The algorithm hype
Recent revelations (1) that the “Google algorithm” has been effective in finding cancer biomarkers possibly indicate the top of the hype in the recent madness in algorithms, analytics and big data. This is well supported by the big Blue’s assertion that they found the machine, Watson, that beat human beings in any intellectual endeavor – rather liberally defined as Chess and Jeopardy. Fair enough, both of these are pursued by men and women of exceptional intellect – some able to parrot answers in the form of questions and others think ahead within the constraints of 64 squares.
Algorithms, by the way, are nothing new. Engineers and scientists have “stumbled upon” them in many of their rather ordinary pursuits of life and career. In the last two decades, Physicists, bored out of their wits looking for strings and extra dimensions, headed out to the street that houses most of the brain cells in the world, in hot pursuit of “algorithms” to predict the unpredictable. What they found made them money sometimes that they lost in others. The behemoths of the Silicon Valley found patterns in searches and faces – to fully extrapolate the future – in sheer pretense. For most from the past, rules are passé’ and intelligence is never an accumulation of such constructs, brute forced through big machines, bigger pipes and software containers.
The hype is ripe, the bubble is full – and just like any other since the advent of humanity, it is likely to burst.
(1) Google goes cancer: Researchers use search engine algorithm to find cancer biomarkers. Published: Friday, May 18, 2012 - 09:34 in Health & Medicine.Source: Public Library of Science
Algorithms, by the way, are nothing new. Engineers and scientists have “stumbled upon” them in many of their rather ordinary pursuits of life and career. In the last two decades, Physicists, bored out of their wits looking for strings and extra dimensions, headed out to the street that houses most of the brain cells in the world, in hot pursuit of “algorithms” to predict the unpredictable. What they found made them money sometimes that they lost in others. The behemoths of the Silicon Valley found patterns in searches and faces – to fully extrapolate the future – in sheer pretense. For most from the past, rules are passé’ and intelligence is never an accumulation of such constructs, brute forced through big machines, bigger pipes and software containers.
The hype is ripe, the bubble is full – and just like any other since the advent of humanity, it is likely to burst.
(1) Google goes cancer: Researchers use search engine algorithm to find cancer biomarkers. Published: Friday, May 18, 2012 - 09:34 in Health & Medicine.Source: Public Library of Science
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