Re:Don't Buy Anyone an Echo
by tialaramex on Tuesday December 05, 2017 @12:53PM
(#15853778)
Note that Babbage has the wrong end of this.
Part of Google's success is realising that yes, your goal needs to be that the right answer comes out when asked the wrong question. If you type "Rebecca Editor of Star Newspaper" it doesn't matter that's not how she spells her name, or that she was never editor of the Daily Star, nor that she's not now editor of anything at all, having been effectively promoted, Google correctly determines that you probably want results about a famous British woman named Rebekah Brooks.
There's an SF story, I thought it was a Multivac story but a list of those doesn't find it for me, where the world computer has been making "mistakes" and the technicians trying to diagnose it eventually realise its "mistakes" are actually causing humans who've disobeyed its instructions to fail. The computer has been tasked with improving efficiency, and disobedience results in inefficiency, so it has arranged for those who are disobedient to be unsuccessful. It isn't murdering anybody, but maybe they'll go bankrupt or miss out on a promotion and so the overall inefficiency is reduced.
Part of Google's success is realising that yes, your goal needs to be that the right answer comes out when asked the wrong question. If you type "Rebecca Editor of Star Newspaper" it doesn't matter that's not how she spells her name, or that she was never editor of the Daily Star, nor that she's not now editor of anything at all, having been effectively promoted, Google correctly determines that you probably want results about a famous British woman named Rebekah Brooks.
There's an SF story, I thought it was a Multivac story but a list of those doesn't find it for me, where the world computer has been making "mistakes" and the technicians trying to diagnose it eventually realise its "mistakes" are actually causing humans who've disobeyed its instructions to fail. The computer has been tasked with improving efficiency, and disobedience results in inefficiency, so it has arranged for those who are disobedient to be unsuccessful. It isn't murdering anybody, but maybe they'll go bankrupt or miss out on a promotion and so the overall inefficiency is reduced.