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The Future of Google Search and Natural Language Queries

Posted by Zonk on from the teach-us-to-search dept.

eldavojohn writes "You might know the name Peter Norvig from the classic big green book, 'AI: A Modern Approach.' He's been working for Google since 2001 as Director of Search Quality. An interview with Norvig at MIT's Technology Review has a few interesting insights into the 'search mindset' at the company. It's kind of surprising that he claims they have no intent to allow natural questions. Instead he posits, 'We think what's important about natural language is the mapping of words onto the concepts that users are looking for. But we don't think it's a big advance to be able to type something as a question as opposed to keywords ... understanding how words go together is important ... That's a natural-language aspect that we're focusing on. Most of what we do is at the word and phrase level; we're not concentrating on the sentence.'"

2 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. this is also why by circletimessquare · · Score: 5, Insightful

    text-to-speech or speech-to-text is also useless (unless your blind/ deaf/ driving a car)

    the idea of interacting with a computer like a human is an artificial hangover from being introduced to the computer the first time. after using it for awhile, you realize that ineracting with a computer, in small limited ways, like searching information, is easier NOT using natural language

    for the very simple reason that it takes more thought, and more typing to interact naturally. it is easier to train a human to interact with a computer than it is to train a computer to interact with a human. and for the human, it is more rewarding, because the human realizes he doesn't need to exert so much effort

    "what is the capital of france?"

    versus

    "france capital"

    if you were to shout "france capital" at someone, it would be rude and confusing. but for a computer, it's actually superior

    it is the conservation of communication effort at work here that wins out over natural language in computer interaction

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  2. The capital of France by CruddyBuddy · · Score: 5, Funny
    Paris Hilton says:

    "That's easy! The capital of France is 'F'."

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    Any problem can be made unsolvable if there are enough meetings made to discuss it.