A search engine that knows exactly what you are looking for, that can understand the question you are asking even better than you do, and find exactly the right information for you, instantly - that was the future predicted by Google yesterday.
Speaking at a conference for Google's European partners, entitled Zeitgeist '06, on the outskirts of London last night Google chief executive Eric Schmidt and co-founder Larry Page gave an insight into perhaps the most ambitious project the Californian business is undertaking - artificial intelligence (AI).
"The ultimate search engine would understand everything in the world. It would understand everything that you asked it and give you back the exact right thing instantly," Mr Page told an audience of the digerati representing firms from Warner Music and AOL to BSkyB and the BBC. "You could ask 'what should I ask Larry?' and it would tell you."
Speaking after what was tabled an end of day 'fireside chat', Mr Page said one thing that he had learned since Google launched eight years ago was that technology can change faster than expected, and that AI could be a reality within a few years.
Certainly in that short period of time, Google has gone from a start-up in Mountain View to one of the most recognised brands in the world. As evidence of its meteoric rise, the Hertfordshire hotel in which the conference took place was also home to the England football team. The post-conference press roundtable was briefly interrupted by assistant manager Steve McLaren who had evidently got the wrong room.
Google's executives were also forced to defend their tactics. While suggesting the business could one day capture a 20% share of the $800bn (£424bn) global advertising market, Mr Schmidt explained that the apparently scatter-gun approach to research that lets engineers spend a fifth of their time working on pet projects, also allows the company to innovate faster than any rival.
While this has created some products (such as shopping service Froogle) that have not been a great success, it also led to the Gmail email service which despite still being only in test form is rapidly catching up with market leaders such as Hotmail.
But Mr Schmidt admitted that the company is spending more energy than perhaps it has in the past on integrating some of these seemingly random ventures back into its core revenue-generating search tool, something that could be seen as a sea change within the business, though Google executives maintain it is not going through a major consolidation phase.
But the lack of a visible pipeline of development from Google - which never gives a clear indication of what it is working on until it is released - infuriates some of its stockholders, who would rather it concentrated on a few lucrative services.
"We are very clear and I want to be clear and on the record," said Mr Schmidt. "We run the company for the benefit of our end-users globally."
Looking at the current court case in Houston where Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, former executives of collapsed energy giant Enron, await the outcome of their trial for fraud, he added: "Speaking as an American company chief executive, when the management team starts focusing on the stock price rather than focusing on its business and customers you get a really bad outcome. We are focused on doing the right thing for the long-term"
Mr Schmidt also attacked suggestions from some major US cable companies that providers of capacity-hungry internet services - such as video and TV - should be charged to run their services over the web. This presents a challenge to what is generally seen as the internet's neutrality, that everyone should be able to get on to it.
"We believe this violates one of the founding principles that built the internet today and it could stifle the next wave of innovation," he said.
In fact Google is currently working on its own video tool. While adamant that the company is not looking to get into the provision of content itself, it is looking to produce a video tool that will allow broadband TV viewers to find the shows they want from the hundreds that are available across the world. It is looking for media partners interested in using such a tool.
Mr Schmidt also had a few consoling words for the traditional media business which sees its profitability being utterly eroded by online rivals. He said usage of traditional media placed online is rising rapidly, but circulations - the revenue generator - are declining. "You don't have a lack of audience problem, you have a business model problem," he said.
Source: http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1781123,00.html
LucasArts Plugs Artificial Intelligence Into Video Games
New software simulates the human nervous system to make movements appear more natural. Read our article and see video of the new and improved in-game Indiana Jones' moves.
Laurie Sullivan
May 11, 2006
When LucasArts releases the next Indiana Jones video game in summer 2007, the characters will move, act and think as humans. Already LucasArts' video games are being developed with artificial intelligence, according to demonstrations this week at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles this week.
The games are being developed with software from NaturalMotion Ltd., featuring a "behavioral-simulation engine" based on Dynamic Motion Synthesis (DMS) technology. Euphoria lets characters attempt to balance themselves as their feet stumble, arms flail and hands reach for security in unpredictable movements as the bridge threatens to send them plummeting to their demise.
The 3D animated characters can sense the environment. The software simulates the body, muscles and nervous system, similar to robotics. With this video game, the player, theoretically, never experiences the same situation twice because the characters respond to cause and effect in the environment, said Torstein Reil, chief executive officer at U.K. software company NaturalMotion. "Just like us, the character's experiences will always be different," he said. "You and I can see, we have balance information and know where are limbs are.
Software algorithms process the data at fast speeds. Something not possible before because game consoles PlayStation and XBox, respectively, from Sony and Microsoft lacked processing power. And although it takes more muscle, the files are smaller, Reil said, kilobytes compared with megabytes.
The 3D character animation software uses C++ language. It's built on Dynamic Motion Synthesis (DMS) technology using adaptive behaviors and artificial intelligence to simulate the human nervous system. A team of PhD researchers in Oxford worked on the project. Based on Oxford University research on the control of body movements, NaturalMotion’s first product, endorphin synthesizes off-line 3D character animation in real time.
LucasArts, a Lucasfilm Ltd. company that develops and publishes interactive software for video game consoles, computers and the Internet, will also use software from Pixelux Entertainment Inc. for the upcoming Indiana Jones and Star Wars game scheduled for release next year.
The software, demonstrated privately, uses Digital Molecular Matter (DMM) technology to create a "real world" experience. From crumbling walls to shattering glass and even swaying organic plant life, the software allows in-game objects to behave realistically. The wood doesn’t simply break apart along a predetermined seam every time. Rather, it splinters into countless pieces from the exact point of impact, taking into account the amount of force exerted from the flying object, for example.
Other Lucasfilm Ltd., such as the production company Industrial Light & Magic, could possible tap into this software for special effects to make movies, said Haden Blackman, project lead for the software transformation at LucasArts, during the Star Wars demonstration.
Steve Sullivan, director of research and development at Industrial Light & Magic, said the Lucasfilm companies, from animation to movies to post-production to video games, have begun to share software tools since moving into the Presidio complex in San Francisco last year.
The Presidio supports more than 3-million feet of cable with the ability to stream content at high data rates, 10-GB IT infrastructure, and 1-GB pipes connected to 340 desktops. A 13,500-square-foot data center houses a 3000-processor render farm that can access 100 terabytes of data storage across the network.
ILM’s research and development and LucasArts engineers collaborated on Zeno, a set of custom 3D software and tools. LucusArts will tap into those the 10 ILM tools, as well as build or modify between three and four during the summer. Those tools include digital actor studio that focuses on making human characters, cut scene authoring, game-layout tool Zed, and physics workshop to explode planes and droids.
A challenge, Sullivan acknowledges. ILM runs on the Linux operating system, and LucasArts on Windows. "Some enterprising and forward-looking LucasArts employees took Zeno and went for it," he said. "It took a long time."
Source:http://www.informationweek.com/industries/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=187202420
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