Facebook May Be Exploiting Emotions of Young Audiences
June 26, 2017
Open Rights Group, a privacy advocacy group is demanding details of a study Facebook conducted on teens and sold its results to marketing companies. This might be a blatant invasion of privacy and attempt to capitalize on emotional distress of teens.
In a press release sent out by the Open Rights Group and titled Rights Groups Demand More Transparency over Facebook’s ‘Insights’ into Young Users, the spokesperson says:
It is incumbent upon Facebook as a cultural leader to protect, not exploit, the privacy of young people, especially when their vulnerable emotions are involved.
This is not the first time technology companies have come under heavy criticism from privacy rights groups. Facebook through its social media platform collects information and metrics from users, analyzes it and sells the results to marketing companies. However, Facebook never explicitly tells the user that they are being watched. Open Rights Group is demanding that this information is made public. Though there is no hope, will Facebook concede?
Vishal Ingole, June 26, 2017
Watson Enters Two New Fields
June 13, 2017
IBM’s Watson has been very busy, and it is no longer just generating recipes and curing cancer. A couple pieces from the company’s recent PR blitz illustrate two new hats the AI has donned: Endgadget shares, “Watson Could Be the Key to Smarter Manufacturing Robots,” while “IBM Watson Now Being Used to Catch Rogue Traders” appears at Silicon Republic. It looks like IBM is positioning Watson as the AI that can do anything.
Engadget reports that Watson is being tapped to perform quality-control for ABB, a firm that makes manufacturing robots and the software that runs them. Writer Rob LeFabvre describes:
Imagine an automotive assembly line, full of robots that build cars without any human intervention. Someone has to monitor and inspect the machinery for defects, ensuring their safe and efficient operation. ABB’s technology can gather real-time images and then get Watson to analyze them for potential problems, something a human previously needed to do.
Meanwhile, Watson now offers a tool for companies to catch rogue traders within their ranks. Reporter Colm Gorey writes:
Referred to as Watson Financial Services, the new product will become a monitoring tool within companies to search through every trader’s emails and chats, combining it with the trading data on the floor. The objective? To see if there are any correlations between suspicious conversations online and activity that could be construed as rogue trading.
While the service is being tested out on a few trading-sector companies, IBM intends to market it to the growing “RegTech” field.
IBM has pointed its famous AI in many directions, and will likely continue to work Watson into as many fields as possible. We ask, “Can she save IBM?”
Cynthia Murrell, June 13, 2017
The Watson Disease: Google and TPUs
June 9, 2017
I think IBM Watson has performed a useful service. Big Blue demonstrates that writing about future technology and its applications can send useful signals to investors, competitors, and analysts.
The Watson Disease is, to my way of thinking, a weird combination of marketing hyperbole and fanciful thinking. The outputs in the form of articles, interviews, and marketing collateral are entertaining and sometimes fun.
One example I spotted appears in “Cloud TPUs: A Chip to Make Every Business as Smart as Google.” The headline assumes that “every business” is less smart than Google. It follows that the less smart will want to be as smart or smarter than Google. It seems to me that Facebook has been zipping along quite nicely. So has Amazon. Too bad that these firms are one which the real journalists at PC Magazine include in the category of firms which want to be “as smart as Google.”
The guts of the story focus on Google’s response to the strong market uptake of Nvidia technology for assorted smart applications. AMD is working to catch up, but it seems to be cornering the bitcoin mining niche while Nvidia is capturing hearts and minds across applications.
Google wants to be the big dog with its TPU or once secret Tensor Processing Units. These confections perform magic when it comes to one trick pony machine learning functions. TPUs are specifically engineered to do artificial intelligence stuff.
The write up reports that:
Cloud Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) are part of a trend toward AI-specific processors, and for Google in particular these cloud-based TPUs are the underlying computer element driving a top-to-bottom AI rewrite fundamentally redefining how Google’s apps, infrastructure, software, and services function by building intelligence in from the ground up.
That’s quite a statement enriched with some amazing words like “in”, “from” and “up”.
The Google wizard explains that Google’s approach has been to build “a kind of drag racing car.”
When will I be able to drive this race car?
Well, there’s the promise of “soon.” Just like IBM Watson’s takeover of the smart software sector. “Soon.”
The car analogies provide a metaphorical anchor for the TPU revolution.
The exemplary use case explains that a Japanese used car dealer creates Web pages automatically.
Yep, used cars.
But there are more application opportunities. I learned:
“There are limits, it’s not magic, but it’s really exciting how many places it’s applicable and in how many businesses it makes sense,” said Hölzle [a Google wizard]. “We’re aiming to be the cloud platform for machine learning and analytics. We’re making it much more accessible to average companies because it works across so many circumstances, from AlphaGo and data center cooling optimization to image and speech recognition trained on the same neural network.”
An interesting nugget finds its way into the sci-fi vision. I highlighted this statement:
Once you have a machine learning project, 10 percent of time is spent on ML and 90 percent is on data preparation, cleaning, interpreting results, and iterating to find better models,” said Hölzle. “We have something in Cloud ML to automatically try out multiple models to find what works best. You may have to pay more because the training step is hundreds of thousands of times more compute power, but you get the optimal model and higher accuracy just by pushing a button and waiting four hours.”
I think this means that human grunt work is required. Where’s the smart software? Well, not yet. I like the “pay more” phrase too.
I wish I could just ask Watson. In the meantime, I will check out the Nvidia technology. I fear there is no antibiotic for the Watson Disease. Scary.
Stephen E Arnold, June 12, 2017
SEO Adapts to Rapidly Changing Algorithms
May 30, 2017
When we ponder the future of search, we consider factors like the rise of “smart” searching—systems that deliver what they know the user wants, instead of what the user wants—and how facial recognition search is progressing. Others look from different angles, though, like the business-oriented Inc., which shares the post, “What is the Future of Search?” Citing SEO expert Baruch Labunski, writer Drew Hendricks looks at how rapid changes to search engines’ ranking algorithms affect search-engine-optimization marketing efforts.
First, companies must realize that it is now essential that their sites play well with mobile devices; Google is making mobile indexing a priority. We learn that the rise of virtual assistants raises the stakes—voice-controlled searches only return the very first search result. (A reason, in my opinion, to use them sparingly for online searches.) The article pays the most attention, though, to addressing local search. Hendricks advises:
By combining the highly specific locational data that’s available from consumers searching on mobile, alongside Google’s already in-progress goal of customizing results by location for all users, positioning your brand to those who are physically near you will become crucial in 2017. …
Our jobs as brand managers and promoters will continue to become more complicated as time passes. The days of search engine algorithms filtering by obvious data points, or being easily manipulated, are over. The new fact of search engine optimization is appealing to your immediate markets – those around you and those who are searching directly for your product.
Listing one’s location(s) on myriad review sites and Google Places and placing the address on the company website are advised. The piece concludes by reassuring marketers that, as long as they make careful choices, they can successfully navigate the rapid changes to Google and other online search engines.
Cynthia Murrell, May 30, 2017
Did IBM Watson Ask Warren Buffet about Value?
May 19, 2017
I read “$4 Billion Stock Sale Suggests Warren Buffett’s Love Affair with IBM Is Over.” The subtitle caught my eye. What would Watson think about this statement:
Berkshire Hathaway’s founder Warren Buffett has admitted that buying IBM shares was a mistake. He has sold 30 percent of his 81 million shares because the company failed to live up to the expectations it held in 2011.
If I had access to a fully functioning (already trained) IBM Watson, I would ask Watson that question directly.
Last night I was watching the NBA playoff game between the technically adept Houston team and the programming-crazed San Antonio team. There in the middle of a start and stop game was an IBM Watson commercial.
Let me tell you that the IBM Watson message nestled comfortably amidst the tats, the hysterical announcers, and the computer-literature crowd.
IBM has a knack for getting its message out to buyers with cash in their hands for a confection of open source, home brew, and acquired technology.
Why doesn’t Warren Buffet get the message?
According the the write up, Mr. Buffet explains what message he received about IBM:
… IBM “hasn’t done what, five or six years ago, I expected would happen – or what the management expected would happen, if you look back at what they were projecting, and how they thought the business would develop. “The earnings have been obviously disappointing. I mean, five or six years ago, I think they were earning $20+ billion pre-tax and maybe it’s $13 billion now, and I don’t think the quality of the earnings has improved. “It’s been a period when it’s been tougher than they thought and it’s been tougher than I thought. But I was wrong. I don’t blame them. I get paid to make my own decisions, and sometimes they’re right and sometimes they’re wrong.
Interesting but not quite as remarkable as smart software being advertised to NBA fans. Air ball.
Stephen E Arnold, May 19, 2017
Google: Fateful Advertising Decision
May 19, 2017
Has Google AdWords become indispensable for business? It is beginning to look that way, we learn from the StarTribune’s article, “How Google Decided to Take Ads on the Most Prominent Real Estate on the Web.” New York Times writer Daisuke Wakabayashi describes the company’s incorporation of search-based advertising:
In the 17 years since Google introduced text-based advertising above search results, the company has allocated more space to ads and created new forms of them. The ad creep on Google has pushed ‘organic’ (unpaid) search results farther down the screen, an effect even more pronounced on the smaller displays of smartphones. The changes are profound for retailers and brands that rely on leads from Google searches to drive online sales. With limited space available near the top of search results, not advertising on search terms associated with your brand or displaying images of your products is tantamount to telling potential customers to spend their money elsewhere. The biggest development with search ads is the proliferation of product listing ads, or PLAs. In a departure from its text-based ads, Google started allowing retailers to post pictures, descriptions and prices of products at the top of search results in 2009.
Another change is the ability for advertisers to link to more general search terms; for example, users see ads for a specific Nike design when they search for “running shoes.” The company has also put resources into optimizing ad placement on both computers and mobile devices. It has gotten to the point that many companies accept a Google AdWords initiative as a necessary expense. Can anyone topple Google from this unique marketing tower?
Cynthia Murrell, May 19, 2017
About.com Still Running Google Adwords
May 18, 2017
I read “After 18 Years, About.com Is Changing Its Name and Shutting Down Its Website — Its CEO Reveals How It All Went Down.” The main idea is that About.com, a weird list of curated sites by topics, is dead. However, I noted this ad on May 15, 13 days after the struggling About.com took a bullet for the good of current information.
The ad appeared in a list of search results for sentiment analysis, not market sentiment analysis, but when someone is spending money to promote a terminated Web information service, that someone either is [a] blessed with oodles of cash, [b] oversees a crew of with it managers, or [c] does not know how to turn off Adwords.
Perhaps this approach to fiscal and marketing methods provides some insight into why the About.com Web site slumped to the moist early summer earth? Definitely a plus for the Google sales professional handling the dead company’s account.
Stephen E Arnold, May 18, 2017
IBM Watson: A Joke?
May 10, 2017
I wanted to ask IBM Watson is it thought the article “IBM’s Watson Is a Joke, Says Social Capital CEO Palihapitiya.” No opportunity. Bummer.
I learned from the real journalism outfit CNBC, which has been known to sell advertising, that:
“Watson is a joke, just to be completely honest,” he said in an interview with “Closing Bell” on the sidelines of the Sohn Investment Conference in New York.
The Social Capital top dog added:
“I think what IBM is excellent at is using their sales and marketing infrastructure to convince people who have asymmetrically less knowledge to pay for something,” Palihapitiya added. “I put them and Oracle in somewhat of the same bucket.”
I like that “asymmetrically less knowledge.” It suggests that the PR firms, the paid consultants who flog the word “cognitive,” and the torrent of odd ball conference talks are smoke and mirrors.
Should one put one’s money into IBM? My reading of the article suggests that the CNBC expert believes that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are where the action is. What? No Alphabet Google thing?
Several observations:
- Describing something in marketing science fiction is fun and can be lucrative. The reality is that Lucene, home brew code, and acquired technology do not add up to a breakthrough in smart software. Sorry, cheerleaders.
- Reporting five years of declining revenue puts hyperbole in context. IBM is simply trying to hard to push Watson into everything from recipes to healthcare. The financial reports tell me that the bet is not working.
- Creating wild and crazy Super Bowl ads which suggest a maximum refund tips toward carnival marketing. Floating white cubes are just as incomprehensible to me as PT Barnum’s Feejee mermaid.
Perhaps IBM can roll out a TV spot with Mr. Barnum’s Chang and Eng as a spokes-people.
Stephen E Arnold, May 9, 2017
US Still Most Profitable for Alphabet
May 8, 2017
Alphabet, Inc., the parent company of Google generates maximum revenue from the US market. Europe Middle East and Africa combined come at second and Asia Pacific occupying the third slot.
Recode in its earnings report titled Here’s Where Alphabet Makes Its Money says:
U.S. revenue increased 25 percent from last year to $11.8 billion. Sales from the Asia-Pacific region rose 29 percent to $3.6 billion. Revenue from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa was up 13 percent to $8.1 billion.
Despite the fact that around 61% of world population is in Asia Pacific region, Google garnering most of the revenues from a mere 322 million people is surprising. It can be attributed to the fact that China, which forms the bulk of Asia’s population does not have access to Google or its services. India, another emerging market though is open, is yet to embrace digital economy fully.
While chances of Chinese market opening up for Google are slim, India seems to be high on the radar of not only Google but also for other tech majors like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook.
Vishol Ingole, May 8, 2017
Salesforce Einstein and Enterprise AI
May 5, 2017
One customer-relationship-management (CRM) firm is determined to leverage the power of natural language processing within its clients’ organizations. VentureBeat examines “What Salesforce Einstein Teaches Us About Enterprise AI.” The company positions its AI tool as a layer within its “Clouds” that brings the AI magic to CRM. They vow that the some-odd 150,000 existing Salesforce customers can deploy Einstein quickly and easily.
Salesforce has invested much in the project, having snapped up RelatelQ for $390 million, BeyondCore for $110 million, Predicition IO for $58 million, and MetaMind for an undisclosed sum. Competition is fierce in this area, but the company is very pleased with the results so far. Writer Mariya Yao cites Salesforce chief scientist Richard Socher as she examines:
The Salesforce AI Research team is innovating on a ‘joint many-task’ learning approach that leverages transfer learning, where a neural network applies knowledge of one domain to other domains. In theory, understanding linguistic morphology should also accelerate understanding of semantics and syntax.
In practice, Socher and his deep learning research team have been able to achieve state-of-the-art results on academic benchmark tests for main entity recognition (identifying key objects, locations, and persons) and semantic similarity (identifying words and phrases that are synonyms). Their approach can solve five NLP tasks — chunking, dependency parsing, semantic relatedness, textual entailment, and part of speech tagging — and also builds in a character model to handle incomplete, misspelled, or unknown words.
Socher believes that AI researchers will achieve transfer learning capabilities in more comprehensive ways in 2017 and that speech recognition will be embedded in many more aspects of our lives. ‘Right now, consumers are used to asking Siri about the weather tomorrow, but we want to enable people to ask natural questions about their own unique data.’
That would indeed be helpful. The article goes on to discuss the potentials for NLP in the enterprise and emphasizes the great challenge of implementing solutions into a company’s workflow. See the article for more discussion. Based in San Francisco, Salesforce was launched in 1999 by a former Oracle executive.
Cynthia Murrell, May 5, 2017
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