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July 19, 2006
Peter Norvig challenges TBL and the Semantic Web
UPDATE: Somehow I neglected to reference the CNET story in my original post. Sorry about that.
I've always been skeptical of the Semantic Web vision and have shared my enthusiasm for a sloppier, more pragmatic approach to metadata. To me, the Semantic Web has always stank like a deluded academic pipe dream incompatible with the realities of the web. Google's Peter Norvig - who despite being a nice guy wrote the book on artificial intelligence - challenged Tim Berners-Lee at an AAAI conference:
"What I get a lot is: 'Why are you against the Semantic Web?' I am not against the Semantic Web. But from Google's point of view, there are a few things you need to overcome, incompetence being the first," Norvig said. Norvig clarified that it was not Berners-Lee or his group that he was referring to as incompetent, but the general user.
"We deal with millions of Web masters who can't configure a server, can't write HTML. It's hard for them to go to the next step. The second problem is competition. Some commercial providers say, 'I'm the leader. Why should I standardize?' The third problem is one of deception. We deal every day with people who try to rank higher in the results and then try to sell someone Viagra when that's not what they are looking for. With less human oversight with the Semantic Web, we are worried about it being easier to be deceptive," Norvig said.
It's refreshing to see Google bringing some reality to a debate that's largely been framed by academics (not us "practitioners" as they're fond of saying). Tim is a brilliant man but I really think he's gone down the rabbit hole with this one. As I've said before, there are humans at both ends of the rope and humans bring with them all of their glorious flaws and foibles.
03:43 PM | Permalink
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