneer FTW!
joeconyers 18y ago
Poorly titled and misrepresented
- jraines 18y ago
  Exactly -- Nick, you've already won the karma game, no need to linkbait.
  - nickb 18y ago
    I am not linkbaiting. If you check the article's title, you will see that it is unchanged. The title comes from this part: "Agarwal calls it Coke for short, and his fellow researchers are affectionately known as Cokeheads." Also, I don't like editorializing and injecting my opinion and pg doesn't as well (I'm guessing he's the one who reverts headlines to their original state when they're editorialized). I've changed few headlines in the past but only when they were grossly misrepresentative of the article or just plain crappy and didn't convey the content of the article. So, if you have a problem with the headline, complain to The Register please :).
    - jraines 18y ago
      I don't go to the Register for news, so their linkbait headlines aren't a problem for me until someone submits them here, even if it's unchanged. So I will complain here. Changing a "curiosity" headline to make it clear what the article is about is not editorializing (except in the most literal sense, so let me preempt any pedants on that point) or injecting opinion. Example: "Yahoo! Researchers develop algorithms to select stories for front page" Is that less intriguing? Yes. Will it get less karma? Yes. Will the people who are genuinely interested in the topic covered still click on it? Yes.
      - SingAlong 18y ago
        Great jraines! You've got a point there. I would like to see headlines like the one you mentioned in the example. Straight-to-the point headlines. It makes reading easier. I think this point should be mentioned in the submission guidelines for Hacker News(and would better if its a rule). Simple headlines save time too. Example: I spend most my of my time with no access to a computer, away from home. I am browsing on a mobile phone with 8kBps internet speed. And simple headlines saves me page loading time. I usually avoid clicking on headlines that are confusing. (and thats why I use mobile lingo in most of my comments) :) would like to see others' opinions on this matter(its a pretty serious one).
biohacker42 18y ago
I've had a yahoo mail account since before the internet. It's my spam and bacon account. And my habit is to go through yahoo.com to get to mail. So I see all the stories and I've never clicked on a celebrity gossip story. Once in a blue moon there will be a science story and I've clicked on a few of those. So what do I keep seeing over 99% of time? Celebrity gossip. Thanks AI!
SingAlong 18y ago
Tom may like to read about Paris Hilton and Harry may like reading about what President Bush had for dinner. I am not interested in both, but I do bother if some company gets funded, if some website gets bought or if someone writes a 'hello world' app in a hundred languages. I don't have the same interests as Tom or Harry. And featuring their likes on my headlines just because they clicked doesn't make an uber-cool feature or a handy tool. To me, it just sounds like a bad automated-Digg clone. This is totally a commercial idea. They seem to be interested in the clicks and henceforth the dollars. The idea would have been a runaway hit if they tried to personalize news as per personal interests. Well, this system cannot personalize news until they ask me to specify my interests and tweak the news personally for me. It can be done with a Yahoo Pipes app ofcourse. But its still like using a calculator for 3+4. How about a direct feature - "personalize ur news". One way to read such news is to use the Google News Search RSS feeds. It works for me. I mentioned just a few days back, that I was working on a news engine - for news analysis and news search (it's for a contest and I'm working on it since I am a news buff). The idea is currently half complete since I have my exams on(will be over by 15th of this month). I found a simple way to personalize news :) I just gave the idea a try and it does seem to be crappy, but its an easier way because that's the simplest data I have access to as a developer. Will post it here soon. I have to convert the app from php to python (going to run it on Google App Engine) John McCarthy; that name reminds me of something... "No one has yet buit a monument so high that a bird can't fly over it and shit on it" --John McCarthy That's my favorite quote. A bit of info if you don't know who John McCarthy is: the man who coined the term "Artificial Intelligence" (-edited to add more-)
- thaumaturgy 18y ago
  | This is totally a commercial idea. They seem to be interested in the clicks and henceforth the dollars. The idea would have been a runaway hit if they tried to personalize news as per personal interests. There was a great magazine article sometime back -- that I can't find now -- that featured a guy who'd been in the radio business for a long time complaining that the ratings and rankings system that he'd developed effectively killed radio, causing so many stations to all play the same homogeneous crap. Yahoo's system, and news in general reflect the same problem: following the money leads to this steaming pile of crap that a lot of people seem to hate. But there's another edge to this too. People who claim to be interested in specific subjects, or in meatier or niche news, are still drawn in to some of the vacuous material. So, nobody actually really wants a completely personalized news service; I'm convinced that that's one reason why jaanix hasn't made it big, while Reddit continues to steam along. People will tune Jaanix for the news feeds that they think they ought to like, and then they quit following it after a while because they'd actually rather click on all of the [pic]s on Reddit's front page.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
giardini 18y ago
Decades ago we used Kalman filtering in naval navigation systems - it was well-established engineering then (Rudolf E. Kalman developed his filter in 1960). The original article's title is somewhat misleading in that Kalman filtering isn't usually considered to be AI. But it's very nice to see this article anyway, if only to know that those old boat filters are creating Yahoo's home pages. Hey, it might even be the same code!8-)) [Tip to Yahoo: Speed 'er up to 23 knots and, if you start getting significant outliers, you've got a rounding problem in your matrix routines.]
- LogicHoleFlaw 18y ago
  One of my favorite stories from my grandfather was how he used Fourier transforms to calculate the weight of cotton on the fly as it was being processed in the machines he developed. This was high technology in the 60s!
giardini 18y ago
Decades ago we used Kalman filtering in naval navigation systems - it was well-established engineering then (Rudolf E. Kalman developed his filter in 1960). The original article's title is somewhat misleading in that Kalman filtering isn't usually considered to be AI. But it's very nice to see this article anyway, if only to know that those old boat filters are creating Yahoo's home pages. Hey, it might even be the same code!8-)) [Tip to Yahoo: Speed 'er up to 23 knots and, if you start getting significant outliers, you've got a rounding problem in your matrix routines.]
run4yourlives 18y ago
In other words, Yahoo! is making more money than ever from shameless celebrity gossip. My thoughts exactly. Rather sad though.

26 points by nickb 18y ago

t0pj 18y ago

And when the speech was over, McCarthy spoke up from the auditorium's front row. "I'm a little puzzled," he said. "What does this have to do with AI?" I love you, John!

jimbokun 18y ago
Anyone know what the reply was?
- shaunxcode 18y ago
  The article didn't give the direct response but quoted another speaker at the conference who said "Over the past 50 years, we've lowered the bar for what we consider AI," -Stephan Nusser, senior manager of the User-Focused Systems research group.
  - apathy 18y ago
    Which is long for "not much, but it sounds good". Maybe they can tack an '-omics' on to the end of it somehow.
  - henning 18y ago
    The essential defining component of AI to me is an explicit attempt to model or study human cognition/neural processes. A lot of the learning/search stuff being published is a mix of traditional engineering tools (like Kalman filters, used for decades for state estimation) with some kind of search/learning metaheuristic and does not give a flying hoot about being "intelligent".
apathy 18y ago
Damn, beat me to it. That was a hell of a punch line, too. True pioneer FTW!

joeconyers 18y ago

Poorly titled and misrepresented

jraines 18y ago
Exactly -- Nick, you've already won the karma game, no need to linkbait.
- nickb 18y ago
  I am not linkbaiting. If you check the article's title, you will see that it is unchanged. The title comes from this part: "Agarwal calls it Coke for short, and his fellow researchers are affectionately known as Cokeheads." Also, I don't like editorializing and injecting my opinion and pg doesn't as well (I'm guessing he's the one who reverts headlines to their original state when they're editorialized). I've changed few headlines in the past but only when they were grossly misrepresentative of the article or just plain crappy and didn't convey the content of the article. So, if you have a problem with the headline, complain to The Register please :).
  - jraines 18y ago
    I don't go to the Register for news, so their linkbait headlines aren't a problem for me until someone submits them here, even if it's unchanged. So I will complain here. Changing a "curiosity" headline to make it clear what the article is about is not editorializing (except in the most literal sense, so let me preempt any pedants on that point) or injecting opinion. Example: "Yahoo! Researchers develop algorithms to select stories for front page" Is that less intriguing? Yes. Will it get less karma? Yes. Will the people who are genuinely interested in the topic covered still click on it? Yes.
    - SingAlong 18y ago
      Great jraines! You've got a point there. I would like to see headlines like the one you mentioned in the example. Straight-to-the point headlines. It makes reading easier. I think this point should be mentioned in the submission guidelines for Hacker News(and would better if its a rule). Simple headlines save time too. Example: I spend most my of my time with no access to a computer, away from home. I am browsing on a mobile phone with 8kBps internet speed. And simple headlines saves me page loading time. I usually avoid clicking on headlines that are confusing. (and thats why I use mobile lingo in most of my comments) :) would like to see others' opinions on this matter(its a pretty serious one).

biohacker42 18y ago

I've had a yahoo mail account since before the internet. It's my spam and bacon account. And my habit is to go through yahoo.com to get to mail. So I see all the stories and I've never clicked on a celebrity gossip story. Once in a blue moon there will be a science story and I've clicked on a few of those. So what do I keep seeing over 99% of time? Celebrity gossip. Thanks AI!

SingAlong 18y ago

Tom may like to read about Paris Hilton and Harry may like reading about what President Bush had for dinner. I am not interested in both, but I do bother if some company gets funded, if some website gets bought or if someone writes a 'hello world' app in a hundred languages. I don't have the same interests as Tom or Harry. And featuring their likes on my headlines just because they clicked doesn't make an uber-cool feature or a handy tool. To me, it just sounds like a bad automated-Digg clone. This is totally a commercial idea. They seem to be interested in the clicks and henceforth the dollars. The idea would have been a runaway hit if they tried to personalize news as per personal interests. Well, this system cannot personalize news until they ask me to specify my interests and tweak the news personally for me. It can be done with a Yahoo Pipes app ofcourse. But its still like using a calculator for 3+4. How about a direct feature - "personalize ur news". One way to read such news is to use the Google News Search RSS feeds. It works for me. I mentioned just a few days back, that I was working on a news engine - for news analysis and news search (it's for a contest and I'm working on it since I am a news buff). The idea is currently half complete since I have my exams on(will be over by 15th of this month). I found a simple way to personalize news :) I just gave the idea a try and it does seem to be crappy, but its an easier way because that's the simplest data I have access to as a developer. Will post it here soon. I have to convert the app from php to python (going to run it on Google App Engine) John McCarthy; that name reminds me of something... "No one has yet buit a monument so high that a bird can't fly over it and shit on it" --John McCarthy That's my favorite quote. A bit of info if you don't know who John McCarthy is: the man who coined the term "Artificial Intelligence" (-edited to add more-)

thaumaturgy 18y ago
| This is totally a commercial idea. They seem to be interested in the clicks and henceforth the dollars. The idea would have been a runaway hit if they tried to personalize news as per personal interests. There was a great magazine article sometime back -- that I can't find now -- that featured a guy who'd been in the radio business for a long time complaining that the ratings and rankings system that he'd developed effectively killed radio, causing so many stations to all play the same homogeneous crap. Yahoo's system, and news in general reflect the same problem: following the money leads to this steaming pile of crap that a lot of people seem to hate. But there's another edge to this too. People who claim to be interested in specific subjects, or in meatier or niche news, are still drawn in to some of the vacuous material. So, nobody actually really wants a completely personalized news service; I'm convinced that that's one reason why jaanix hasn't made it big, while Reddit continues to steam along. People will tune Jaanix for the news feeds that they think they ought to like, and then they quit following it after a while because they'd actually rather click on all of the [pic]s on Reddit's front page.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

giardini 18y ago

Decades ago we used Kalman filtering in naval navigation systems - it was well-established engineering then (Rudolf E. Kalman developed his filter in 1960). The original article's title is somewhat misleading in that Kalman filtering isn't usually considered to be AI. But it's very nice to see this article anyway, if only to know that those old boat filters are creating Yahoo's home pages. Hey, it might even be the same code!8-)) [Tip to Yahoo: Speed 'er up to 23 knots and, if you start getting significant outliers, you've got a rounding problem in your matrix routines.]

LogicHoleFlaw 18y ago
One of my favorite stories from my grandfather was how he used Fourier transforms to calculate the weight of cotton on the fly as it was being processed in the machines he developed. This was high technology in the 60s!

giardini 18y ago

run4yourlives 18y ago

In other words, Yahoo! is making more money than ever from shameless celebrity gossip. My thoughts exactly. Rather sad though.