{"id":17336,"date":"2017-03-07T19:15:59","date_gmt":"2017-03-08T00:15:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=17336"},"modified":"2017-03-07T19:15:59","modified_gmt":"2017-03-08T00:15:59","slug":"googles-algorithm-is-lying-to-you-about-onions-and-blaming-me-for-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2017\/03\/07\/googles-algorithm-is-lying-to-you-about-onions-and-blaming-me-for-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Google’s Algorithm Is Lying to You About Onions and Blaming Me for It"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom Scocca<\/a> (via Andrew Abernathy<\/a>):<\/p>\n

So when I saw the news that Google’s search result box has been giving people bogus information in its algorithmic search for the One True Answer to various questions, I thought about the onions. If Google can’t figure out whether Barack Obama is plotting a coup or not<\/a>, or whether or not MSG is lethal<\/a>, can it at least recognize that the lie about cooking onions is a lie? <\/p>

I typed “how long does it take to caramelize onions” into Chrome. The answer was worse than I could have imagined[…]<\/p>

Not only does Google, the world’s preeminent index of information, tell its users that caramelizing onions takes “about 5 minutes”—it pulls that information from an article whose entire point was to tell people exactly the opposite<\/em>. A block of text from the Times<\/em> that I had published as a quote, to illustrate how it was a lie, had been extracted by the algorithm as the authoritative truth on the subject.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

In fact, it made the lie even worse, because Google’s automated text analysis is too dumb to recognize that “about 5 minutes” followed by “about 5 minutes longer” means 10 minutes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

See also: Google’s “One True Answer” problem<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom Scocca (via Andrew Abernathy): So when I saw the news that Google’s search result box has been giving people bogus information in its algorithmic search for the One True Answer to various questions, I thought about the onions. If Google can’t figure out whether Barack Obama is plotting a coup or not, or whether […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1351,131,51,343,96],"class_list":["post-17336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-bug","tag-google","tag-search","tag-web"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17336"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17337,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17336\/revisions\/17337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}