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I disagree. We've already passed the tipping point for tech, and investment will continue to accelerate. This is true for various form of artificial intelligen

I disagree. We've already passed the tipping point for tech, and investment will continue to accelerate. This is true for various form of artificial intelligence, and the rest of tech. Businesses in general started to see the appeal around the time that the Google Assistant, Cortana, Alexa and Siri started to become actually useful and desired by the general public. Because of that, there will continue to be a push to extend and enhance those capabilities. The current systems can turn a normally worded question into a web search, and present the results in a pleasing manner. The next step is to extend the ability of the systems to actually understand wider and wider ranges of questions. We are still a ways away from having free-flowing conversations with our computers, but there are many steps along the way that are useful of themselves. Advancing this technology is a competitive advantage, and becomes key to drawing in and keeping people in one of the various tech ecosystems (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple). In the wider business world, people are finding new and better ways to apply this technology.

PuppyTailWags 4y ago
I disagree current systems can turn a web search that presents results in a pleasing manner. I had a horrible time trying to find a specific musician's work on YouTube just last night. It kept recommending me completely unrelated vids as if I was browsing just to browse. It couldn't seem to comprehend that even though I usually watch cute cat videos today I am searching for music, even when I was exact quoting the author's name. I think technology has shifted from giving me what I want to telling me what I want. I really dislike it.
- foobarian 4y ago
  The current Alexa experience is like guessing the syntax in the early 90s adventure games. It's horrible :-)
  - bornfreddy 4y ago
    But man does it feel good when you guess correctly. :-)
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    Wait, has anyone made audio interactive fiction on Alexa? Sounds like a killer app for those who've played text adventures.
- Rury 4y ago
  I think a part of this problem is just simply a matter of scale. As more and more information gets generated and stored on the internet, finding the information you exactly need in 3-5 words typed into a search engine at some point just ceases to become probable or even possible. So search engines have to predict what you want based upon the limited information you give it (and does this using others things such as how often something is visited, search patterns, trends, and/or related promotions), and you end up perceiving it as it telling you what you want. Sadly giving a search engine too many words can stop it from even searching, probably because that would cause a scan or result in a very time and computer/resource intensive search. So it doesn't even bother searching and tells you it couldn't find anything.
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  You answered yourself in the last sentence. Google's algorithm is designed to maximize their add return not to immediately return what you are searching for. Imagine this use case. User searches for a video that costs Youtube royalty fees and is not monetized. Do you prioritize that in your return results or some other video that makes your business money instead of costing it? Same thing with the Spotify Company playlists and recommendations versus user generated ones. Spotify's seems to include lesser quality, lower royalty songs now even though that is not what I want and it knows it. But unlike Google, I only go to Spotify BECAUSE of the quality of the songs it recommends me. Now that it's priority is first lower royalty songs over songs it things I would like the most I have no incentive to stay.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  I think technology has shifted from giving me what I want to telling me what I want. Underrated insight
time_to_smile 4y ago
Huge amounts of our current tech industry have yet to prove they can even make a profit. I'm pretty sure than in a few more months we'll find out they can't. I work for a fairly large, fairly successful company and I'm having to explain to my team how to quantify the business value of a product, like showing that the value provided to customer in terms of dollars is greater than the cost of the service we provide. It's an uphill battle, because we've lived in a bubble so long people don't even remember this basic fundamental of business. The tech industry exploded because of cheap money, but by and large has completely failed to extract actual value from the technology. Even when I list out the "tech" products I do use frequently (Uber, Door Dash and the like) I realize that the products they offer are basically investor charity since they cannot be sustained indefinitely at the price point they're offered (and they don't make sense if they charge more). Of the actual technology I use, the vast majority has barely changed in a decade. The most impressive thing I've purchased in years is finally getting an RTX 3070 and that is just "neat!". Anyone who remembers the release of the original iPhone will instantly recognize that despite the trillions spend in the tech industry, nothing quite as game changing as that has come out since. Google search was also better back then.
varispeed 4y ago
> The current systems can turn a normally worded question into a web search, and present the results in a pleasing manner. Pleasing but not useful. I really miss Google search from 10 years ago. I think things started going downhill when they introduced the instant search feature. Nowadays it's difficult to find anything. The results are mostly irrelevant and littered with spam and AI written nonsense. I remember I could go through hundreds of result pages and find useful things on the tail end, now quite often I get one page only and nothing is relevant to my search term. I have to often use quotation marks etc, but even that stops being helpful - basically more often than not I get no results at all.

PuppyTailWags 4y ago

I disagree current systems can turn a web search that presents results in a pleasing manner. I had a horrible time trying to find a specific musician's work on YouTube just last night. It kept recommending me completely unrelated vids as if I was browsing just to browse. It couldn't seem to comprehend that even though I usually watch cute cat videos today I am searching for music, even when I was exact quoting the author's name. I think technology has shifted from giving me what I want to telling me what I want. I really dislike it.

foobarian 4y ago
The current Alexa experience is like guessing the syntax in the early 90s adventure games. It's horrible :-)
- bornfreddy 4y ago
  But man does it feel good when you guess correctly. :-)
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  Wait, has anyone made audio interactive fiction on Alexa? Sounds like a killer app for those who've played text adventures.
Rury 4y ago
I think a part of this problem is just simply a matter of scale. As more and more information gets generated and stored on the internet, finding the information you exactly need in 3-5 words typed into a search engine at some point just ceases to become probable or even possible. So search engines have to predict what you want based upon the limited information you give it (and does this using others things such as how often something is visited, search patterns, trends, and/or related promotions), and you end up perceiving it as it telling you what you want. Sadly giving a search engine too many words can stop it from even searching, probably because that would cause a scan or result in a very time and computer/resource intensive search. So it doesn't even bother searching and tells you it couldn't find anything.
ROTMetro 4y ago
You answered yourself in the last sentence. Google's algorithm is designed to maximize their add return not to immediately return what you are searching for. Imagine this use case. User searches for a video that costs Youtube royalty fees and is not monetized. Do you prioritize that in your return results or some other video that makes your business money instead of costing it? Same thing with the Spotify Company playlists and recommendations versus user generated ones. Spotify's seems to include lesser quality, lower royalty songs now even though that is not what I want and it knows it. But unlike Google, I only go to Spotify BECAUSE of the quality of the songs it recommends me. Now that it's priority is first lower royalty songs over songs it things I would like the most I have no incentive to stay.
anigbrowl 4y ago
I think technology has shifted from giving me what I want to telling me what I want. Underrated insight

time_to_smile 4y ago

Huge amounts of our current tech industry have yet to prove they can even make a profit. I'm pretty sure than in a few more months we'll find out they can't. I work for a fairly large, fairly successful company and I'm having to explain to my team how to quantify the business value of a product, like showing that the value provided to customer in terms of dollars is greater than the cost of the service we provide. It's an uphill battle, because we've lived in a bubble so long people don't even remember this basic fundamental of business. The tech industry exploded because of cheap money, but by and large has completely failed to extract actual value from the technology. Even when I list out the "tech" products I do use frequently (Uber, Door Dash and the like) I realize that the products they offer are basically investor charity since they cannot be sustained indefinitely at the price point they're offered (and they don't make sense if they charge more). Of the actual technology I use, the vast majority has barely changed in a decade. The most impressive thing I've purchased in years is finally getting an RTX 3070 and that is just "neat!". Anyone who remembers the release of the original iPhone will instantly recognize that despite the trillions spend in the tech industry, nothing quite as game changing as that has come out since. Google search was also better back then.

varispeed 4y ago

> The current systems can turn a normally worded question into a web search, and present the results in a pleasing manner. Pleasing but not useful. I really miss Google search from 10 years ago. I think things started going downhill when they introduced the instant search feature. Nowadays it's difficult to find anything. The results are mostly irrelevant and littered with spam and AI written nonsense. I remember I could go through hundreds of result pages and find useful things on the tail end, now quite often I get one page only and nothing is relevant to my search term. I have to often use quotation marks etc, but even that stops being helpful - basically more often than not I get no results at all.