Sarcasm Lost on Google

With its complex algorithms that would make advanced extra terrestrial life wither dumbly, it's no secret that the super wizard computer geeks at Google have done some amazing things.

Not only can one type in the nonsense phrase "goat saddle" and actually see picture after picture of, you guessed, goats wearing saddles, but he can also find web sites that sell goat saddles and - I swear it - tips on how to make saddling a goat as pleasant as possible for you and the goat.

But what makes Google so successful as a business is how it recognizes key words within your search results and automatically generates relevant and potentially useful links to paid advertisers. So when searching for goat saddles, on the right of the screen are links to web sites where you can buy goats and saddles.

Google has applied this same technology to its e-mail program Gmail. But instead of recognizing key words in an internet search, it picks up on what it thinks is the content of your e-mail - keywords and phrases - and offers potentially relevant advertising links to the right of the message.

At first this seems a little creepy and a lot obtrusive. I imagine someone or something actually reading and comprehending the content of my e-mail and supplying the corresponding advertising.

But if you read the disclaimers and FAQs supplied by Google, you can be rest assured that it has nothing to do with monitoring or spying and everything to do with the complex algorithms and Google super wizards mentioned above.

While Google may pat itself on the back for being able to use artificial intelligence to decipher human correspondence, all in the name of advertising, I have discovered something Google is not too good at: Detecting sarcasm.

This played out simply the other day, in an e-mail exchange I had with a friend of mine who I'll call "Ted." (I'll also omit the names of anyone else to keep all identities anonymous).