The Lamisphere

When I think about the future of the internet and “Web 3.0″, I generally don’t dwell on haptic displays or fully-immersive virtual worlds. Rather I think about the Do Button.  I’ve given a series of talks this year on emerging technologies that will change the world, and one of the main topics covered has been looking at how semantic tools will morph into stronger AI as they become process oriented.

In my world of 2012, the Google home page of the future looks amazingly similar to the home page of today.  The Google search button is relabeled “Do It”, and the logo now sports a techno-color “Agent” appendage.  While the number of pixels changed is relatively small, the implications to a web-engaged society is enormous.

Behind the “Do It” click is a semantic processor that takes the natural language command (e.g. Schedule a date with Kathryn for tomorrow night) and determines the context of the sentence:

• Who is Kathryn?
• What is a “date”?
• When is tomorrow night?
• Is Kathryn available?
• Where is this request to take place?
• What kinds of dates do Jonas and Kathryn like to conduct?
• What needs to be scheduled in order for them to have a date?
• Is a baby sitter available?
• Is a table available?

From there, the process engine goes into action.  Each task is executed through the complex decision-tree of “date scheduling”, ultimately resulting in a text message to my iPhone “Date with Kathryn scheduled, click here for details”.

How the tasks occur may be based on training done to the system on a per user basis, but more likely is based on a collaborative training scheme where you can have your agent execute tasks that were learned by someone elses’ agent in your trusted network.

I’ve pegged the emergence of the Do Button at 2012.  But recent events make me think I have over shot by 3 years.  I’m keeping an eye on a certain Stealth Company that might be scheduling dates for my wife and I within the next 12 months.

4 Comments | In: Artificial Intelligence, Google, Just Plain Cool, Semantic Web, Siri | | #

Today’s keynote at the Singularity Summit was Peter Norvig, Director of Research from Google. His talk was titled The History and Future of Technological Change, and he couched his presentation as an analysis of “how to evaluate technical change”.

This is the first time I have heard Norvig speak, and I found his talk to be extremely pragmatic. His trek through the art of predicting the future, to demonstrations of narrow AI to his list of AGI prerequisites pointed toward a technologist with a perspective firmly grounded in continuous improvement, averse to making high-risk, long-shot bets. If Norvig speaks from a place of authority on Google product direction, it seems to me that we should expect continued evolutionary innovation from GOOG, but they will leave the breakthrough innovation of AGI to others. This is an important observation for the investment community that has put Google on pedestal related to the continued release of major breakthroughs.

Norvig began his talk discussing how the predictions he was used to making are about incremental advancements in technology. A 1% improvement here, a 2% improvement there. He pointed out that predictions about AGI are 100% “or greater” improvement ruminations. He pointed out the dichotomy between other prognosticators. “We will all be dead in 100 years” vs. “We will live to be 1000 years old”. “AGI can’t happen for another 100 years” vs. “within the next 10 years”.

From there, Norvig took a detour through other concepts of “Artificial General”. He postulated about “Artificial General Space Exploration”, “Artificial General Materials Science”, and “Artificial General Culture” – equating these concepts to the emergence of AGI.

Here Norvig was at his most pragmatic. He sees continuous innovation in these areas bringing about a more advanced capability, but certainly no “rapture”, no “big bang”. He commented that “the Singularity is a period, not a point”. He sees a date in the future when we look back at the progress and say – wow that was a big change.

In preparation for this presentation Norvig used Google Scholar to query papers presenting breakthroughs in AI. His keywords were “AI” and “unlike previous”. From 1968 – present, Norvig can’t tell the difference in breakthrough claims, with claims of novelty repeating in the data set. This indicates to him that we are not on the verge of discovering something major in AI.

To bring about an AGI, Norvig offered his list of prerequisites:

• Probabilistic First-Order Logic
• Hierarchical Representation and Problem Solving
• Learning over the data from above
• With lots of data
• Online
• Efficiently

I think the recursive thinking nature of Norvig’s AGI underpins his continuous improvement philosophy, and also presents a very Googlian view of success. Let an algorithm loose on lots of data, and eventually it might get there.

Rodney Brooks asked Norvig a question during the Q&A session:

Brooks – Any emergent property of Google materializing within the massive systems that has been a surprise?

Norvig’s best answer was that he was surprised at how Game theoretic Google’s role in the internet is. Initially, he thought Google would be an observer of the internet – just serving up search results. Now Google is co-evolving with the web.

No Comments | In: Artificial Intelligence, Google, Singularity Summit | | #

Addition coverage from BBGM - mndoci.com

Scifoo: Google and large scientific datasets ? business|bytes|genes|molecules

No Comments | In: Business, Google, Research | | #

“Every hour there was at least one session I wished I could have attended, but the one I will single out here is “Give us your Data! Google’s effort to archive and distribute the world’s scientific datasets” by Noel Gorelick (formerly of NASA and now at Google). For a conference on the future of biology, technology, and science, meeting at Google’s global headquarters, this was a rare session that focused explicitly on how Google is changing the landscape. Rather, Google now is the landscape, and the success of SciFoo offers ample demonstration of that.” — George Dyson in Edge 219

Edge 219

No Comments | In: Business, Google | | #

One of the premises promoted by Singularity University is that we have to make it easier to connect researchers across disciplines. Innovation - especially that focused on bringing about The Singularity - needs to happen across domains, and the increasing narrowness of expertise of a given researcher is necessary, yet counter productive to that goal.

Consequently, I believe we will see a set of services emerge that will provide cross pollination of concepts for the research and clinnical community. This article points to some interesting trends regarding the availability of this type of information on the web, and the practitioner’s increasing ability to find it.

Doctors using Google to diagnose illnesses | the Daily Mail

No Comments | In: Ethics, Google | | #