6 replies to this topic

[Live Forever]

Here is a link to an article on what the future of Google may hold (near term future I am supposing since they stated it in such a public way). The first paragraph sums up the article nicely:

"A search engine that knows exactly what you are looking for, that can understand the question you are asking even better than you do, and find exactly the right information for you, instantly - that was the future predicted by Google yesterday."

[Kalepha]

Then, we'll just continue waiting for the service that makes it unnecessary for us to interface with anything that "knows us better than we know ourselves."

[MichaelAnissimov]

I was impressed that they used the phrase "understand the question you are asking even better than you do" in this article". It implies creating another category of AI that is smarter-than-human in a restricted domain.

[RighteousReason]

I expect that Google isn't going to be leaving anytime soon. With their aspirations for AI, and their seemingly above average intelligence, at least their motto is reassuring.

[maestro949]

Is this really AI? When they say understanding everything in the world I suspect they simply mean a knowledge tree of all known facts and concepts with relational pointers between them. And since knowledge of things and ideas is relatively static it's just a matter of enumerating them and wiring up the cross references between them.

As far as understanding the question "better than you do" they probably have simply come to the conclusion that people tend to ask the same questions over and over thus the evolution of FAQs and Wikis, etc. Nothing really novel here but just more progression towards the more efficient storage and retrieval of information.

hankconn, I tend to agree that Google isn't going anywhere soon but they're a publicly traded company now and that means they must change their atruistic behavior. They are beholden to investors and short-term profits now. Now that the internet is being handed over to corporate america and ISPs, i.e. the loss of net neutrality, Google faces significant long term strategic issues. It would be wise to start sinking a good % of it's billions of $ into lobby efforts to fight this though it may already be too late.

[RighteousReason]

they're a publicly traded company now and that means they must change their atruistic behavior

I don't think being evil is necessary for corporate success, if that's what you are suggesting.

[maestro949]

That's a fairly extreme interpretation. I'm not sure how you gleaned that from my comments but no, I'm not suggesting that Google must become evil. I'm just saying that there's little room for altruism in corporate success unless it happens to convieniently coincide with shareholder value.