A Google black box for metaverse bots, anyone?
justingibbs — Mon, 2007-08-13 23:27
I first met Udi Mander while we were both at Yahoo! Now he's at Google tackling the hard problems of search. How hard - well he recently outlined just what makes search such a hard problem. As interesting as that was, what I found most intriguing and use in the metaverse was what Google was doing to tackle the problems.
- Users and Queries - Ability to understand that 'GM' stands for 'General Motors
- Models - Ability to interpret questions, such as 'How much does it cost for an exhaust system' to ' cost of an exhaust system'
- Languages - Localize the above two techniques
Google is of course in an enviable position, collecting instant feedback from millions of a search every day. So it isn't too far fetched to believe that Udi and Google will overcome the hard problem of search. With that Google can look to further dominate the search market.
But what they're building can be applied to more then just search, and maybe spelling utilities. What if they turned that search engine power over to the Metaverse ? Not just to find stuff but to power natural language support for bots? Box all that in a black box and let bots ping it. Such a black box wouldn't supply responses but would greatly increase the interpretation of user inputs. Responses could be supplied by combining the black box with AIML chatterbot technology.
Community projects could sprout up a la Wikipedia style - letting the community supply appropriate AIML responses. Feedback to the black box could determine which response were found to be the most appropriate. This enhanced black box could be the starting point for bot creators, a default. Creators could create unique responses for their bot and rely on the enhanced black box for everything else, ensuring their bot would never be stumped.
This is just wishful thinking of course as Google has yet to announce their metaverse, despite the long running rumors.
