A conversation with Google’s in-house philosopher

Re:A conversation with Google’s in-house philosopher by ridiculous_fish on Friday August 07, 2015 @07:01PM (#10025501)

But Google is not just returning links: they are positioning text prominently above the link results that answers the query directly. In that way they are a search engine for facts, and they do decide what information we read.

Google for "calories in an ear of corn". It will answer directly: 606 calories, which is wrong. There's no popular vote or underlying conflict, just a falsehood that Google presents as the truth, endowed with their authority. Are you OK with that? What if the question were "how much tylenol is safe?" Getting this stuff wrong has actual consequences.

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Re:A conversation with Google’s in-house philosopher by kenzokai on Saturday August 08, 2015 @09:57PM (#10029269)

I wouldn't say they are facts, I would say they are "sentences with a specific semantic structure that can be found on a highly trusted webpage".

And the most trusted web page happens to be that page.

That's a great argument about Tylenol, and if those answers have the possibility of being incorrect they should not be shown at all, since an algorithm will determine what is shown. A "sensitive information" classifier could point out "Ask your doctor, etc." on relevant questions.

But what about the consequence of not showing answers about creationism? My statistically average person decides my site sucks and moves to DuckDuckGo, and I've lost a source of revenue. Not good.

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Re:A conversation with Google’s in-house philosopher by dredmorbius on Saturday August 08, 2015 @01:47AM (#10026478)

NB: that answer is for calories in a cup of corn, 606g. That's not a wrong answer but one which fails to conform to the units specified in the question. An ear of corn has ~27g carbohydrate and ~120 calories.

One cup of corn is about five ears' worth of kernels.

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