Sometimes humans are smarter than computers
Google’s proprietary algorithmic method of ranking Web sites for search is part of what made Google the success that it is. The old style directory done by human editors was slow, expensive, and inconsistent. Exactly how Google ranks pages is a company secret but it seems that human judgment still has a role. Google doesn’t say much about what the humans do but Bits reports:
Marissa Mayer, in a talk in June, said the company had more than 10,000 people checking its search quality, according to notes taken by a blogger. Indeed, Google’s job site lists a bunch of part-time positions for “quality raters†in various languages.
The news about the Google page ranking process is interesting but what really caught my attention in the article was this little anecdote about Amazon:
We can’t tell how much this helps Google with its search results. But it is clear that some problems are still better handled by people. I remember touring Amazon’s vast automated distribution center in Fernley, Nev., which is filled with conveyor belts, mechanical arms and machinery of all sorts. Yet there was one place where a line of people picked up products from a chute and placed them into boxes that had automatically been lined up near by.
Why couldn’t a machine do that, I asked. It turned out it was far cheaper to hire people to pick up objects that could be any size or shape and move them 3 feet, than to use a robot that would need a very sophisticated special processing system.
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.