SyntaxNet and ParseyMcParseface - what do you see ?

Last week Google supercharged the artificial intelligence and machine learning landscape by releasing, for free, an advanced natural language understanding system. The technical term for breaking down a sentence into chunks a computer can understand is parsing and hence ParseyMcParseface. Take that sports lover as an old friend of mine used to say. No chilling effects here but a red hot acetylene blowtorch.

Detailed information on this and the free software download can be found HERE

On one level this is an amazing advance which will allow developers and coders all over the world to benefit from capabilities they could never have developed themselves. This could lead to various challenges being solved in a much shorter time frame related to health, food supply etc etc and the greater good.

Perhaps the various commercial businesses who were developing similar technologies but cannot afford the "free model" will be less positive about this as a blowtorch is taken to all the revenue projections in their carefully polished business plans. Game over at a stroke probably (briefly delayed until the advisors have found a suitably padded exit of course).

A combination of Google's DeepMind artificial intelligence and the software identified above appears to put Google well ahead of any potential competitor or government. Let's hope benevolent dictatorship is the end game here and that there is not a less positive ghost in the machine lurking somewhere in the code.

What might DeepMind and all this software have to say on the concept of democracy, the EU referendum or even The Donald ?

Lee Se-Dol 1 - DeepMind AlphaGo 4

Expressed in footballing terms it is a bit of a thumping. A computer powered by artificial intelligence has convincingly defeated its world champion human opponent at the intuition based board game GO. Is it possible that AlphaGo deliberately lost one game to give the humans hope and prevent us taking early defensive action ?

Deep Mind was founded in September 2010 so it has taken @6 years to defeat about 6,000 years of human development.

The network effect will allow machines to learn much faster than human biology will allow so the question is what happens next ?

From an optimistic point of view many issues that seem totally beyond our capability to solve can be sorted out (financial crisis, hunger etc etc) from a pessimistic point view we lose control and humans are seen as part of the problem.

Either way this will be pretty exciting and my money backs the humans to keep the upper hand.

Beyond Google

The industrial revolution and steam age reduced the value of physical labour. Google has now set the bar pretty high for any aspiring knowledge workers. Essentially to deliver value you have to be able to deliver beyond what Google has to offer for free. What might the hourly rate be for a professional Googler ? Would a Google Scholar Googler get a premium ?

Imagine a researcher not delivering what could be discovered on Google in 30 mins and hoping to be paid for it ? Trust has a part to play and perhaps Googling the symptoms of pancreatic cancer would not be enough to head direct to the operating theatre.............but give automated eye scan based diagnosis a few years and we might be there.

DeepMind the Google AI project will really accelerate the erosion of value in knowledge work and challenge the value of many previously well protected professions.