[Sigia-l] GoogleNews

[Listera]

"ryankowalczyk at mchsi.com" wrote:

> Instead, IAs play a role in the design of the template
> itself by helping to decide things like, in this case:

I don't know if humans did or did not have anything to do with the
structural decisions you cited, specifically in the GoogleNews case. But
it's not impossible for me to fathom that such structural decisions can and
will be made in the future entirely by computers as well. Genetic algorithms
are one such method to "organically" generate structure after a very large
set of random iterations, feedback loops and mutations, the domain of
Google. So, I think, rather than being a non-starter, this might indeed be
the first tiny but highly-visible step in that direction.

Victor Lombardi" wrote:

> I think IAs will increasing need to create algorithms, i.e. we'll design
> systems rather than design instances. We'll need to think about the reasons
> why we made a design decision and put that reasoning into algorithmic
> format for the computers to replicate.

What's exciting or scary (depending on your POV) about this is that
computers can and will generate the algorithms that generate the instances.
That is, computers will decide to create a new news section, when they
detect a "need" for it. They will place it in an "appropriate" spot in the
page geometry. They will decide to drop sections that are not popular with
readers. They will introduce sections for serendipity purposes. They will
monitor the popularity of various sections and rearrange the template in
small iterations or in one big swoop. They will highlight certain sections
by the use of color, type, placements, etc. We're not too far from all this.
(I haven't said anything about whether this is all "good" or not . :-)

Best,

Ziya