Google Will Become an AI Company • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Will Become an AI Company

#21

Post by ph0rque » Mon, Jan 03, 2011, 7:15 PM UTC

alextp wrote: post #3

What's the point of owning a driverless car? Apart from luxury/status, it should be far cheaper to rent one as you go, in the driverless cab fashion. Also, I can't help but cringe inside when people act as if the only benefit of living in the city is less commute time. As far as my life goes, I'd trade more commute time to live inside an urban centre with all the facilities at a walkable distance plus all the nice be…

Once cars are driverless, they become investment vehicles (pun unintended). One might buy a car, then lease it out by the mile/km, with certain times during the day that it has return to one's location to pick up (assuming the spot market makes it cheaper to call one's car back rather than just lease another one). So cars become an investment that is on average an order of magnitude less expensive than real estate.

Re: Google Will Become an AI Company

#22

Post by achompas » Mon, Jan 03, 2011, 7:16 PM UTC

randallsquared wrote: post #12

alextp wrote: post #3

What's the point of owning a driverless car? Apart from luxury/status, it should be far cheaper to rent one as you go, in the driverless cab fashion. Also, I can't help but cringe inside when people act as if the only benefit of living in the city is less commute time. As far as my life goes, I'd trade more commute time to live inside an urban centre with all the facilities at a walkable distance plus all the nice be…

For many people, whatever nice benefits of density there are (and I'm struggling to think of more than one or two... choice of places to go for fun, maybe?) seem offset by the harms of density, which are manifold. However, lower commute time is something nearly everyone wants, even if it's currently only 10 minutes, so it's an easy point to make.

For many people, whatever nice benefits of density there are

Here are a few that I came up with in 30sec:

Varied options on things to do (like you said)

Closer proximity to other people in general (more social opportunities)

Commuting on foot

Better access to more government services

Greater selection of goods, food and produce

Re: Google Will Become an AI Company

#23

Post by ujjwalg » Mon, Jan 03, 2011, 7:16 PM UTC

http://code.google.com/apis/predict/

this seems a perfect stepping stone... an awesome move on Google's part.

Re: Google Will Become an AI Company

#24

Post by btilly » Mon, Jan 03, 2011, 7:17 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #16

nollidge wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a Christmas tree machine?

Scifi. Imagine you had nano-scale robots where, given a substrate to work with, they would assemble whatever the local environment needed to look like, then assemble two child bots coming from them like twigs on the branch of a Christmas tree. This is supposed to allow arbitrarily complex construction at prices which are rounding error next to current ones, solving scarcity, reshaping the world, and generally making…

FWIW your version is the one I've encountered before.

I saw it in a nice book called Indistinguishable From Magic by Robert L. Forward. It is half sci-fi, and half hard science fact. The format is that he first describes a hard science idea that could allow future technology to do something that looks like magic. And then he has a short story showing a world with that technology. Then he moves on to the next idea.

Christmas Tree robots were one of the ideas he considered.

Re: Google Will Become an AI Company

#25

Post by jonmc12 » Mon, Jan 03, 2011, 7:17 PM UTC

Google has ALWAYS been an AI company. From the beginning, pagerank indexed information, made meaning out of this information, and could predict the most relevant url better than anything else in the market. Search was simply the first application.

AI is not a market - AI is a tool. Google is NOT poor at product development. However, it does seem that they have failed to build some products around AI tools (like Google Wave).

Sure Google (and others) will continue to make products by applying AI to market problems.. but they've been doing this their entire existence.

Re: Google Will Become an AI Company

#26

Post by axod » Mon, Jan 03, 2011, 7:19 PM UTC

zandorg wrote: post #4

I keep telling everyone that I don't need to learn to drive - we'll have automatic cars in 10 years or so thanks to Google.

You should try it. It's actually great fun.

Re: Google Will Become an AI Company

#27

Post by abstractbill » Mon, Jan 03, 2011, 7:19 PM UTC

I was very impressed when I found out Google was running a free 411 phone information service just so that they could gather a ton of data to train new voice-recognition algorithms. That's real long-term thinking, and definitely makes them an AI company in my book.

Re: Google Will Become an AI Company

#28

Post by alex_c » Mon, Jan 03, 2011, 7:20 PM UTC

jonmc12 wrote: post #25

Google has ALWAYS been an AI company. From the beginning, pagerank indexed information, made meaning out of this information, and could predict the most relevant url better than anything else in the market. Search was simply the first application. AI is not a market - AI is a tool. Google is NOT poor at product development. However, it does seem that they have failed to build some products around AI tools (like Googl…

I'm not that familiar with Wave (other than using it for a bit), but can you expand on the connection between Wave and AI?

Re: Google Will Become an AI Company

#29

Post by btilly » Mon, Jan 03, 2011, 7:22 PM UTC

maeon3 wrote: post #14

Self driving cars are 15 years away. The self driving cars will have to deal with the chaotic human drivers, and this will require Strong AI. Once we have this, driving around will be one of the small issues of the day.

Self driving cars are 15 years away.

Google already has them. Seriously.

They have been driving on real streets with real people. The only serious incidents that have happened with them is that one got rear-ended by a human while it was stopped, and a journalist noticed them so Google had to admit that they exist.

Re: Google Will Become an AI Company

#30

Post by tgflynn » Mon, Jan 03, 2011, 7:23 PM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #2

This is a great article. Every now and then Matt can really knock one out of the park. Of all the tech that we talk about on here, there are only a few items that really catch my attention. Christmas tree machines are one of them. Auto-drive cars is the other. These two inventions, when complete, will massively change things. Good luck guessing when they'll be complete, though. Could be a decade. Could be a couple of…

The time-frame for auto driving cars is actually more difficult to predict than that for general adaptive robotics because of the regulatory and social issues involved. I'm sure it will be decades not centuries though.

My prediction is that robotic servants will be common place in homes by the 2020's and that almost all manual occupations will be replaced with automation during that decade. I have no idea how society and the economy are going to adapt to that reality however.