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Why is Google a Learning Machine? – Here’s Why with Mark & Eric

In this episode of Here’s Why, Mark and Eric discuss the Singularity, Google’s ever-evolving Artificial Intelligence, the Knowledge Vault, making sure that we keep our robot overlords happy, and much more. For a deeper dive into the world of Google’s Knowledge vault, check out Eric’s article: Knowledge Graph Advances From Google.

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If you want to check out any of the articles or sites referenced in the video you can find them all here:

We’re failing to prepare our kids for the impending robot takeover
Top 10 Reasons We Should Fear The Singularity
Time Flies Too Fast! The Terminator Franchise Is 30 Years Old!
From Big Data to Big Knowledge
Google’s fact-checking bots build vast knowledge bank
Google “Knowledge Vault” To Power Future Of Search
Good Bye Knowledge Graph, Hello Google Knowledge Vault?
Hold Your Horses: The Knowledge Vault Is Just A Research Project For Now

Full Transcript:

Mark: Hello and Welcome to another episode of Here’s Why with Mark and Eric.
Mark: So Eric, I feel like I should put on a tin foil hat before I ask this, but is the singularity upon us?
Eric: Before I answer that, I have to tell you, you might be cute with a tin foil hat on. First of all, let me tell you what the singularity is and what people mean by that. They mean that moment in our history when machines get to be smarter than humans. And it’s a subject of a lot of discussion because people fear what will happen when we get there. Machines might start bossing us around and telling us what to do.
But the reality is that we have a long way to go before that happens. For example, one thing that machines would need to be able to do is set a goal or decide on a goal for something they would like to accomplish. They would then need to be able to make a plan to pursue that goal and then they would have to execute all the steps of that plan. We’re a really long way from that happening. So, what we really see most of the time now is what I’ll call Point Solutions to specific problems.
Mark: What is a point solution?
Eric: I’m glad you asked, because I’m actually going to give you a little demo of one. But the short answer is a Point Solution is where you get a solution to a very specific set of problems. So I’m going to show you that right now.
DEMO:
Eric: Where is the empire state building?
iPhone Answer: Empire State building is at 350 5th Ave, New York.
Eric: Who built it?
iPhone Answer: The Empire State building was designed by William F. Lamb.
Eric: Restaurants.
iPhone Answer: Here are the listings for restaurants near Empire State Building.
Eric: So, you’ll noticed that I only used the phrase “Empire State Building” once in that whole sequence and it remembered all the context of that conversation, much like a human being would. That’s really an interesting thing and this notion of understanding context actually is an important step forward. And you can actually go further with these queries.
After it gives me the list of restaurants, I can ask it to give me directions to “the third one” and it will actually do that. So, it’s really sophisticated, but this is a very specific problem that they solved. And there are millions of other problems that they haven’t derived a solution to yet.
Mark: What about this Knowledge Vault from Google that we keep hearing about.
Eric: We heard about the knowledge vault because a guy called Kevin Murphy did a presentation at a conference in August of last year and then he did another one in August of this year, those are rough times. But after that second presentation a lot of press people picked up on it and they started pushing out publicity about the Knowledge Vault saying “Here’s a big step forward that Google is taking.”
But it turns out, that it’s really just a research project at Google. It’s not really in development right now, but it is meant to be a step forward by Google in the right direction. You can think of it as an implementation of a whole new set of Point Solutions rather than having gotten to some major leap forward.
Mark: That’s helpful for understanding that. Just wrapping this up, looking forward to the things you just talked about and this new world where machines will really be able to anticipate and answer questions and give us information the way humans do, how long do you think before that’s actually happening?
Eric: In my opinion, you’re probably talking about decades. There’s a lot that needs to happen and there isn’t enough processing power available to solve these problems. And that assumes you know what problems you’re trying to solve. So there is a ton of work that remains to be done and it’s one of the reasons why Google is investing in quantum computing. I really do think we’re a couple decades away.
Mark: We should expect to continue to see incremental improvements along the way and more intelligence built in. It’s exciting and interesting to watch.
Eric: And while we’re at it, when we’re done with this, we better go ask that computer if we did this okay.
Mark: I for one welcome our robot overlords. Thank you for joining us for this episode of Here’s Why. Here’s an interesting article that Eric wrote about the Knowledge Vault, so check that out. And we’ll see you next time.

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Eric Enge

Eric Enge is part of the Digital Marketing practice at Perficient. He designs studies and produces industry-related research to help prove, debunk, or evolve assumptions about digital marketing practices and their value. Eric is a writer, blogger, researcher, teacher, and keynote speaker and panelist at major industry conferences. Partnering with several other experts, Eric served as the lead author of The Art of SEO.

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