[Search-l] Related concepts, function words, content words

[Jimmy Wales]

That's totally fascinating.

This is one reason I am such a skeptic for the world seeing any major 
improvements in machine-generated search results anytime soon, whether 
using semantic technology or whatever.  Frankly, machines are still 
pretty stupid, and stupid even in cases where there is pretty obviously 
a HUGE amount of money to be made from having the machines "understand" 
things just a little bit.

In your example case, pretty clearly what was needed was ads for books, 
videos, or seminars about coaching - inspiring team members to show up 
on time, etc.  A human knows that immediately.

--Jimbo

Linas Vepstas wrote:
> I just noticed something curious about google's "related topics" function.
> 
> I'd been reading gmail using the web browser, and there's always a list
> of ads that seem to be keyed off of keywords in the email.  Today, none
> of the ads were keyed off of keywords ... instead, they were keyed off of
> broad sentiment.
> 
> The actual email was from my rowing coach, bitching about how people
> failed to show up for practice, and how that makes everyone late on the
> water and changes the planned workout, etc.    The ads were all about
> employee-employer relations -- how to fire employees, how to file
> workplace greivances, negotiating with unions, etc.  Now, nowhere
> in the email did it use the words "employee", "union", "grievance",
> "fire", "discharge" -- but somehow google perceived the overall negative
> tone, and that it had to do with personal relationships.  Its mistake was
> to assume its job-related.  And yet -- none of the ads were for marriage
> counseling or spousal abuse -- so it could tell that this was a more formal
> setting -- it did not mistake it for a lover showing up late for a romantic
> dinner (no "buy her flowers" ads),  or missing out on camping with your
> buddies (no "how to make friends" ads).
> 
> Particularly of note is that it missed the obvious sports nature of the email:
> content words like "rowing" "water", "workout", "practice" and "boat" were in
> the email, and should have given a strong positive .. and yet these were
> overlooked, in favour of the much more vague non-content, functional
> phrases like "failing to show up".
> 
> --linas
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