Communications of the ACM
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How the “Frontier” Became the Slogan of Uncontrolled AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been billed as the next frontier of humanity: the newly available expanse whose exploration …
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Ranking vs. Relevance: 2 Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them
A crucial distinction for search applications is the difference between ranking and relevance. In this post, I explain what happens when search applications fail...
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Sparse and Dense Representations
The heart of the AI-powered search revolution is the move from sparse bag-of-words representations to dense embedding-based representations. But reducing everything...
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AI-Powered Search: Embedding-Based Retrieval and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
When search application developers consider replacing a traditional search architecture with AI-powered search, they usually have two things in mind. The firstbag...
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Analyzing the AI Search Opportunity
In the past several years, AI has disrupted every part of the technology industry. Search applications are no exception: it is not a question of whether to useinverted...
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Learn to Rank = Learn to be Humble
As a search consultant, I work with lots of organizations that strive to improve their search applications. I tend to emphasize query understanding and contentlearning...
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Hierarchy is Hard!
A fundamental concept in language understanding is that of semantic hierarchy. In linguistics, a hyponym is a more specific or subordinate word, while a hypernym...
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An Update on Search Classes
In 2022, Grant Ingersoll and I launched our first four-week Search with Machine Learning class on Uplimit, then called Corise. I still have a special place in my...
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Making Sense of Null and Low Results
With rare exception, searchers are unhappy when a search query returns zero results. Businesses — especially ecommerce businesses trying to sell products to searchers...
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Precision, Recall, and Desirability
Recent developments in AI have created opportunities across the search stack. But before building solutions, it is important to clearly identify the problems they...
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Retroactive Loss of Privacy
We live in an age where we increasingly feel a loss of privacy. Much of our communication, media consumption, and shopping is mediated through platforms that track...
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Random Thoughts on Interestingness
As a computer scientist and an information scientist, I have always been fascinated by fundamental questions of computational complexity and compressibility. These...
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Query Specificity
The central challenge of query understanding is mapping a query to a representation of the searcher’s intent. Recognizing when two or more different search queries...
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Query Understanding and Ecommerce
Yesterday, I had the privilege to deliver a “last lecture” at eBay, where I have been working with the query science team for nearly 6 years. I took the opportunity...
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Indexing by Intent
Search developers mostly focus on mapping queries to results. This perspective is natural, insofar as search starts with the user formulating a query and (hopefully)...
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Using Retrievability to Measure Recall
In court, witnesses swear to tell “the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” Search engines are not under oath, but they should be truthful.Two metrics for search...
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Search vs. Browse
One of the oldest distinctions in information access is between searching and browsing. Does a user initiate an information-seeking journey by typing keywords into...12