Pete's Blog

Google has incorporated an algorithm into its search engine that now has a senior engineer at Google saying of it, "The algorithm's understanding of language 'has moved from a 2-year-old infant to something close to an 8 or 10-year-old child.'"

In an article put out by the San Francisco Chronicle, read how the researchers at Google are advancing the brain of their search engine.

Researchers only began to make major strides in the last 15 years or so, once they began supplementing rules with a so-called statistical approach.

Put very simply: By analyzing huge quantities of human text, initially labeled and dissected in much the manner of English class sentence diagramming, machines eventually begin to detect the patterns that define the use of language. After a certain stage of development, the algorithms can be unleashed onto raw or unstructured data, and continue to refine their understanding.

What an interesting idea! Play the odds in language.

Furthermore, this new technique is being employed to improve face-identification technology:

The same process has led to similarly momentous advances in language translation tools, and machine perception technologies like facial and voice recognition.

Cool.