4 ms·

> it knows what is being said in those videos at the exact moment it is said. How did you think they did automated closed captioning..?

by johnfn 2y ago

slg 2y ago
I don't know why you quoted this snippet to ask this question when I addressed it literally in the next sentence of my original comment, but I guess I need to reiterate it. Automatic transcripts/ closed captioning suggest Google heard what was said. This feature suggests Google understands what was said. Think of it like reading a foreign language that uses the same alphabet. You can give me some French text and I can read it well enough for a French speaker to understand it. That doesn't mean that I myself understand what I read. Transcripts are the former and this feature is the latter.
- 8note 2y ago
  Does this feature suggest they understand what was said? I'd expect the button to light up at random times in a video about "smash the like button" causing the button to light up, rather than in the end call to action for the video where the video author actually wants the watcher to click the button. Similarly, I doubt it can properly understand when the video presenter implies the term "smash the like button" while instead say, leaving an empty space where they would usually say such a thing. If I pointed you at some french text and asked you to point at the term "le Chateau" you'd be able to do that without understanding french.
  - slg 2y ago
    Now this is just a semantic debate about whether a computer can even "understand" anything. The system is conditionally responding based upon the content of what was said. That indicates a level of sophistication in analyzing the content of the video that a transcript does not. I don't really care if you define that as "understanding" or not.
- pb7 2y ago
  Does it understand it or does it have a regex for "smash that subscribe button"?
  - dylan604 2y ago
    do you really think that Googs has implemented a regex for this little easter egg without parsing the rest of the content in a much more meaningful manner as the original comment is suggesting? i'm in agreement that the levels of what these platforms can infer about the content you consume is beyond creepy.
    - root_axis 2y ago
      Yes, because a regex match is cheap, easy and predictable. I don't see a reason why it needs to be any more complicated than that.
      - dylan604 2y ago
        but that's not how Googs makes money
        root_axis 2y ago
        What does that have to do with anything? The text transcript for the video already exists on the client, implementing this behavior is trivial with that in mind. Whatever creepy analysis YouTube is doing (which I don't doubt they are), this feature isn't evidence of it.
        dylan604 2y ago
        you honestly think that Googs spend the time and money to develop automatic transcription/translation for anything other than figuring out ad sales to videos? anything else they've done with it is just bonus features from the work on how to direct ads. how is that difficult to grok?
  - hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
- johnfn 2y ago
  The reason I didn't respond to the rest of your post is because I can't understand its relationship to your argument. There is no need for deeper understanding here. It's just a substring match.
  - slg 2y ago
    Ironically you seem to be focusing too much on the exact words and phrases I used rather than the deeper meaning. So let's just get completely away from words like "knows" and "understanding" which seem to be tripping multiple people up. > It's just a substring match. Let's just say this is true. That is a super simply process, but what would it look like? Step 1: Transcribe the audio into text Step 2: Run substring match on text The transcribing/close captioning feature only does step 1. This shows that a step 2 is possible. I think you would have to be naive to think the capability to do this type of analysis on the transcribed text was designed for only this feature and would never be used for anything else. This feature is announcing that Youtube isn't merely creating transcripts of the audio in videos, it is running some unknown amount of analysis on that data. As I said in my original comment, "it isn't that I didn't know Google had this ability", but this is literally a glowing sign pointing to this fact. I think the danger of Google reminding people of this has potential to outweigh the benefit of the "that's cute" reaction that this is designed to elicit.
    - jrvieira 2y ago
      so you're not so worried that they do this analysis (this is very tame comparing to what they really do), but rather that they are transparent about it?
    - johnfn 2y ago
      > I think you would have to be naive to think the capability to do this type of analysis on the transcribed text was designed for only this feature and would never be used for anything else. Why would you have to be naive to believe this? The subtitles, with timings, are available on the client-side already. You seem to allude that doing this work would require some sort of deep analysis work. I think it's really more like 5 lines of JS, and 4 of them are producing the fun animated gradient :P
- SirMaster 2y ago
  So you consider an if statement checking whether "like button" was present at that time in the CC to be the computer "understanding"?

> it knows what is being said in those videos at the exact moment it is said. How did you think they did automated closed captioning..?

by johnfn 2y ago

> it knows what is being said in those videos at the exact moment it is said. How did you think they did automated closed captioning..?

slg 2y ago

I don't know why you quoted this snippet to ask this question when I addressed it literally in the next sentence of my original comment, but I guess I need to reiterate it. Automatic transcripts/ closed captioning suggest Google heard what was said. This feature suggests Google understands what was said. Think of it like reading a foreign language that uses the same alphabet. You can give me some French text and I can read it well enough for a French speaker to understand it. That doesn't mean that I myself understand what I read. Transcripts are the former and this feature is the latter.

8note 2y ago
Does this feature suggest they understand what was said? I'd expect the button to light up at random times in a video about "smash the like button" causing the button to light up, rather than in the end call to action for the video where the video author actually wants the watcher to click the button. Similarly, I doubt it can properly understand when the video presenter implies the term "smash the like button" while instead say, leaving an empty space where they would usually say such a thing. If I pointed you at some french text and asked you to point at the term "le Chateau" you'd be able to do that without understanding french.
- slg 2y ago
  Now this is just a semantic debate about whether a computer can even "understand" anything. The system is conditionally responding based upon the content of what was said. That indicates a level of sophistication in analyzing the content of the video that a transcript does not. I don't really care if you define that as "understanding" or not.
pb7 2y ago
Does it understand it or does it have a regex for "smash that subscribe button"?
- dylan604 2y ago
  do you really think that Googs has implemented a regex for this little easter egg without parsing the rest of the content in a much more meaningful manner as the original comment is suggesting? i'm in agreement that the levels of what these platforms can infer about the content you consume is beyond creepy.
  - root_axis 2y ago
    Yes, because a regex match is cheap, easy and predictable. I don't see a reason why it needs to be any more complicated than that.
    - dylan604 2y ago
      but that's not how Googs makes money
      - root_axis 2y ago
        What does that have to do with anything? The text transcript for the video already exists on the client, implementing this behavior is trivial with that in mind. Whatever creepy analysis YouTube is doing (which I don't doubt they are), this feature isn't evidence of it.
        dylan604 2y ago
        you honestly think that Googs spend the time and money to develop automatic transcription/translation for anything other than figuring out ad sales to videos? anything else they've done with it is just bonus features from the work on how to direct ads. how is that difficult to grok?
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
johnfn 2y ago
The reason I didn't respond to the rest of your post is because I can't understand its relationship to your argument. There is no need for deeper understanding here. It's just a substring match.
- slg 2y ago
  Ironically you seem to be focusing too much on the exact words and phrases I used rather than the deeper meaning. So let's just get completely away from words like "knows" and "understanding" which seem to be tripping multiple people up. > It's just a substring match. Let's just say this is true. That is a super simply process, but what would it look like? Step 1: Transcribe the audio into text Step 2: Run substring match on text The transcribing/close captioning feature only does step 1. This shows that a step 2 is possible. I think you would have to be naive to think the capability to do this type of analysis on the transcribed text was designed for only this feature and would never be used for anything else. This feature is announcing that Youtube isn't merely creating transcripts of the audio in videos, it is running some unknown amount of analysis on that data. As I said in my original comment, "it isn't that I didn't know Google had this ability", but this is literally a glowing sign pointing to this fact. I think the danger of Google reminding people of this has potential to outweigh the benefit of the "that's cute" reaction that this is designed to elicit.
  - jrvieira 2y ago
    so you're not so worried that they do this analysis (this is very tame comparing to what they really do), but rather that they are transparent about it?
  - johnfn 2y ago
    > I think you would have to be naive to think the capability to do this type of analysis on the transcribed text was designed for only this feature and would never be used for anything else. Why would you have to be naive to believe this? The subtitles, with timings, are available on the client-side already. You seem to allude that doing this work would require some sort of deep analysis work. I think it's really more like 5 lines of JS, and 4 of them are producing the fun animated gradient :P
SirMaster 2y ago
So you consider an if statement checking whether "like button" was present at that time in the CC to be the computer "understanding"?