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counterpoint; separating the wheat from the chaff is already terribly difficult, and perhaps this will provide the necessary motivation to produce an effective

counterpoint; separating the wheat from the chaff is already terribly difficult, and perhaps this will provide the necessary motivation to produce an effective method of doing so. Google, once upon a time, solved a similar problem. With all the information on the internet, how do you find the good stuff? The relevant stuff? I don't think it does this job at the moment - and perhaps flooding the world with content will create the conditions for the next major disruptor to create something that actually works rather than this ad-bloated nonsense we have now. It already takes a ton of my time seeking out books and other media that align with what I want. Humans have done a spectacular job of creating stuff that's minimally acceptable to make a sale. AI isn't creating the problem you're talking about, even if it is making it worse. Perhaps it will become bad enough that it becomes worthwhile to fix.

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
The fix for the flood of crappy Chinese products so far has been recommendation engines. And those are gamed (Amazon reviews, goodreads comments, etc)… so no fix yet.
- pksebben 4y ago
  Yep. Part of the problem is the set of incentives surrounding these huge centralized databases of consumer preference - the folks holding the reins have no reason to fix the situation because they make money off the circumstances as well. This was effectively the situation with the internet when the Goog came in and wrecked everyone's cash cow - because it was valuable enough to take the hit and prospect for future value to undermine the status quo. I see two ways to break the current stalemate: - Some 'new google' comes by and does to google what google did to Yahoo et al. - Somebody creates a system that does the same job, but distributed. You control your recommendation algorithm, so you can prune it as you want. I really really want the second one, but I haven't yet figured out how one would get the necessary data. There's a bootstrapping problem here - in order for recommendation algorithms to work, you need a ton of folks creating data for them. In order to get those folks, you would need to have a good enough recommendation algorithm to attract them. I'm wondering now, though, if data on user preferences is for sale somewhere. Like, if I wanted to bootstrap such a system, is there some adtech business somewhere that has information on what books / music / etc people like, and how much would it cost to get that in there? But now, of course, because you're looking at spending a bunch of money to bootstrap - you're hobbled by the need to be profitable to make that back. Stuck in Trapitalism.

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago

The fix for the flood of crappy Chinese products so far has been recommendation engines. And those are gamed (Amazon reviews, goodreads comments, etc)… so no fix yet.

pksebben 4y ago
Yep. Part of the problem is the set of incentives surrounding these huge centralized databases of consumer preference - the folks holding the reins have no reason to fix the situation because they make money off the circumstances as well. This was effectively the situation with the internet when the Goog came in and wrecked everyone's cash cow - because it was valuable enough to take the hit and prospect for future value to undermine the status quo. I see two ways to break the current stalemate: - Some 'new google' comes by and does to google what google did to Yahoo et al. - Somebody creates a system that does the same job, but distributed. You control your recommendation algorithm, so you can prune it as you want. I really really want the second one, but I haven't yet figured out how one would get the necessary data. There's a bootstrapping problem here - in order for recommendation algorithms to work, you need a ton of folks creating data for them. In order to get those folks, you would need to have a good enough recommendation algorithm to attract them. I'm wondering now, though, if data on user preferences is for sale somewhere. Like, if I wanted to bootstrap such a system, is there some adtech business somewhere that has information on what books / music / etc people like, and how much would it cost to get that in there? But now, of course, because you're looking at spending a bunch of money to bootstrap - you're hobbled by the need to be profitable to make that back. Stuck in Trapitalism.