Tuesday, July 26, 2011

The Science Fiction Behind Search | Think Quarterly by Google

The Science Fiction Behind Search | Think Quarterly by Google: "Search_that_understands_me

We’ve started teaching computers how to translate languages, but teaching a computer to actually understand language remains one of our biggest challenges. Google knows that ‘GM’ refers to General Motors in the context of cars, but ‘genetically modified’ in the context of food, for example. But what about words with multiple meanings? How does Google know that when you’re looking to change the brightness of your laptop screen, you actually want to ‘adjust’ it? By contrast, if you want to change a PDF file into a Word document, Google can help you learn how to ‘convert’ that file."