More about Bert: Will TikTok Videos Be Next?
May 28, 2021
Google asserts its new AI model will deliver significant improvements. SEO Hacker discusses “Google MUM: New Search Technology.” We are told MUM, or Multi Unified Model, is like BERT but much more powerful. We learn:
“They are built on the same Transformer architecture, but MUM is 1000x more powerful than its predecessor. … Another difference between MUM and BERT is that MUM is trained across 75 languages – not just one language (usually English). This enables the search engine, through the use of MUM, to connect information from all around the world without going through language barriers. Additionally, Google mentioned that MUM is multimodal, so it understands and processes information from modalities such as text and images. They also brought up the possibility for MUM to expand to other modalities such as videos and audio files.”
For an example of how the new model will work, see either the SEO Hacker write-up or Google’s blog post on the subject. The illustration involves Mt. Fuji. Naturally, the Search Engine Optimization site ponders how the change might affect SEO. Writer Sean Si predicts MUM’s understanding of 75 languages means non-English content will find much wider audiences. The revised algorithm will also serve up more types of content, like podcasts and videos, alongside text-based resources. Both of those sound like positives, at least for searchers. Other ramifications on the field remain to be seen, but Si anticipates SEO pros will have to develop entirely new approaches. Of course, producing quality content relevant to one’s site should remain the top recommendation.
Cynthia Murrell, May 28, 2021
Google and Local Laws: Compliance As a Hedge Against Uncontrollable Costs
May 27, 2021
I read “Google CEO Sundar Pichai on New Social Media Rules: Committed to Comply With Local Laws, Work Constructively.” At first, I thought, “Google is waking up and smelling the La Colombe Corsica Dark Roast.” Then I considered this statement in the write up:
“So, we fully expect governments rightfully to both scrutinize and adopt regulatory frameworks. Be it Europe with copyright directive or India with information regulation etc, we see it as a natural part of societies figuring out how to govern and adapt themselves in this technology-intensive world,” he said, adding that Google engages constructively with regulators around the world, and participates in these processes.
Sounds good but is this the beginning of a Google for the fracture-net?
Also, Google’s enthusiasm for conforming is a recent development. Google wanted to make the world a better place—once. A decade ago, Google seemed to suggest that China had to change the behavior of its government. That appears to have triggered a distancing of Google from China. Then the Dragonfly, China specific search system came and possibly went.
With regulators in a number of countries taking action to deal with US technology companies which prefer to break things and apologize after the fact, Google is adapting.
Why?
First, the cost of being Google is high and those costs are quite hard to control.
Second, Google’s grip on personal data and online advertising revenue is weakening with age. Amazon is in the game, and I have heard that product search remains Amazon’s go to horse for the Madison Avenue derby.
Third, Google has become Google because there has been [a] zero recognition of what the company does and [b] the thrill of Googling has blunted interest in regulating the company.
The same can be said of other US technology giants.
This article about the new Google is less about Google wanting to follow local laws and more about what Google has to do to maintain its revenue streams.
The costs of being Google are high in business and financial terms. The enthusiasm for going local is more about getting into certain markets and keeping the data and money flowing into Google. A failure to do this means that Google’s costs will become an interesting challenge for the high school science club’s management methods.
Stephen E Arnold, May 27, 2021
Google Ads: Helping Users and Developers. Oh, and Maybe Google Too?
May 27, 2021
How is Google changing? Ads everywhere. “Google Will Soon Allow Developers to Advertise Their Android Apps on the Desktop Search” reports about a problem and a very interesting solution:
App developers can face a hard time while trying to advertise their apps on the Google play store and get people to download them, for new developers promoting their app can be a hard battle if they don’t have the right budget and tools for it.
Keeping this problem in mind Google was quick to come up with a creative and really well thought of ideas and tools that will make it easier for developers to advertise their apps much better across the Google eco system.
Love that Chrome and its variants, don’t you? Here’s how the new ad centric revenue maker works:
The Ad campaign feature uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to evaluate and improve the advertisement campaigns, Google machine learning algorithm learns user behavior, location and previous searches which helps targeting the right audience for the advertisements. Now for the very first time Google will be releasing this feature on the desktop version of Google browser.
Web search continues to get better and better at providing Google with clever ways to generate revenue. Do developers have a choice? Sure, there’s the friendly Apple app store. You may not know much about it. Heck, Tim Apple doesn’t know much about how the business works either.
Google? Much simpler. Everything may become an ad. How about relevance? How about bias in smart software? How about that free search system and its super duper results?
Stephen E Arnold, May 27, 2021
Google DeepMind: Two High School Science Clubs Arm Wrestle
May 26, 2021
Not Fortnite vs Apple, not Spartans versus some people from the east, and definitely not Wladimir Klitschko fighting Deontay Wilder. Nope this dust up is Google Mountain View (the unit uses an icon of Jeff Dean as its identifier) against Google DeepMind (this science club uses an icon of a humiliated human Go master as its shibboleth).
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The Murdoch real news outfit published “”Google AI Unit Fails to Gain More Autonomy.” You can chase down the dead tree edition for May 22-23, 2021 or cough up some cash and read the report at this link. I noted this passage from the write up:
Senior managers at Google artificial-intelligence unit DeepMind have been negotiating for years with the parent company for more autonomy, seeking an independent legal structure for the sensitive research they do…Google called off those talks…The end of the long-running negotiations, which hasn’t previously been reported, is the latest example of how Google and other tech giants are trying to strengthen their control over the study and advancement of artificial intelligence.
The estimable Murdoch real news outfit notes:
Google bought the London-based startup for about $500 million. DeepMind has about 1,000 staff members, most of them researchers and engineers. In 2019, DeepMind’s pretax losses widened to £477 million, equivalent to about $660 million, according to the latest documents filed with the U.K.’s Companies House registry.
What are the stakes for the high school science club teams? A trophy or a demonstration of how bright people engaged in AI (whatever that means) manifest their software vision?
Several observations:
- Money losing gives the Mountain View team an advantage
- “Winning” in the mercurial field of smart software depends on the data fed into the algorithms. Humans – particularly science club members – can be somewhat subjective, unpredictable, and – dare I say the word – illogical
- The DeepMind science club team appears to value what might be called non-commercial thoughts about smart software. (Smart software, it seems, can be trained like a pigeon to perform in interesting ways, at least according to my psychology textbook which I studied a half century ago. Yep, pigeons. A powerful metaphor too.
This David versus Goliath fight is a facet of the fantastic management acumen demonstrated in the Mountain View handling of ethical AI staff. (Google’s power may have reached the US TV show which reported about AI “issues” without mentioning the standard bearer of algorithmic bias. Does the name Dr. Timnit Gebru sound familiar? It apparently did not to the “60 Minutes” producer.
Net net: Both science club teams are likely to be losers. The victor may be dissenting staff who quit and write about the Google’s scintillating management methods. I expect some start ups to emerge from the staff departures. Venture funds like opportunities. I do like the icons for each team. Are their coffee mugs and T shirts available?
This intra AI tussle may not amount to anything, right?
Stephen E Arnold, May 26, 2021
The Country Russia and the Company Google: Fair Fight?
May 25, 2021
Sergey Brin’s flight to space did not blast off. Now it seems that Google’s business is mired in a mere nation state’s regulatory bureaucracy. What’s galactic Google to do when a country refuses to be Googley? “Russia Orders Google to Delete Illegal Content or Face Slowdowns” states that Russia’s:
Roskomnadzor internet commission gave the company 24 hours to delete more than 26,000 instances of what it’s classifying as illegal content. If Google doesn’t comply with the order, it could face fines valued at up to 10 percent of its annual revenue, in addition to seeing its services slowed down within the country. The agency has also accused Google of censoring Russian media outlets, including state-owned entities like RT and Sputnik.
Google played a mean game of Boogalah in Australia. I am not sure which combatant triumphed. The upcoming content with the Bear may be more challenging than tossing around a ball covered in kangaroo skin. Hockey and vodka drinking are among the more popular sports in Yakutsk I have heard.
Will Sundar Pichai travel to Russia and perhaps bond with Mr. Putin when he goes camping or horse back riding? I can visualize the two bonding over a camp fire or enjoying a ride about 150 miles northeast of Moscow.
The article explains that Russia has been less than thrilled with some US high technology companies. Furthermore, the country’s government remains squarely focused on earth and has not been willing to kneel before outfits which are galactic.
Getting into a dust up with Russia might be a reason to hire someone to check food deliveries to the Googleplex.
Stephen E Arnold, May 28, 2021
Another Way to Inject Ads into Semi-Relevant Content?
May 25, 2021
It looks like better search is just around the corner. Again. MIT Technology Review proclaims, “Language Models Like GPT-3 Could Herald a New Type of Search Engine.” Google’s PageRank has reigned over online search for over two decades. Even today’s AI search tech works as a complement to that system, used to rank results or better interpret queries. Now Googley researchers suggest a way to replace the ranking system altogether with an AI language model. This new technology would serve up direct answers to user queries instead of supplying a list of sources. Writer Will Douglas Heaven explains:
“The problem is that even the best search engines today still respond with a list of documents that include the information asked for, not with the information itself. Search engines are also not good at responding to queries that require answers drawn from multiple sources. It’s as if you asked your doctor for advice and received a list of articles to read instead of a straight answer. Metzler and his colleagues are interested in a search engine that behaves like a human expert. It should produce answers in natural language, synthesized from more than one document, and back up its answers with references to supporting evidence, as Wikipedia articles aim to do. Large language models get us part of the way there. Trained on most of the web and hundreds of books, GPT-3 draws information from multiple sources to answer questions in natural language. The problem is that it does not keep track of those sources and cannot provide evidence for its answers. There’s no way to tell if GPT-3 is parroting trustworthy information or disinformation—or simply spewing nonsense of its own making.”
The next step, then, is to train the AI to keep track of its sources when it formulates answers. We are told no models are yet able to do this, but it should be possible to develop that capability. The researchers also note the thorny problem of AI bias will have to be addressed for this approach to be viable. Furthermore, as search expert Ziqi Zhang at the University of Sheffield points out, technical and specialist topics often stump language models because there is far less relevant text on which to train them. His example—there is much more data online about e-commerce than quantum mechanics.
Then there are the physical limitations. Natural-language researcher Hanna Hajishirzi at the University of Washington warns the shift to such large language models would gobble up vast amounts of memory and computational resources. For this reason, she believes a language model will not be able to supplant indexing. Which researchers are correct? We will find out eventually. That is ok, we are used to getting ever less relevant search results.
Cynthia Murrell, May 25, 2021
Google Smart Software: Bert and Ernie Subbed for Joe Fourier
May 24, 2021
The story “Google Replaces Bert Self Attention with Fourier Transform: 92% Accuracy, 7 Times Faster on GPUs” may be more smart software hog wash. Against the colorful background of Google’s artificial intelligence melodrama, now Bert (shorthand for the wonderfully named Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) has some flaws. It seems accuracy and performance are among the ones which caught someone’s attention at the Google.
What’s up next?
The 19th century methods of Joe Fourier, who dabbled in fancy math in the 18th and 19th century until his vibrations petered out in 1830. Joe may be gone, but this math has new life. Why? Bert, it appears, was not exactly a high performer in the 100 meter sprints needed to make ad centric smart software work.
The write up is filled with jargon. That’s okay since anyone who reads about Fourier transforms knows something about the methods. However, what’s left out is an explanation of how the DeepMind research team has reacted to the Sesame Street infused acronym.
My hunch is that there are some sharp differences of opinion because, well, Google, smart software, algorithmic issues, and management methods.
Stephen E Arnold, May 24, 2021
Google: Technology Which Some Day Will Be Error Corrected But In the Meantime?
May 20, 2021
I read “Can Google Really Build a Practical Quantum Computer by 2029?” which is based on the Google announcements at its developers’ conference. The article reports:
… the most interesting news we heard at I/O has to be the announcement that Google intends to build a new quantum AI center in Santa Barbara where the company says it will produce a “useful, error-corrected quantum computer” by 2029.
Didn’t Google announce “quantum supremacy” some time ago? This is an assertion which China appears to dispute. See “Google and China Duke It Out over Quantum Supremacy.” Let’s assume Google is the supremo of quantumness. It stands to reason that the technology would be tamed by Googlers. With smart software and quantum supremacy, what’s with the 96-month timelines for “a useful” quantum computer?
Then I came across a news item from Fox10 in Arizona. The TV station’s story “Driverless Waymo Taxi Gets Stuck in Chandler Traffic, Runs from Support Crew” suggests that a Google infused smart auto got confused and then tried to get away from the Googlers who were providing “support.” That’s a very non-Google word “support.” The write up asserts:
A driverless Waymo taxi was caught on camera going rogue on a Chandler intersection near a construction site last week. The company told the passenger at the time that the vehicle was confused with cones blocking a lane.
The Google support team lifted off. Upon arrival, the smart taxi with a humanoid in the vehicle “decided to make for a quick getaway.”
According to Business Insider, “Waymo issued a statement that it has assessed the event and used it to improve future rides.” If you want to watch smart software and the incident, you can navigate to this YouTube link (YouTube videos can be disappeared, so no guarantees that the video will remain on the Googley service.)
Amusing. Independent, easily confused smart Google vehicles and error-corrected quantum computers. Soon. Perhaps both the Waymo capabilities and the quantum supremacy are expensive high school science club experiments which may not work in way that the hapless rider in the errant Waymo taxi would describe as “error corrected”?
Stephen E Arnold, May 20, 2021
Surprise! Prabhakar Raghavan Runs Google
May 20, 2021
The revelation that the Google boss is Prabhakar Raghavan, a former Verity executive who jumped to Yahoo and bounced into Google. The article/interview “Prabhakar Raghavan Isn’t CEO of Google—He Just Runs the Place” is an entertaining romp through search and a number of other topics. Please, read the interview. I want to highlight three statements from the article and offer a few observations.
Dr. Raghavan is quoted as saying:
Even now, with all the resources of Alphabet, if you remove one of the biggest constraints, such as competition, the problem doesn’t become easier.
My interpretation of this statement is that Dr. Raghavan has admitted that Google has no competition. Perhaps the “if” is the word that allows my conclusion to be disputed. Nevertheless, search is tough; there’s no competition; and the first page of most query results are ads and Google-ized content. “Objective” and relevant search results may appear on subsequent results pages. Hunting for the optimal result is as tedious as digging through the pages of the paper version of the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature circa 1964.
Here’s another interesting statement:
For instance, if you ask, “What’s today’s weather?” I show you a module of the weather, I don’t send you off somewhere else.
I think this means that Google engineers stickiness into its search results. Google does not want the user to click away and possibly not enjoy more Googley goodness. Over the years, the stickiness has ossified into what is a walled garden. Google caches the most clicked on content and serves it from a point close to the user. The originating site is not involved in some cases. The walled garden is replacing Wild West swinging doors with those one-way doors found in secure facilities. Easy in but no way out.
My final circled item from the article/interview was:
There is no circumstance under which I would say let’s toss that out and become a conventional company, because that is not what is going to lead us to innovate and serve humanity.
Google does not want to be conventional.
Interesting. Google seems to be evolving into an entity which has not been seen for decades: A quasi-country which operates in a way that gives it as much control over what information flows as an old-fashioned dictatorship. The list of Google prohibited words is fascinating. The banned creators on YouTube is varied and evolving. The company’s approach to innovation is “me to, me to”. The short attention span for products and services is a challenge to developers.
How will Google fare in the harsh light of more legal scrutiny? Will Google’s handling of “ethical AI” become the standard for the emerging smart software sector? Will the learnings imparted at Verity transfer to the Google environment? Will Google deliver relevant search results without the curve balls that seem to be the go-to pitch for the core service?
No answers are available for these questions. Maybe in the next round of European Union and US legal activities.
Stephen E Arnold, May 20, 2021
Google Says, Roku You!
May 19, 2021
YouTube TV is a popular streaming service accessible through various sling boxes a.k.a. carriages. Apple TV, Amazon Fire, and Roku are the top carriages that offer YouTube TV. Roku, however, could soon be off that list says Android Police in: “Google Tells YouTube TV Customers To Spam Roku Support.”
Google owns YouTube and its affiliate TV streaming service and the search engine giant is pursuing a new contract with Roku. Google wants Roku to push YouTube TV to the front of its interface. Roku, however, claims Google is using its monopoly power to force them into a new contract.
“…Google is looking to position YouTube as the premier streaming destination on Roku, requesting a dedicated search page, boosted music results, and a full block on search returns from other sources while the YouTube app is open. In perhaps its most brazen move, the company has reportedly asked Roku to meet specific hardware requirements to continue carrying its apps. On paper, none of these demands have anything to do with YouTube TV. Instead, Roku alleges that Google is using negotiations for its cable streaming service to gain leverage for YouTube as a whole, a move labeled “anticompetitive” in this morning’s email.”
Roku reasonably requests its users to petition Google to keep YouTube TV on its carriage. Google denies that it wants access to user data or it would interfere with search results. They also told YouTube TV subscribers to message Roku’s customer support in order to keep the cable alternative.
Bicker, bicker, bicker. Google wants more power over Roku, but the company will not cave. Solution: Just stick the YouTube TV thing into the YouTube free thing. That’s a “Roku you” for sure.
Whitney Grace, May 19, 2021
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