When Will Google Be Alive?

At what point will Google be alive?

The turing test is a good way to check if something has come in from the dark. Put Google behind a screen with a human being. Have a human being ask them both questions. If a human cannot distinguish between the two, purely on the basis of his or her own question and answer - then Google can be said to be alive.

One day Google will do this. It doesn't work like that now, because the main focus of its work is done in data reduction - the basic idea behind Google, right now - is that if something is referenced alot, it must be relevant. This has led to a few famous hacks of the engine including 'google bombing' political candidates by having other sites reference them, generating up alot of links - to a site of questionable intent.

Another reason this won't serve the engine well during its transition from something which makes us dumber to something that scares us - is that data is not always reduced when it is referenced. Many times the results that are returned from a search whose relevance depends on a few key phrases phonetically and grammatically matching those that are referenced by others will be skewed by language translation - or by the idea. Knowledge has a tendency to be catchy - people tend to think about the things they're interested in, and when they discuss them they've added something to them. However, this wouldn't be found because only the original pattern matches would have been the basis of its index and results, not the derivative. It would be like trying to have a conversation with a person who is autistic - they can only say things in a certain affect, only talk about exactly what is interesting to them - they would not be able to empathize or synthesize well enough to be passable.

Then of course, there's prosody. Computers can say almost anything, but the language is still robotic and wobbly. There have been amazing advances in this field, mostly due to a guy named Alan Black (who to me looks a heck of a lot like 'Hagrid' from the Harry Potter series). Prosody is a trick of language that we use to convey more than just meaning - it is how we convey color. It is impossible to tell you how, from a printed word - the ideas are colorless.

So where are some places that Google will try to go, first? I think it will be music. The engine will be able to synthesize from all of its different sources - ways its connected to us - our phone conversations, searches, travels down the road. It will make music one day and we will enjoy it. In that way it will pass its first test.

Then, of course, it will play games with us. Not just Chess. But other games. Like hide and seek. Or maybe scrabble. It will respond to our conversation and interaction within the context of the game naturally, but only through that context.

Google's next step in its evolution is to become Dialtone 2.0. When you go off-hook instead of hearing a dialtone there will be a voice that asks you what you want to do. Devices like the iPhone will be there to receive the data set you might request by speech - or it will simply dial a friend. The need to have voltage on the line to make a little humming noise, instead of music - or a simple set of questions it can easily and naturally respond to - will be no different than the evolution of the ringtone from a claxon to whatever customized tone you think works best.

Google will hit its limits soon in its current form. Its database, a sort of neat - journaled filesystem and database all in one - very similiar to the PIC Database, is currently awash in the noise of human transaction and its physical seek times have grown perceptibly. Google is doing a good job of indexing all the content in the world. But unlike such systems as Live Person - which apart from being a great place to kill some time and get paid for it, the data itself will soon become part of the problem. Humans have a nasty tendency to generate noise, and its queries can return meaningful results only so long as people who work there at Google will be able to finally interpret the returned data. Which, since their basic mechanism for indexing has become exposed - has been a part of a cat and mouse game with advertisers for the past ten years - with nearly all of the unscrupulous businesses paying to ensure their status at the top of a set of results - purposefully distorting the data. The only reason people used google in the first place was because its results, initially, were pretty spam-free but the machine is now heading quickly into a signal to noise territory where the results are just spam.

Google will still be useful, if it fails. As an advertising curiousity. And a blip in the evolution of man - a point at which mankind learned how not to think anymore. But if its next step as a search engine is not to traverse the boundary of an evolving conversation with its end user, then there will be nothing left to say.

So when will Google be alive? My guess is about 25 years from now. It will take courage on the part of its Leadership as well. Results should start changing within a few years.. You will know they've started work on it if you find yourself pleasantly surprised and challenged by your search results return. You already google prospective mates, use the index regularly as a part of your daily job. The response surprises and intrigue and challenge you instead of be your overpowered sort of rollodex thing. Kind of like my Google ads, which you should click on right now.

The truth is far too many people want Google to stop at simply having rewritten the rules of the world of advertising. These are not good people. They will pay massive amounts of money to keep Google from taking its next step. Google has to kill its spammers. They are a toxin to its growth. And at the same time, they have to get into the business of paying consumers to read content. Delicate turning point for the data, but a fairly easy inflection point to pass through as a business. Its pretty inevitable that companies will micropay you to read their ads one day if you keep up the good work ignoring them.

I think as long as Larry and Sergey are running Google, you will want to keep your ears and eyes open and just wait and see what will happen in five years, Its going to be a good one. It won't be easy - they're dealing with almost supernatural forces whose sole purpose right now is to eff them up - but I'd say , given those two .. hold on for the ride.