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Searching for the pathway to wisdom
By Amit Singhal |
March 13, 2012, Tuesday
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CENTURIES ago, it used to be that data was king. If you knew how to read, if you were a person who knew the most facts, you had a huge advantage in this world. The world is not designed that way anymore. How many facts you know doesn't matter. You can get as many facts and data as you want in a few clicks.
Today, it's much more about how you make use of data. How do you connect between pieces of data to convert it into useful information? How do you take useful information and convert it into knowledge, and ultimately wisdom?
By converting data into information, we mean surfacing relevant facts from a sea of raw data. Google Search already does this to some extent - we take the raw stuff of web pages, videos, images, etc. and organize it into relevant information to match your query.
But going forward, we want to be able to take information and make it more easily digestible, so you can more quickly decide what to do with that information. We've started to do that with quick answers. If you ask Google a question like, "How tall is the Empire State Building?" we give you our best guess at the answer right on the search results page, connecting you directly to that knowledge. More and more, you ask us a question, and we give you the answer - not just links.
However, search is still far from where we want it to be. It doesn't know what to do with a question like, "Do mosquito nets that are laced with anti-insect spray work more effectively than mosquito nets that are not laced with insect spray?" Assuming no one has written on exactly that topic already, you won't get a good answer as a result. That's because it requires more than compiling information; it requires knowledge of things in the real world and how they interrelate. We're starting to scratch the surface of becoming a knowledge engine - and someday approach wisdom.
This means our system needs to figure out what a user needs, and then synthesizes that and presents it so it's useful, right when and how the user needs it. We need to go beyond words on a page and really understand people, places and things - and how they interrelate. The human brain is very good at this naturally, but for computers, it's a problem in artificial intelligence.
It's a challenging task, but the work has already begun. We've made tremendous progress with converting data into information, and now we're making serious strides towards a knowledge engine. To explain the future of Google search - and to explain this progression from data, to information, to knowledge, to wisdom - I'd like to use two examples.
The first example is a Big Mac meal from McDonald's. I can give you a bit of data about how much fat it has. That's just data. You don't know if it's good or bad. Then I show you a nutrition chart and explain that it's more than 100 percent of your daily intake - now it's been converted into information. Then you watch the film Super Size Me and realize that if you eat such a meal every day, it's harmful to you. Suddenly you've become knowledgeable about the subject. And someday you will become wise and only eat healthy salads!
Actual knowledge
Here's another example. Today if you search for "10 deepest lakes in China," you have to cross your fingers and hope someone has already created a website that has that list. Otherwise, you're out of luck - or at least you have to do a ton of digging to piece it all together. The search engine isn't smart enough to know what a lake is, or that lakes have depth or how to synthesize this information into a useful list for you. But going forward, we want to build a search engine that does understand that there's such a thing as a lake, and that one of its attributes is depth, and that when someone asks for the "10 deepest," they want a ranked list of lakes. If we can achieve that, we'll have moved from mere information - strings on the page - to actual knowledge of things in the real world.
In order to get you knowledge, Google needs to get smarter. As the Internet becomes bigger, richer and more interactive, it means that we have to work that much harder to ensure we're unearthing and displaying the best results for you.
Today we're working hard on being the best knowledge engine around, but the "holy grail" of search is true understanding of human intentions.
If Google can understand what you mean, it can deliver you exactly the information you're looking for instantaneously - sometimes before you even knew you needed it.
Today, it's much more about how you make use of data. How do you connect between pieces of data to convert it into useful information? How do you take useful information and convert it into knowledge, and ultimately wisdom?
By converting data into information, we mean surfacing relevant facts from a sea of raw data. Google Search already does this to some extent - we take the raw stuff of web pages, videos, images, etc. and organize it into relevant information to match your query.
But going forward, we want to be able to take information and make it more easily digestible, so you can more quickly decide what to do with that information. We've started to do that with quick answers. If you ask Google a question like, "How tall is the Empire State Building?" we give you our best guess at the answer right on the search results page, connecting you directly to that knowledge. More and more, you ask us a question, and we give you the answer - not just links.
However, search is still far from where we want it to be. It doesn't know what to do with a question like, "Do mosquito nets that are laced with anti-insect spray work more effectively than mosquito nets that are not laced with insect spray?" Assuming no one has written on exactly that topic already, you won't get a good answer as a result. That's because it requires more than compiling information; it requires knowledge of things in the real world and how they interrelate. We're starting to scratch the surface of becoming a knowledge engine - and someday approach wisdom.
This means our system needs to figure out what a user needs, and then synthesizes that and presents it so it's useful, right when and how the user needs it. We need to go beyond words on a page and really understand people, places and things - and how they interrelate. The human brain is very good at this naturally, but for computers, it's a problem in artificial intelligence.
It's a challenging task, but the work has already begun. We've made tremendous progress with converting data into information, and now we're making serious strides towards a knowledge engine. To explain the future of Google search - and to explain this progression from data, to information, to knowledge, to wisdom - I'd like to use two examples.
The first example is a Big Mac meal from McDonald's. I can give you a bit of data about how much fat it has. That's just data. You don't know if it's good or bad. Then I show you a nutrition chart and explain that it's more than 100 percent of your daily intake - now it's been converted into information. Then you watch the film Super Size Me and realize that if you eat such a meal every day, it's harmful to you. Suddenly you've become knowledgeable about the subject. And someday you will become wise and only eat healthy salads!
Actual knowledge
Here's another example. Today if you search for "10 deepest lakes in China," you have to cross your fingers and hope someone has already created a website that has that list. Otherwise, you're out of luck - or at least you have to do a ton of digging to piece it all together. The search engine isn't smart enough to know what a lake is, or that lakes have depth or how to synthesize this information into a useful list for you. But going forward, we want to build a search engine that does understand that there's such a thing as a lake, and that one of its attributes is depth, and that when someone asks for the "10 deepest," they want a ranked list of lakes. If we can achieve that, we'll have moved from mere information - strings on the page - to actual knowledge of things in the real world.
In order to get you knowledge, Google needs to get smarter. As the Internet becomes bigger, richer and more interactive, it means that we have to work that much harder to ensure we're unearthing and displaying the best results for you.
Today we're working hard on being the best knowledge engine around, but the "holy grail" of search is true understanding of human intentions.
If Google can understand what you mean, it can deliver you exactly the information you're looking for instantaneously - sometimes before you even knew you needed it.
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