Is Google's Future: Star Trek? 446
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet UK has an interview with Google's CTO, Craig Silverstein, and he's got some pretty cool visions: "When search grows up, it will look like Star Trek: you talk into the air ("Computer! What's the situation down on the planet?") and the computer processes your question, figures out its context, figures out what response you're looking for, searches a giant database in who-knows-how-many languages, translates/analyses/summarises all the results, and presents them back to you in a pleasant voice." Now that's the search engine I want." The NLP required for this is far off, but it sure will be cool when we get there.
Where's the story. (Score:3, Insightful)
I imagine if you ask Microsoft, Apple, or Palm, they'll mimic those goals. NLP, instant searching, instant translations, it's all well and good, but where's the story?
Speaking. (Score:1, Insightful)
AI searches (Score:3, Insightful)
Cool but (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, more probably... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever notice the 'rot' that is occuring on google lately? For example, a search on "mercedes 300D transmission" used to bring up the article on mbz.org [mbz.org] about adjusting the vacuum shift in this car. Now this link, the most useful one, is all the way on the third or fourth page, buried in OEM parts retaillers that you know damn well are ranked high thanks to "ranking services".
I hope they can figure out how to weed this kind of stuff out...
Beaming up? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's a Nice Thing, but does anyone have any insight into exactly how far off into the future we are looking?
- speech recognition systems leave quite a lot to be desired
- is there *anything* out there that's able to put stuff into context {so to speak}
- if it's far enough off, the whole multiple-language thing will take care of itself - the number of languages is dwindling each year
will be nice to have, though.
Oh - wait. Probably won't be in my time. And if it is, I'll probably be to old to figure out how to use it. Drat all these new-fangled things!
Summaries (Score:1, Insightful)
What I really want Google to be able to do is get me a mass of primary source material, convert from text to speech in a reasonable way (ie not get beaten by php and crappy web-page layouts), and speed it up to 3x so I can wade through it faster than I can read.
Of course, that would require real primary information, instead of mere summaries, to exist on the web, and that's the real bottleneck for using Google as a serious educational tool...
Re:bullshit, google is retarded. (Score:5, Insightful)
Except, when I searched that phrase, the first link is "How to fix leaky faucet," then "Fred and Gerry on leaky faucets," another, "How to fix leaky faucet," next is "Repair a leaky faucet in six steps," then "Repair a leaky washer-type faucet," and it just goes on from there.
Too bad none of those had to do with fixing leaky faucets.
Re:bullshit, google is retarded. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This isn't about Google or Search. (Score:5, Insightful)
Computer voice recognition works in a similar fashion. The computer waits for a keyword or trigger before it accepts input directed at it. So you would say, "Computer, kill the bastard". Saying the keyword "Computer" alerts the computer that this is an istruction that is directed at it rather just some background noise or other conversation that it is not expected to act upon.
This brings us to the keyword itself. Depending on the environment using "Computer" as the keyword or trigger may not be a good choice. For instance in an IT environment the word computer is likely to come up often which would cause undesirable commands to be arbitrarily executed in a voice recognition situation. Similar problems occur today in home automation environments where people name their automation system(set the trigger) to a word that is too often used in the course of a normal converstation, like a friend's or pet's name. This causes undesirable results or a confused system. Instead they must choose a name that is both pleasing to them and is unlikely to be used in the home for any other reason than addressing the automation system.
Future of search engines are neural networks (Score:2, Insightful)
The future of searching is: Computers will NOT search as they do today. They will be based on the model of the human brain and how it addresses "memory", by activating nodes in a massive neural network.
Nonlinear Analysis (Score:2, Insightful)
Visually you can look at a screen of replies and skip to the next "line" instantly if the current line is not what you want. Difficult for audio.
Also, you can look at the screen as a whole and can often see the answer you desire because it essentially "jumps out at you" from visual filtering. Listening to all the audio output as a whole will most likely give you nothing.
So what would really be cool (and more practical) is to have the voice input (a la Star Trek) and then have an instant display of results on a viewable surface in mid-air.
Re:Ah, something like Apple.... (Score:3, Insightful)
You actually think Jobs did that just because it was a Scully project? Jobs did what he had to do to get the company back into the black. He had two major areas to focus on: 1. getting the Mac into the public again (with the iMac); and 2. cramming NeXT's operating system expertise crammed into the heart-and-soul of every Mac. The Newton had already gave way to the Palm line; did you want Jobs to fight not just Palm but Microsoft eventually getting into the market? Jobs had to do other unpopular things, like swallow pride and settle with Microsoft (even taking the poison of making IE the default browser), as well as personally killing off the Mac compatible market (although Jobs probably enjoyed that stroke)... Truth be told, the Newton was deader than the idea of the Mac game system via Bandai...
I should get bonus karma points for NOT using the Bloodhound Gang reference of "deader than the parents on *Party of Five* to describe the Newton circa the return of Jobs."
Re:Google is getting way too much attention fromME (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile, I wish Google supported Boolean queries (Score:3, Insightful)
(potato or potatoe) and ((fried or mashed) and gravy)
It's my only peeve about that wonderful search engine.
Probably more like Galaxy Quest (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Or, more probably... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh silly me, that isn't what YOU want, so we must change everything.
Re:This isn't about Google or Search. (Score:4, Insightful)
The hard part is figuring out what I'm asking. When I say "What's going on in the world?" what do I want to know? If I ask "when's the next showing of LotR?" how does it figure all that out? Or even better is how to personalize it. If I ask "Is there anything on TV?" I don't expect "Yes." I expect it to know what kinda stuff I may like and base it's answer on that (talking TiVo?)
Basically I want a mix between the Enterprise and KITT.
Q&A used to have this built into their database years ago. You could ask it questions such as "how many widgets were sold in march?". If it didn't know what a widget was, it'd prompt you on how to define one (ie. where column B='WIDGET') and would ask you how to determin if something was sold, etc... This was back in around '86 or so. Way ahead of it's time.
Re:It is unfortunate to hear the CTO of Google (Score:4, Insightful)
However, do NOT underestimate the desire that "average Joes" have to be free of keyboards.
When you're a blue-collar factory worker with a dumpy crappy Compaq running Windows XP Home and connecting to the Internet through AOL, and you can type all of 5 words per minute on a GOOD day by hunting and pecking, the one thing you want the MOST is to be able to talk to the thing. I predict that in the future, keyboards will ONLY be used by programmers (as we're virtually the only ones who need to type funky things like "printf("Hello, World\n");" that would be a RIDICULOUS pain to input with voice), and they will cost a huge amount. Also, it is likely that they will only work with Windows. KEYBOARDS ARE GOING TO BECOME EXTREMELY RARE, and hence EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE, since most people CAN'T type faster than they can talk.
voice later, working searches now please (Score:1, Insightful)
I would find it much more useful to refine easily by context and subject matter and specify multiple spellings of words without having to write something that looks like perl or ROT13 output each time.
Re:Let the ST jokes fly (Score:1, Insightful)
Umm...well, yeah. It is legalized violence...that's the whole point. I don't think anyone has tried to make it appear otherwise.
Microsoft doesn't know how to do research. (Score:3, Insightful)
Nothing good has come of it in all the years of its existence.
Re:This isn't about Google or Search. (Score:2, Insightful)
As phrased, this article suggests that the computer will be able to read minds to clarify which question you're asking... Half the time even humans don't know what you're asking!
Re:Google is getting way too much attention fromME (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux search terms tend to take me to the wrong places all the time. (Google groups works better). Enternainment and move title search times take me to the wrong places. Generic searchs "whats the weather like in Mountain View california" are AWFUL. Searching for hotel/resort information in an area is awful (takes me to package tour sites).
In all these examples, Google takes me to "commercial clearinghouses" rather than the definitive source of information. The more successful Google is whenever it IPOs, the more its results will skew. (Google groups searchs still tend to take me "where I want to go").
All of this reinforces my theory: all search engines are doomed to fail. The start small, peak, get rich, suck, and go away. Google is entering the "get rich" phase.
It's about librarians! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's part of it. But the bigger problem I see with this scenario is getting humans to verbalize what they're really looking for. I work for a public library, answering computer questions for the public. Finding the answer is not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is getting the public to accurately explain what the hell they're looking for.
That requires two things:
1. Knowing what they really are looking for
2. Being able to verbalize it
In some ways, the written word is superior because often when they write the actual words, people are more specific about what they need. Usually they've considered it and narrowed it down a bit (though not always).
Real life examples of humans searching for info:
"Where are the art books?" Actual need: tattoo information
"I need a book on Microsoft." Actual need: Learning that the Enter key will move you down to the next line when using a word processing program such as Word
"When I was little, I really liked this book you had. The little girl in it was named Jane or Joan, I think. I think it was blue. Do you know it?"
As you can see, many people do not give enough information or context on their first try. So computers would have to learn how to ask questions for more input and get people to narrow things down. And while that's easy in some situations, it can be difficult to guess the correct context in others.
That technology seems years away to me.
Re:Quantum Searching (Score:2, Insightful)
Checking an answer is infinitely easier than solving a problem. Calling is like checking to make sure the phone book listing is right, it's a helluva lot easier.
It's like if you walked into a party and started looking to see if anyone you know is there, and the host walks up to you and says "I think you know her in the corner over there." You can just look and see that, yes, you know her. However, looking through all the people to find out if you know anyone would have taken a long time.
Quantum computing may allow us to check all of the answers at once, without solving the problem in the first place, which will make P = NP, and open up a whole new realm of things. (Maybe we'll have answers without problems . . . 42? Heh.)
Alicebot has the answer (Score:2, Insightful)
But just as Dr. Wallace figured out that it was easier to simulate intelligence by coming up with several thousand question-answer pairs than to actually write true NLP; my guess is that Google will figure out that it's easier to pick the "right" answer to give you by selling "sponsered answers" the way they did with sponsered search results.
Q: "So Computer, who's the sexiest man alive?"
A: "Bill Gates, inventer of the world's most secure and reliable computer operating system, and the future Governer of California!".
Yeah, the future is going to be a lot more annoying than Mr. Rodenbury predicted. But check out www.Alicebot.org anyway. Maybe if you open source gurus do it before Google, you can keep things from getting too ridiculous.