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A couple of weeks ago, I became aware of a shift in techno babble. Here are some examples and their sources:
Fire-and-forget. Shoot a missile and smart software does the rest… when necessary. Source: War News
Hyperedge replacement graph grammars (HRGs). A baffler. Source: Something called NEURIPS
Performative. I think this means go fast or complete a task in a better way. Source: Mashable
Proceleration. The Age of Earthquakes.
Tangential content. The idea is that information does not have to be related; for example, if you write about car polish for a living, including articles about zebras is a good thing. Source: Next Web
Transition from pets to cattle. Moving from the status of a beloved poodle to a single, soon to be eaten bovine. Source: Amazon AWS
Fascinating terminology. Time for digital detox and maybe red tagging. No, I don’t know what these terms means either. I assume that vendors of smart software which can learn without human fiddling knows these terms and many more because of experience intelligence platforms.
Stephen E Arnold, January 6, 2021
Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Marketing, News, Semantic | Comments Off on Marketing Insight or Marketing Desperation?
I read “Why We’re Posting about Misinformation More Than Ever.” I am not going to work through the Silicon Valley MBA, jargon fest. The informing idea for the essay may be this statement:
Neither the media nor fact-checkers controlled the online conversation surrounding “misinformation” this year.
I am tempted to ask, “Who appointed media and fact checkers as the arbiters of truth”? But, no, I will not ask this question.
Instead I will focus on the big concept of a single online publication dog paddling with enthusiasm to generate revenue, writing about misinformation.
I want to ask several questions and perhaps an enthusiastic Silicon Valley MBA thumb typer or a graduate of a up market journalism school will answer each. Here we go:
- Is Vox is writing about misinformation because Vox is outputting misinformation? The skewed output is similar to a Google results list just powered by humans, not algorithm magic.
- Does Vox wants clicks because clicks generate the desirable pile of money?
- Does Vox believe that technology is now the fabric of modern life; therefore, politics, specious write ups about what a company should do, and trying really hard to become more than an online information service is the path to influence?
Standing by.
Stephen E Arnold, December 30, 2020
Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Marketing, News | Comments Off on Misinformation: Semi-Explained
I spotted “What AlphaGo Can Teach Us About How People Learn.” The subtitle is Google friendly:
David Silver of DeepMind, who helped create the program that defeated a Go champion, thinks rewards are central to how machines—and humans—acquire knowledge.
The write up contains a number of interesting statements. You will want to work through the essay and excavate those which cause your truth meter to vibrate with excitement. I noted this segment:
I don’t want to put a timescale on it [general artificial intelligence], but I would say that everything that a human can achieve, I ultimately think that a machine can. The brain is a computational process, I don’t think there’s any magic going on there.
I noted the “everything.” That’s an encompassing term. In fact, the term “everything” effectively means the old saw from Paradise Lost”
O sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams, That bring to my remembrance from what state I fell; how glorious once above thy sphere; Till pride and worse ambition threw me down, Warring in heaven against heaven’s matchless King. (IV, 37–41)
I also noted this Venture Beat write up called “DeepMind’s Big Losses and the Questions around Running an AI Lab.” The MBA speak cannot occlude this factoid (which I assume is close enough for horse shoes):
According to its annual report filed with the UK’s Companies House register, DeepMind has more than doubled its revenue, raking in £266 million in 2019, up from £103 million in 2018. But the company’s expenses continue to grow as well, increasing from £568 million in 2018 to £717 in 2019. The overall losses of the company grew from £470 million in 2018 to £477 million in 2019.
Doing “everything” does seem to be expensive. It was expensive for IBM to get Watson on the Jeopardy show. Google has pumped money into DeepMind to nuke a hapless human Go player.
I also noted this write up: “Google Told Scientists to Use a Positive Tone in AI Research, Documents Show.” I noted this passage:
Four staff researchers, including the senior scientist Margaret Mitchell, said they believe Google is starting to interfere with crucial studies of potential technology harms.
Beyond Search believes that these write ups make clear:
- Google is in the midst of a public relations offensive. Perhaps it is more of a singularity than Google’s announcements about quantum computing. My hunch is that Timnit Gebru’s experience may be an example of Google-entanglement.
- Google is trotting out the big dogs to provide an explainer about “everything.” Wait. Isn’t that a logical impossibility like the Godel thing?
- Google is in the midst of another high school science club management moment. The effort is amusing in a high school science club way.
Net net: My take is that Google announced that it would “solve death.” This did not happen. “Everything”, therefore, is another example of the Arnold Law of Online: “Online fosters a perception that one is infallible, infinite, and everlasting.” Would anyone wager some silver on the veracity of my Law?
Stephen E Arnold, December 28, 2020
Wow, I had almost forgotten that IBM Watson was going to be a $1 billion business back in 2014. How quickly some forget that Lucene, home brew code, and acquisitions blended with science fiction? In 2017, the former Big Blue executive said in the Harvard Business Review:
“Watson will touch one billion people by the end of this year.”
Touch is not generate $1 billion and more in sustainable revenues. Nope, Watson failed in cancer, did zippo to fight Covid, and did create some memorable full page ads like the weird chemical structure thing in 2015:
Yeah, building blocks of cognitive software.
“IBM Sets Its NLP Ambitions High With New Capabilities In Watson” explains that IBM is making progress. Note this statement:
While recent announcements by IBM focus around language, explainability, and workplace automation, the update around its language capabilities include reading comprehension, FAQ extraction and improving interactions in Watson Assistant. All these products aim to bring resilience, productivity and value for enterprises.
I like the explainability. Why not explain why the supercomputer Covid drug analysis did not generate a usable output, defaulting to a long list of “maybe these will work drugs” for humans to figure out what would work and what would not. Helpful in a time of crisis.
I don’t want to dwell on the implications that IBM Watson can now understand what humanoids write, particularly in short, cryptic WhatsApp messages about an illegal transaction. Let me quote one dollop of pink confectioner’s sugar paste:
…the company also announced a new intent classification model in IBM Watson Assistant, which is aimed at understanding an end user’s goal or intent behind engaging with the virtual assistant. It will then be used to train the systems accordingly while enabling greater accuracy in virtual assistants.
With a new president, I thought that the old IBM over hyped cognitive PR squibs had been retired for Ms. Rometty to oversee.
Wrong.
IBM is back in the hyperbole game. Let’s ask Watson. On second thought, nah.
Stephen E Arnold, December 23, 2020
Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under IBM Watson, Marketing, News | Comments Off on IBM Watson: More Promises after Previous Promises. Will IBM Deliver This Time?
I read “Expanding Our Global Footprint with New Cloud Regions.” I skipped most of the announcements about data centers and zoomed to this statement:
The cleanest cloud in the industry. We do all of this while operating the cleanest cloud in the industry, matching 100 percent of the electricity we use with renewable energy. This commitment to sustainability enables our customers to meet their own cloud computing needs with zero net carbon emissions. You can learn more about our global infrastructure, including new and upcoming regions, here.
Okay, clean cloud, no dolphin skin lesion causing actions, no birds into wind farm blades, and no hot exhaust to fricassee feathered friends.
I ran three Google searches on a system which I assume runs on the clean Google cloud. Here are the results of each query:
1. Vegas 18 crack. The clean Google cloud result:
2. Cannabis online. The clean Google cloud result:
3. Hand gun suppressor. The clean Google cloud result:
After running these three queries on the clean Google cloud, one of the researchers working for me, said, “I don’t think your interpretation of the word clean is what Google meant?”
I looked at the researcher and replied, “Clean is clean, right?”
What’s clean mean to you gentle reader, saving the planet with giant data centers or making it easy for anyone to locate stolen software, potential contraband, and silencers for weapons?
I remain baffled about the clean cloud phrase. Presumably Amazon, HP, IBM, and Microsoft are not clean. I am struggling. Time for more marketing from Googlers I assume.
Stephen E Arnold, December 22, 2020
Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Google, Marketing, News | Comments Off on Google Outmarkets Cloud Competitors
Okay, okay, I am not sure if this story is accurate, but it certainly is interesting. Navigate to “Microsoft President Blames Israeli Company for Rash of Cyberattacks, Wants Biden to Intervene.” The write up reports:
Smith [the Microsoft president] has suggested that NSO Group and similar companies are “a new generation of private companies akin to 21st-century mercenaries” who generate “cyber-attack proliferation to other governments that have the money but not the people to create their own weapons. In short, it adds another significant element to the cybersecurity threat landscape.”
If accurate, Mr. Smith may want to validate that industrial strength cyber tools are available from code dumps from other specialized software vendors, downloadable via Microsoft’s own Github, penetration testing tool developers and the third parties creating add on kits to these software, and on certain fora on either encrypted messaging platforms or the handful of remaining Dark Web sites which allow authorized users to buy or download exploits.
In the galaxy of specialized software firms, NSO Group has been illuminated due to its emergence as a PR magnet and the business set up of the company itself. However, there are other specialized software vendors and there are other sources of code, libraries, and information to guide the would be bad actor.
Microsoft itself suffered a security breach and promptly (after five or six months) took action. The company published a report. Now Microsoft is acting to focus attention on a company which may or may not have had an impact on the supply chain matter involving SolarWinds and possibly other cyber security firms.
This Microsoft assertion is almost as interesting as the death star response to the incident.
But the kicker is this report form Techradar: “Microsoft Azure Breach Left Thousands of Customer Records Exposed.” If correct, this statement seems to suggest that Microsoft is into shifting blame:
Thanks to questionable security practices by an app developer, more than half a million sensitive documents of its customers were exposed on the Internet. The documents were housed in an unprotected Microsoft Azure blob storage and could be viewed by anyone with the direct address of the files, without any kind of authentication.
Okay.
Stephen E Arnold, December 21, 2020
You may not remember, but I do. Like yesterday. I wrote an analysis for the late, highly regarded financial services firm and contract bridge epicenter BearStearns. The document was published more than a decade ago. Two things happened. Google immediately rolled out a special event to announce universal search. I heard that the name morphed into unified search and then federated search among some Googlers. The idea is that a user runs a query and expects the content of which he or she is aware will be in the results. Ho ho ho. The merrie search elves know that even at the mighty Google one must search silos of data. Universal, unified, federated. That’s like a Dark Web vendor posting 1 800 YOU WISH as the customer support number for bogus contraband.
Imagine my surprise when I noted this Amazon post:
Announcing Unified Search in the AWS Management Console
Universal, unified, whatever. I find it fascinating how search related terminology comes into vogue and falls out of favor only to return in a weird but actually identifiable Kondratiev waves. Examples include:
- Inference (nifty but there was a search vendor called Inference now essentially forgotten)
- Boolean which several vendors have resurrected after thumbtypers declared the method dead
- indexing now creeping back into favor after metadata and enrichment have not moved the needle for jargon recycling.
Yep, unified. Much better than “federated”, of course. Remember Vivisimo? I sort of do, but IBM repositioned it as some whizzy part of Watson. Is search at AWS or anywhere for that matter what the user expects. Ho ho ho say the merrie search elves. Ho ho ho. That’s a good one.
Stephen E Arnold, December 16, 2020
Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Marketing, News, Search | Comments Off on Amazon Uses Googley Phrase Which Also Was Mostly Marketing Hoo Hah
I noted that China has out-Googled Google in the quantum supremacy horse race. The “real” news outfit South China Morning Post published “China Claims Quantum Computing Lead with Jiuzhang photon Test, Creating Machine One Trillion Times Faster Than Next Best Supercomputer.” I spotted this emission from Intel, the fabrication super company: Intel Debuts 2nd-Gen Horse Ridge Cryogenic Quantum Control Chip.
The question that came to me was:
Do the Jiuzhang engineers use Intel’s Horse Ridge?
I don’t know.
There were two thoughts which surfaced as I read these articles:
- Google has been either equaled or surpassed by China
- Intel’s quantum computing announcements seem out of step; for example:“With Horse Ridge II, Intel continues to lead innovation in the field of quantum cryogenic controls, drawing from our deep interdisciplinary expertise bench across the Integrated Circuit design, Labs and Technology Development teams. We believe that increasing the number of qubits without addressing the resulting wiring complexities is akin to owning a sports car, but constantly being stuck in traffic. Horse Ridge II further streamlines quantum circuit controls, and we expect this progress to deliver increased fidelity and decreased power output, bringing us one step closer toward the development of a ‘traffic-free’ integrated quantum circuit.” –Jim Clarke, Intel director of Quantum Hardware, Components Research Group, Intel
Quantum computing is a lightning rod for claims about supremacy and a convenient band wagon for companies take for a ride. (I really want to say “horse ride” but I will not. I shall trot peacefully along.)
Stephen E Arnold, December 9, 2020
Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Marketing, News, Technology | Comments Off on Intel Whips Its Quantum PR to Horse Ridge II
I read a weird content marketing, predicting the future article called “OpenText CEO: Organizations Must Rethink Approach to Business, Technology.” OpenText is interesting for a number of reasons. It is a Canadian outfit. The company owns more search and retrieval systems than one can remember. Fulcrum, BRS, Dr. Tim Bray’s SGML search, and others. There are content management systems which once shipped with an Autonomy stub. I dimly recall that OpenText was into Hummingbird and maybe Information Dimensions too.
Wow.
Now a company which ostensibly sells content management is suggesting that there is a “new equilibrium” on deck for 2021 is fascinating. I am not sure about the old equilibrium which seemed slightly crazy to me, but, hey, I am just reading what a Canadian outfit sees coming. I would prefer that the said Canadian outfit invest in enhancing the technologies it has, but I am flawed. That’s probably part of the old equilibrium.
The write up reports that the new equilibrium is part of the great rethink:
We are going through the fastest technology disruption in the history of the world. The shift to Industry 4.0 had already resulted in a huge increase in connectivity, automation, AI, and computing power. The response to COVID-19 has accelerated this process and forever changed the business environment.
Okay. How is that working out?
The pandemic has also forced a huge shift in time-to-value. Five years ago, companies would wait two years to deploy an ERP system. Now, the expectation is that you will have a solution in weeks, or even days.
Ah, ha. New system deployments have to be done faster. Is this an insight? I thought James Gleick’s Faster explained this process 20 years ago. That seems as if the OpenText insight has moved slowly through the great Canadian intellectual winter. Where is the management guru who lived on a sailboat in Canada when one needs him?
The new equilibrium for OpenText sounds a whole lot like Amazon Web services or the Microsoft Azure “blue” thing. I noted:
These cloud solutions enable businesses to re-invent processes and seize emerging opportunities faster, easier, and more cost-effectively. Developer Cloud is particularly exciting. It will provide a platform for developers to create custom solutions to manage information, and will help build a community of innovators working together to create better enterprise applications.
From my point of view, this content marketing fluff has not changed my perception of OpenText which is:
OpenText software applications manage content or unstructured data for large companies, government agencies, and professional service firms.
Services, new equilibrium, rethink. Got it. Enterprise search. Jargon.
Stephen E Arnold, November 27, 2020
I spotted “Google’s Verse by Verse AI Can Help You Write in the Style of Famous Poets.” The subtitle illustrates why this Google innovation is probably going to find some Silicon Valley Shakespeares:
Quoth the Bugdroid, “Nevermore.”
The write up guides the reader to this url. Then the page displays:
Okay, let’s write a poem with the Google smart software. I am skeptical because Google set out to solve death. So far, no luck with that project. For poetic style, I quite like the approach of William Abernathy, who wrote a remarkable tribute to Queen Elizabeth called Elisaeis, Apotheosis poeticaas in Latin when he was trying to avoid arrest for religious heresy. (For more info on William Abernathy, navigate to your local university library and chase down Vol. 76, No. 5, Texts and Studies, 1979. “The Elisæis” of William Alabaster (Winter, 1979). Oh, the poem is a tribute to Elizabeth the First. Did I mention the poem was an epic, thousands upon thousands of lines. In Latin too. Hot stuff.)
Well, bummer. Mr. Alabaster is not listed as a stylistic choice on the Google write a poem Web site. I thought AI was smart. Well, let us sally forth with the clever and sometimes interesting Edwin Arlington Robinson who wrote:
Mininver loved the Medici,
Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
Could he have been one.
Yep, sin. But I had to pick other poets with which the smart Google AI is familiar. Trepedatiously I selected the fave of elderly literature teachers: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Plus in a nod to the Rona and rising infection rates, I plunked my mouse cursor on the liquor-loving and raven loving Edgar Allen Poe. Yep, I noted the “nevermore” in the article’s subtitle. Then I clicked “Next.”
I specified a quatrain in iambic pentameter with the rhyming scheme AB AB.
Google’s smart software wanted a chunk of poesy as a “seed” for the smart software. I provided:
Whoa, teenaged mind, cause no sorrow or pain
I want to point out that this is the first line of a poem my junior class English teacher Edwardine Sperling required us to write. (She loved cardinals, the bird, not the baseball team.) My poetic flight of fancy at age 15 on this line motivated Ms. Sperling to try and get me expelled me from high school. No sense of humor had she. (The compromise proposed by the assistant principal was that Ms Sperling could ban me from the National Honor Society as a result of my inappropriate writing, and I had to sit outside the class in the hallway for the remainder of the semester.)
And what was my “Spirit of Nature” poem about? Nothing much. Just sitting in the woods on a sunny day in early autumn. Then the Spirit of Nature emerged from a pile of leaves. I explained that my Spirit of Nature was the October 1959 Playmate of the Month from Playboy magazine. I elaborated via metaphors (terrible metaphors I must confess) how the Spirit of Nature or Miss October helped move away from “sorrow or pain.” I will leave the details to your imagination. My poem was a hoot. But I got the boot.
Back to the Google smart poetry writer, a system which I hypothesized would have zero imagination and would have been an A student in dear Ms. Sperling’s literature class.
I clicked the Next button again. Magic. Google’s fine system spit out after some prompting after I provided the first line in red. Google goodness is in blue:
Whoa, teenaged mind, cause no sorrow or pain
Enlife a phantom of an idle love;
Yet in a fancy I could now attain
Look on the beauty of that world above!
Great stuff those words in blue crafted sharp and true by Lord Google.
Ms Sperling would have relished the “enlife” word. The prefix “en” leads to many coinages; for example, enbaloney, enstupid, and enmarketing. Maybe enAI? Sure. But no Playboy bunnies. No filthy innuendo. No double entendre. The meaning thing eludes me, but, hey, Google couldn’t solve death either. The GOOG is not doing too well in poesie either I opine. Any questions about Google’s query ad matching semantic system? Good.
Stephen E Arnold, November 24, 2020
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