Google’s plan to make search more sentient

At the keynote speech of its I/O developer conference on Tuesday, Google revealed a suite of ways the company is moving forward with artificial intelligence. These advancements show Google increasingly trying to build AI-powered tools that seem more sentient and that are better at perceiving how humans actually communicate and think. They seem powerful, too.

Two of the biggest AI announcements from Google involve natural language processing and search. One is called LaMDA, which stands for language model for dialogue applications; LaMDA makes it easier for artificial intelligence systems to have more conversational dialogue. The other is a technology called Multitask Unified Model (MUM), which is an AI model that boosts understanding of human questions and improves search. Google also revealed a number of AI-powered improvements to its Maps platform that are designed to yield more helpful results and directions.

Overall, these steps indicate that Google aims to take on more and more of the work humans normally do when interacting with technology — mainly by making AI smarter. Instead of needing to use multiple queries to answer a series of questions, you could do it with one more sophisticated query. Or, rather than users needing to think through what routes might be most dangerous, Google wants to make these calculations itself and then automatically suggest safer routes. These advances show that Google not only aims for its AI tech to become more powerful but that it will also take on more responsibility in our day-to-day interactions with our phones and computers.

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