Cristos Goodrow: YouTube Algorithm | Artificial Intelligence (AI) Podcast

20 thoughts on “Cristos Goodrow: YouTube Algorithm | Artificial Intelligence (AI) Podcast”

1. I really enjoyed this conversation with Cristos. Here's the outline:
   0:00 – Introduction
   3:26 – Life-long trajectory through YouTube
   7:30 – Discovering new ideas on YouTube
   13:33 – Managing healthy conversation
   23:02 – YouTube Algorithm
   38:00 – Analyzing the content of video itself
   44:38 – Clickbait thumbnails and titles
   47:50 – Feeling like I'm helping the YouTube algorithm get smarter
   50:14 – Personalization
   51:44 – What does success look like for the algorithm?
   54:32 – Effect of YouTube on society
   57:24 – Creators
   59:33 – Burnout
   1:03:27 – YouTube algorithm: heuristics, machine learning, human behavior
   1:08:36 – How to make a viral video?
   1:10:27 – Veritasium: Why Are 96,000,000 Black Balls on This Reservoir?
   1:13:20 – Making clips from long-form podcasts
   1:18:07 – Moment-by-moment signal of viewer interest
   1:20:04 – Why is video understanding such a difficult AI problem?
   1:21:54 – Self-supervised learning on video
   1:25:44 – What does YouTube look like 10, 20, 30 years from now?

2. Youtube is the most important resource for all history. The problem is they are removing the depth and variety that attracted creators and viewers in the first place. All the great creators are banned, censored or outright just shown the door by throttling them out of existence. "Don't be evil" used to be your motto. I wonder what it is now? No gluten, organic, safe for the environment, pablum for the masses?

3. I'd love a copy of my history for the last few years

4. Haha…I use the subscribe button like that also!

5. Loved this video…….I've learned so much over the last 3 years of watching YouTube. It's opened my mind to so many topics and taught me so much about algorithms….I have little knowledge of AI but have spent all this time being guided by them and only now can I see what was working behind the scenes. It's amazing….and gives me great hope for the future. I know I've became a better person and have a better understanding of the world because of my time on YouTube.
   I may not understand it all…..but my mind in blown all the same.

6. Hey I click on your videos. Honestly, you do have an authority on presenting some of the worlds brightest minds to a purely general audience. I fear the day that you start requiring money to continue, not discounting that your catalog is premium and already heavily discounted and hopefully equally appreciated. What I learn from these videos are on the same balance and what I learned from watching Donald Sadoway's intro to solid state chemistry 6or7 years ago and was able to complete the neils bohr equation for a one electron system, and learned about plancks constant. The thing is, I still adore him. He's like Feynman. Just like you.

7. How many sociologists are employed at google to tackle these difficult questions, and, even more importantly, finding other questions in need of asking? How does one evaluate the benefits of technology to different theories of democracy? If they dont have sociologists working on this, how can I contribute?

8. There were so many questions that I was missing in this discussion, but I suppose you cant get in the room with these people if you are too critical.

9. Great video, thanks lex. When you guys were talking about clips i thought about pornhub's videos where they have markers indicating the start or transitions of different sexual acts. For a second I was amazed that pornhub was ahead of google on this one, but then I realized they probably use a 'heat map' based on where people skip the video to, which wouldn't work as well for youtube as the important content isn't always evident by simply sliding through the thumbnail previews of different timestamps. Definitely a much harder problem for a product like youtube to solve

10. I came across Joe Rogan's podcast which led me to you by searching through his videos. So glad I found you 🙂 I love You Tube !

11. The youtube algortithm:

    1) Show the user what he has clicked on
    Help a friend with a subject that does not interest you, and research it with youtube and google; the result is that youtube will now recommend said subject for the rest of your life, regardless of how man times you tell youtube "not interested", "dont show content from channel". Test this, try clicking "home", then click not interested to the subject that does not interest you, then click refresh and confirm that you might as well have written your preferences on toilet paper and flushed it down the drain. To give an example, I helped a family member research which guitar to buy, and I have clicked "not interested" to 100+ guitar videos, but I always get at least 10 guitar video suggestions, every time I click Home. Also, when I click home, youtube will recommend 20 videos that I have already watched.

    2) Show the user only what is politically correct
    Show the user only pop culture, commercial content and politically acceptable content
    Youtube and google censors content. I know this because I have used search engines from before google existed, so I know what content I am supposed to find, and it does not show up, in the search results. During the last couple of years, this has gotten so bad, especially with regards to fringe subjects and subjects that might be considered "dangerous". UFO's, pyrotechnics, assassination techniques, etc. If you are an expert on such a subject, you can verify that what I say is true … newcomers will have no clue this is going on and will just be presented with misinformation OR no information.

    3) Show the user what other's have clicked on
    Sigh. Corona virus (not interested), sports (not interested), pop music (not interested), etc, etc, etc.

    4) What is going on ?
    As far as I can see, the algorithm is optimized to protect the powers that be, keep us stupid, enforce political correctness and maximize our consumption. No amount of feedback can train the algorithm to show high quality content in your fields of interest UNLESS your interests are in line with what I have written above. If your feedback, which is limited to "not interested", is not used to help show you recommended videos in your fields of interest, what is it intended for ? More profiling ? How does the algorithm adjust, when you click "not interested" ? Am I not interested because the video is less than 20 minutes ? Am I not interested because the content is not technical enough ? Am I not interested because I don't want to listen to some of the persons in the video ?

    If this is AI ? Or could you write 100 lines of classical code (logic, functional or procedural) that works better than the AI they have spend millions developing ?

12. Yo Lex, might sound kinda crazy but maybe if you could find about who's the Cristos Goodrow equivalent in PornHub and bring him in, that could be an interesting chat. Because if I recall correctly the "moments" and "highlights" of some videos on there are in fact detected and you can click buttons that take you there. Maybe due to the nature of the videos it's easier to predict and label those moments but still.

13. I did want to be able to get a random video on youtube, but there's no API for that. It would be more useful than he thinks.

14. Thank you YouTube algorithm for recommending this video!

15. Drinking cocacola? Really that soft washed brain, to choose such a shit from gazzilion of options?????

16. "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit" intro.

17. Thx for your time, i look forward to every video you publish. Dont let the trolls get to you. My feed is notthing but science and jazz 🙂

18. الإخوة والأخوات العرب نرجو منكم المختصر المفيد للمقطع وجزيتم خيرا

19. Much as I like this podcast in general – not just because of the guest list, but also because Lex is a very likeable person, in whose personal integrity I'd totally believe – I was shocked by the idea of CLUSTERING USERS. I am still clueless how our society came to care so little about privacy, and worry so little about surveillance. Here is a post I wrote about it, please read: https://medium.com/@keydana/the-hard-problem-of-privacy-4bc0f731c16e

20. Fascinating conversation, I really love your conversations. They're simple, informative, and definitely get me thinking about the particular the topic at hand.

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