Google Predicting the Future?








Food for thought.


The author


7 thoughts on “Google Predicting the Future?”

  1. Kevin Kelly talks a bit about this in his answer to’s question of what will change everything(?) :

    Google has developed, in a sense, a sort of artificial intelligence, and is making it “close to ubiquitous.” Kelly’s point is that having truly ubiquitous AI will add an additional level of mind to the world, and improve our own ability to think, in part via this “extended mind.”

    That doesn’t directly respond to your point of Google’s being able to predict the future, although that is certainly good use of ai. It does help show though that massively parallel processing, with “googlebytes” of data, WILL transform our world in unseen ways. At some point, as in chaos theory, the benefits will cascade, much in the same way that a hurricane ultimately forms from the flapping of a butterfly’s wings on a distant continent.

    Thanks for the post!

  2. Aaron, thanks for continuing the discussion.

    You are wise to caution against individuals placing too much trust of their own data into “The Engine.” However, it’s not that Google can know so much about you — it knows it about US.

    Who wants to winnow down to individual profiles? The information there is boring and of limited value (unless you’re blackmailing.) Don’t look at drops of water, look at the pattern and the ripple of the movement. Those inform, and at a scale such that even those with no online presence are accounted for.

    Maybe “chaos theory” isn’t the best analogy, nor is it complexity. I’m a fan of both. I think the better descriptor of what is going on is “fuzzy logic.”

    Take massive computing power, and crunch it on comparing patterns in datasets. It doesn’t require a human until later, to start interpreting the relationship and the viability of connection versus coincidence. In other words, they don’t know what patterns they’ll be able to match initially. Might be Irish rugby scores for all we know.

    The ethical issue that emerges will happen whether you use Gmail or not: how long can a small cadre of idealists remain unjaded, while sitting on the most explosive dataset since “Let there be light?” Once you can predict the likelihood of certain events, do you risk trying to alter them? And if so, are we beholden to the world-shaping ideology of a small group of engineers who think they know better than we do?

    Welcome to the Machine. All hail the Engine.

  3. Interesting thoughts. But a conspiracy to predict the future to what end – grow rich from stock speculation (they’re already rich at the top – rich beyond what most of us would find to be an opulent lifestyle)? Grow in political influence to challenge the world order? Page and Brin don’t seem like those type of guys, nor do the C-levels there.

    So who is the conspiracy “against?”

    Maybe Dan Brown could write a novel about it…

  4. Thing is, we help Google position itself to be that one and only benefactor of such information because so many think itâ€™s omniscient, almost like HAL, looking to it for all the answers to lifeâ€™s questions. You suggest spreading your personal info across multiple sites, and Iâ€™d agree. Iâ€™d take it one step further and say people need to look to other sources for info beyond Google. (Another topic for another time perhaps, but itâ€™s scary how many people also treat Wiki as if itâ€™s the Bible.)

  5. The thing to remember about chaos theory is that it’s full name is Deterministic Chaos Theory, and it is used to describe systems which ought to be absolutely predictable but for some reason are not. Chaos theory says you can’t predict chaotic systems beyond a short horizon, except to say that that your system will likely stay within some ‘basin of attraction’, and that it’s possible for it to flip into a new basin but unless it’s been in that new basin before, you can’t be sure when, or what small event will flip it, or if the basin really exists. All the detailed data in the world won’t help you, if you haven’t been there before. Finally, chaos is destroyed by randomness. If it’s not deterministic, it can’t be chaotic, formally. There may be things Google can predict, using their collection of information, but the kinds of things and the range in time is limited.

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