EU Commission designates ChatGPT, Reddit, Roblox under Digital Services Act | Shaping Europe’s digital future. Really!

Most likely a very stupid big government decision! Reeks of government paternalism!

Apparently, the EU wants to fall further behind in AI!

I hope OpenAI or Reddit and others affected will shut down their service in the European Union in response to this decision by the EU Commission!

"These services declared that they reach at least 45 million average monthly users in the EU and thus meet the threshold for designation.

Following the notification of the designations, these services have four months, i.e. by January 2027, to comply with the additional DSA obligations for VLOPs [Very Large Online Platforms] and VLOSEs [Very Large Online Search Engines], such as assessing and mitigating the systemic risks [???] stemming from their service and algorithmic systems related to the

dissemination of illegal content [???], the 

negative effects on minors [???], 

users’ physical and mental well-being [???], 

fundamental rights [???], 

electoral processes and public security [???]. ..."

"... The designations bring the total number of platforms and search engines under the DSA's strictest tier to 28.

The regulation has already produced around €870 million in fines, including a record €550 million penalty against AliExpress in July for failing to curb the sale of illegal and counterfeit goods, a €200 million fine against Temu in May for comparable failings and a €120 million fine against X in December 2025 over content moderation and transparency shortcomings. ..."

Commission designates ChatGPT, Reddit, Roblox under Digital Services Act | Shaping Europe’s digital future

EU places ChatGPT, Reddit and Roblox under strictest digital safety rules "Brussels has classified ChatGPT as a search engine under the Digital Services Act, a first for an AI chatbot, and designated Reddit and Roblox as Very Large Online Platforms. All three have four months to comply."

Credits: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Nice example of AI hype in one picture

Google AI can not even answer such a simple, straight foward question properly! This is a total failure!

What is the antonym of hardline or hardliner?

When you ask AI powered Google search or Bing search you get following very unsatisfactory and lopsided answers.

Moderate is definitely not the antonym of hardline! So does the word softline not exist or is not in use? In German, we have the word Softie

Is this lopsidedness due political correctness or the domination of social media, search engines etc. by lefities?

Sometimes Microsoft search beats Google search dramatically

I just searched for "dental amalgam european union", because the EU is reported to have recently prohibited these fillings.

Google search result: A total failure!

Microsoft search result: Spot on

A Google search colossal failure, sometimes Bing is clearly better

This morning, I discovered from the Swiss news that France (the country of Laicism) is expelling its foreign Muslim imams by March. Then I started looking for the English news using Google and Bing. Voila Bing did a much better job than Google. Google only produced highly outdated search results!

Obviously Google Search does not like The Epoch Times?

Or is it deliberate censorship or just plain failure? 

Today, I searched for "epoch times tv interviews by yan lickelick"(I did not remember the exact name of the journalist). Google failed totally. I tried modifications like "jan" instead of "yan", but same result. Then, I tried Microsoft's Bing and voila (bingo). What an experience!

Chatbots could one day replace search engines. Here's why that’s a terrible idea. Really!

This seems to be a nice non sequitur by the MIT Technology Review! Why chatbots would eventually replace search engines is doubtful!

Speaking is faster than typing! Thus a chatbot could help to speed up and improve our searches! E.g. a chatbot could make us immediately aware of ambiguities, alternatives, or other considerations etc. Or the chatbot can present us immediately with several relevant options or similar previous searches etc.

"Large AI models can simulate natural language with remarkable realism. Trained on hundreds of books and much of the internet, they absorb vast amounts of information.

 

There’s growing excitement in the tech sector that they might one day replace search engines. In theory we could simply ask a computer a question and it could return a bite-size answer. The trouble is, language models are mindless mimics. They do not understand what they are saying, and cannot reason about what their words convey.

Some researchers are concerned that chatbot search engines could worsen our existing lack of critical thinking around search results. A natural language answer can hide complexity behind a veneer of authority that is not deserved. Experts also fear that it could lead to more misinformation and more polarized debate." (Source)

Chatbots could one day replace search engines. Here's why that’s a terrible idea. | MIT Technology Review

OpenAlex, a new competitor for Semantic Scholar and Google Scholar

Good news! The website will be launched in February 2022! I am  looking forward to using it like Semantic Scholar and Google Scholar.

This web search engine also provides a public API so I can automate my queries! 

It appears this will be some kind of a successor of Microsoft Academic, which unfortunately shut down at the end of 2021

"... Our two most important data sources are MAG [Microsoft Academic Graph] and Crossref. ..."

Welcome! - OpenAlex documentation

Bye, Bye Microsoft Academic

As of today (1/1/2022), the great website Microsoft Academic (http://academic.microsoft.com/) is gone!

I was hoping to the last minute that someone would rescue this great site from being discontinued. Unfortunately, a knight in shining armor did not show up this time.

Microsoft Academic had several serious advantages over its competitors Google Scholar and Semantic Scholar. I have intensely worked will all three websites over the past two years or so almost on a daily basis to study artificial intelligence and machine learning.

For example, MA would clearly delineate in which journals and what year an article was published. This was very helpful if an article was published in multiple venues at different times. The competitors fail to do that.

The other major competitor, Prophy, a European Union product, is rather bureaucratic and cumbersome. In short, no match!

AI-driven search engine You.com takes on Google with $20M

There is a new search engine in town! I started today to check it out!

"You.com, which bills itself as the world’s first open search engine, today announced its public beta launch along with $20 million in funding led by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff with participation from Breyer Capital, Sound Ventures, Day One Ventures, and others. The company says that the funds, will be put toward user growth, product, and technology as You.com scales its platform to new users on the public web. ..."

AI-driven search engine You.com takes on Google with $20M | VentureBeat

Microsoft Academic announced its shut down by end of 2021

This is really bad news! Microsoft Academic has some strength and is superior  in some respects to its competitors like Google Scholar or Semantic Scholar. I have used it very frequently during the past two years  for my research of artificial intelligence, computer vision, machine learning, computational linguistics etc. 

Microsoft Academic excels compared to its competitors e.g. in:

1. It is much easier to learn if a research article was published in multiple venues, which venues and when it was published in that venue
2. The information provided about publications is usually of high quality. Compared to Semantic Scholar it has far fewer quality issues. 

One can only hope that Google Scholar will seize the opportunity. Unfortunately, Google Scholar has for several years refused automatic requests to retrieve information and it does not provide an API to do so! Very regrettable! I know, because my efforts to write a Python program to retrieve information has been blocked by Google Scholar!

"Microsoft Academic Website: No longer accessible after Dec. 31, 2021"

Next Steps for Microsoft Academic – Expanding into New Horizons (What an euphemistic announcement!)

The European Commission Search Engine: A Joke

This is what the EU Commission search engine looks like: Cumbersome, not intuitive, almost useless unless you are an EU bureaucrat (compare that to e.g. Google or Bing):

You wonder what they are hiding! Not to mention, when you visit the EU Commission website you are prompted like half a dozen times about cookies, data privacy etc.! Very annoying!

Is it so difficult and complicated to provide e.g. two options for the search engine interface: 1) A basic one similar to Google or Bing 2) A detailed one like the one shown on the scree print above

I wanted to search for a very recent competition infringement decision against several European and U.S. banks, but I had to give up here. Too much hassle! When I used the other general purpose search function on their website to look for Credit Suisse (one of the banks involved), the search results returned were totally useless. All of them were related to the country Switzerland instead of the bank! Such ineptitude is stunning!

Bravo Brexit and the British people! 

Microsoft Academic was down today

I tried dozens of searches for exact title match today with a few hours and they all failed. Intermittently, it seemed to work for one or two searches before it failed again. Was this by any chance related to Microsoft's trouble with Exchange or with hacker attacks?

MA failed to inform its users. Here is a screen print of a typical search failure:

Google Scholar Annoyances

Posted: 8/9/2020 Updated: 9/16/2020

More annoyances will be added!

1. When you list the publications of an author it will also show the U.S. patents of this author. You can not turn this off! Very annoying!

2. There is no feedback functionality for the user! Microsoft Academics has it. Semantic Scholar used to have one until recently (8/9/2020)

3. You cannot filter the publications of an author e.g. by year or venue etc.

4. Google Scholar only allows you to save 100 scholars in your alerts/follow list. This limit is bizarre and incomprehensible!

5. I recently also noticed to my great surprise that I did not receive email alerts for at least half a dozen very recent new papers by highly cited authors who I follow for at least several months and longer. This is disturbing to say the least. Often more than one author is listed on the same paper, so I should have actually received 2 or more emails about this paper, but I apparently didn’t. Unfortunately, I did not have the time to document the cases.

6. The authors listed in your Manage your Alerts list are not linked to their profiles. Very annoying and incomprehensible (9/16/2020)

7. When a profile in your Alerts list becomes no longer available or no longer public, GS will not notify you nor will it tell you for which author. This is very annoying! E.g. if I knew the author’s name I could then create possibly a new alert with one of the competitors like Semantic Scholar or Microsoft academic. (9/16/2020)

Microsoft Academic Annoyances

Posted: 2/19/2020  Updated: 

I have been using Microsoft Academics for about 1.5 years or longer.

List of annoyances:

1. A user’s Reading List has a ridiculous maximum limit of 1000 papers. It makes no sense in this day and age!
2. I have lately noticed frequent stability issues with the website after entering paper titles in the search bar (as of 2/20/2020). Microsoft Academic fixed this issue by early March 2020, they even provided some feedback to me about the issue after me contacting them and that it was being remediated
   
3. This is lousy done! Would be a very useful tool to drill down by topic [e.g. Active Learning] and then select certain journals! (3/17/2020)
   You cannot read the names of the top journals!
   You cannot select multiple top journals at once!
   
4. 
   

Notes:

1. The list of annoyances will be amended as time goes by