You might be right if Google wants to answer all questions ever, but they can just limit this feature to situations where they do know what the answer is (you already see this when you type in math, conversions between different units, etc).
> and in fact is how we do it in a social context ("I'm totally not making this shit up, I've read it in a scientific article / this morning newspaper / a tweet message").
That's not how I converse with people around me at all, I only talk about the source if there is some disbelieve about whether it is true.
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When someone asks me for some information, I will answer and that is the context the person places me in. I won't tell that person "I heard this from Craig, he heard if from Judy and she was told by Bob, etc..". Google wants to become this person / context.
The whole idea is that you don't have to click / verify / think about the potential webpage, because Google has already ranked all webpages that mention your query, and it will only snippet the top one (which is the result Google thinks will most likely answer your question).
Adding the source is:
- extra noise (the user now needs to look at the text & look at who said it and determine whether it might be true or not).
- easily spoofable: you either rely on some meta tag for an Author, which websites can spoof. Or on a URL, which will lead to people doing stuff like "nytimes.com.quotefromgoogle.com".
> The system should provide an escape hatch, and allow the user to be in control.
Below the snippet are the 10 links that you can still click, functionality available since the mid 90s.
> The user of an automated system should always be able to inspect how the system came to the provided result
> You might be right if Google wants to answer all questions ever, but they can just limit this feature to situations where they do know what the answer is (you already see this when you type in math, conversions between different units, etc).
That argument was valid when they limited answers to simple calculations, coins exhange and the current weather. They are now trying to answer why fire cars are red and whether Obama is part of a conspiracy. For that kind of content, it's essential to be aware where the answer came from.
> That's not how I converse with people around me at all, I only talk about the source if there is some disbelieve about whether it is true. When someone asks me for some information, I will answer and that is the context the person places me in.
When you converse with people, there's a context of what you were talking about and your previous relations. Plus, you trust that the person will filter the sources that might interest you, and that they will apply common sense when selecting the sources and will warn you if they have little confidence in the answer. And you could further inquire them about the sources if the information looks fishy.
Nothing of this applies to Google. The question and answer are devoid of any context in a conversation. Plus it doesn't have common sense, it takes sources from the whole web, and it won't tell you how it selected the sources used to find the reply. The answer being provided by a secret algorithm should make you always disbelieve whether it is true.
> The whole idea is that you don't have to click / verify / think about the potential webpage, because Google has already ranked all webpages that mention your query, and it will only snippet the top one (which is the result Google thinks will most likely answer your question).
Right. And it should be clear that doing it this way is a sure recipe for spectacular failures.
> (the user now needs to look at the text & look at who said it and determine whether it might be true or not)
The user always needs to (be able to) do that. Pretending that they don't is deluding themselves, both the company and the users. Just ask Wikipedia what happens when you build a large scale knowledge repository and you don't follow this principle.
> Below the snippet are the 10 links that you can still click, functionality available since the mid 90s.
> Just click the top link?
You don't have any of those in the conversational interface, which is the default mode and primary interface for which this functionality is being created.
You might be right if Google wants to answer all questions ever, but they can just limit this feature to situations where they do know what the answer is (you already see this when you type in math, conversions between different units, etc).
> and in fact is how we do it in a social context ("I'm totally not making this shit up, I've read it in a scientific article / this morning newspaper / a tweet message").
That's not how I converse with people around me at all, I only talk about the source if there is some disbelieve about whether it is true.
----
When someone asks me for some information, I will answer and that is the context the person places me in. I won't tell that person "I heard this from Craig, he heard if from Judy and she was told by Bob, etc..". Google wants to become this person / context.
The whole idea is that you don't have to click / verify / think about the potential webpage, because Google has already ranked all webpages that mention your query, and it will only snippet the top one (which is the result Google thinks will most likely answer your question).
Adding the source is:
- extra noise (the user now needs to look at the text & look at who said it and determine whether it might be true or not). - easily spoofable: you either rely on some meta tag for an Author, which websites can spoof. Or on a URL, which will lead to people doing stuff like "nytimes.com.quotefromgoogle.com".
> The system should provide an escape hatch, and allow the user to be in control.
Below the snippet are the 10 links that you can still click, functionality available since the mid 90s.
> The user of an automated system should always be able to inspect how the system came to the provided result
Just click the top link?