[youngerdryas]

>Kurzweil eventually wants to help create a “cybernetic friend” that knows what you want before you do

I am not sure I want that. At least not as much as Google does. Kurzweil is going to help me click on more ads. Shreds any sense of him being a visionary.

[jaxytee]

I'm 100% sure I don't want this. Exploration and discovery as a whole is one of the most rewarding experiences we have as humans. I don't want that outsourced to some machine/ algorithm. I addition to that, we deal with so much cognitive dissonance within our brains on a day to day, minute to minute, millisecond to millisecond basis, I'm not convinced Google (even with their massive cache of data on us) could even predict what we "want" anyhow. Think of youtube and it's "recommended for you" video suggestion. Just because I listen to Lil Boosie every now and then dosen't mean I want to hear all the shitty southern rap songs it's choosing for me.

[dpatrick86]

I'm not in love with the personally tailored search experience as it stands.

I'm totally OK with searching "#{my_city} taxi" instead of "taxi" if it means when I search "abortion" I get a sampling of search results that has the greatest co-citation... instead of something that myopically focuses on Google's perception of my preferences.

At the least, I'd like to be able to switch off the personalization. But anyway... Beating a dead horse here in this community, I'm sure.

[fyi80]

If only there were a way to predict that users searching for "taxi" tend to want local results, and users searching for "abortion" don't. You know, like that other search engine does, called, um, Google:

https://www.google.com/search?q=abortion

https://www.google.com/search?q=taxi

Or if you were willing to type more than 2 words into the search box before blaming Google for failing to read your mind, while you simultaneously tell Google to stop trying to read your mind.

[ryankey721]

I believe he's trying to say that he doesn't want results tailored to him at all. For example, if I were republican, I'd tend to get anti-abortion material when searching.

He seems to be saying that he'd be okay with typing in his city name to get local results in exchange for not having any personalization. In other words, it's beyond local vs non-local.

[modarts]

Sounds like a Minority Report version of Clippy.

[anonymfus]

It's inverse.

Clippy told people how to do their work more efficiently, and because people don't like to remember new ways of doing work if their old habits sufficient, people hate him. Clippy was like computerized supervisor, slave driver, who looked over their shoulders and told them "You selected one menu item 5 times, better use keyboard shortcut to mine more uranium for your Master."

Google wants to tell people what to do. He is like missionary, every layman would respect him for making life easer. People would love Google for this.

[nmridul]

Read somewhere - "Its sad to see that all the best brains are working now just to make you and me click that Ad".

[SkyMarshal]

Jeff Hammerbacher.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_17/b42250609...

[jkldotio]

Worse than ads I think is the long-term (in civilizational terms) potential for this to be abused in the domain of politics.

[jodrellblank]

Surely it can also click the ads on your behalf, and save you needing to know about them at all?

[IvyMike]

The phrase 'cybernetic friend' brings back nightmares of Clippy and Rover the search dog.