Behind the Google brain: is AI a kind of technology, or strategy?

AlphaGo wins Lee Sedol at the game of GO!

The first computer program ever beats a professional player!

The artificial intelligence surpasses a human finally!

On March 2016, AlphaGo, a computer program developed by Google DeepMind, played the board game Go against Lee Sedol, the most famous Korean Go player. It beat Lee in a five-game match with a final score of 4 games to 1.

The success of AlphaGo has shocked the whole world. Meanwhile, the development of artificial intelligence technology (also known as AI) has come back on table again. Based on deep learning, AlphaGo has conquered the obstacle of board game, so the next step, as people concern, does that mean AI is heading to a level of manufactural industry that machines can take over human’s life?

Google proved that their concerns would come true. On June 2016, Google’s I/O 2016 annual developer conference kicked off in San Francisco, announcing a range of developments for Google and Android. The hardware and software using the technology of voice or image recognition, or even virtual reality, offered Google a leading place in competing with others. Google introduced “Google Assistant” and “Google Home”, which were voice-activated based on AI technology. “Google Assistant” is a new person AI for users, which is designed to work across all Google properties and be smarter to take a logical action after being asked a question. For example, if people ask to recommend the movies suitable for children in the cinema, Google assistant will help to get online tickets other than merely giving details of the movie.

With all those new products developed to make human’s life more convenient and efficient, Google has provided a bright and high-technology future life picture. However, behind the Google brain, behind the strong business that Google is working on, what does AI technology mean to Google, and to us?

Kevin Fang, one of the leading experts who are contributed to the investment of new science and technology projects, concludes that AlphaGo is no doubt a landmark on the development of AI. From his perspectives, “the program is set to decide which step to go, so that AlphaGo can get more chances to win in this game, facing Lee’s every move. AlphaGo has not yet been smart enough to recognize which step will Lee go during the whole game. So, it is actually a mathematic problem.”

A video interview made by BBC Newsnight, shows that AlphaGo can mimic human players based on data and it is trained to predict the move that human expert makes. “AlphaGo can measure all the possibilities and learn much faster from each success and failure. During daily exercises, it plays with itself 30 million times to learn. This is the most exciting and both terrified part.” Kevin says, “but in this case, things we need to concern is actually not the technology itself, but the company, Google. One of the reasons that Google leads the field of AI is because it has the advantage of meta data, which benefits from the search engine, gaining and operating huge amount of data everyday. Through the success of AlphaGo, Google actually declares a war against all technology giants over the world. Therefore, the one who wants to take over our life is not AlphaGo, but Google.”

Looking up into the AI development history, “Google Brain” is a deep learning research project at Google. The project began in 2011 as a part-time research, using deep learning techniques to crack the problem of artificial intelligence. The project’s technology is currently used in the Android Operating System’s speech recognition system, photo search for Google+ and video recommendations in YouTube. From 2016 I/O conference, Google released the message that AI and VR would be the focus. Other companies, like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, etc., all pay great attention on the move of Google. The competition among those giants is not only about technology itself, but also about business.

Eryue Chen, who once worked in Google, points out that Google is going faster than other technology companies in recent years. “So the CEO Sundar Pichal said that 20% of Google’s mobile search queries were voice queries. Google, as a search engine, is promoted not only to provide information links now, but also to fulfill the real tasks in daily life. To the company, the competition is beneficial in this field, because they need to attract more developers to join in through the open source to promote technological progress; at the same time, it is also a way for those companies to reduce the pressure of research funding. In general, the more people use a platform, the better the platform will become; this is a kind of network effect.”

As for now, although the success of Google has aroused a broad discussion on AI technology all over the world, yet the AI business still stays in the laboratory. On one hand, as a strategy, no matter how far Google can go, it has already won a worldwide reputation.

On the other hand, as a technology, it seems that AI is far away from us, but actually it is not. Nothing can stop the fast track of technology. The development of AI is destined to be a coming future, because it has already entered into our life and generally changed our lifestyles, quietly and undetectably. For example, when we talk to “Siri” (a life assistant provided by iPhone), sometimes it gives funny or even ridiculous answers which are totally inappropriate to questions. Siri is hidden insider the phones, so that people can easily recognize it as a combination of computer programs and metadata. But actually, though it lacks a real figure, likes a robot, it indeed records the reaction and learns to work better next time until finally get the right answer.

This is just one aspect. Considering of the daily routine of ourselves, when we use our mobiles phones on the trains, buses, while walking, waiting for the dishes, don’t we look like robots, who are controlled by the phones, the internet?

“Today, AI was no longer classic computer program designed to solve problem. It can learn much faster and think like human, even be developed and trained to be emotional, which makes those robots so real.” Amanda Song, who has been doing researches on AI technology for several years, predicts that AI will be more “humanized” in the future. “Google is digging deeper into the field of virtual reality. For instance, a VR platform built on top of Android N. called “Daydream”, was released to make up a vivid mobile daydream for people. In the future, with Google glasses, or even not, more mature VR technology will provide more possibilities in visual experience, and the world will be very different from what we see today.”

The key debate over AI technology is that people concern one day it may be out of control. The machine that people design to serve themselves will finally destroy all human beings. But if we think carefully about it, there is still a long way to go before AI can understand what it is doing. What’s more, people can still choose to live without an assistant. Miguel from Spain, who works in high technology as an engineer in United Kingdom, claims that he doesn’t use AI assistant for some reasons. “My fields are electronics and telecommunications. I don’t use any assistance with the exception of the keyboard, maybe in the future. Right now I work in military applications, top secret.” From his point of view, “machine learning is very useful in some applications but will never replace a human being.”

According to a Turing test (developed by Alan Turing in 1950), a human being should be unable to distinguish the machine from another human being by using the replies to questions put to both. If the machine cannot be identified, then it successfully passes the test. AlphaGo has survived, which means that a new generation of AI has already come. In the word of Google CEO, Pichal, “over time, the computer itself, whatever its form factor, will be an intelligent assistant to help you through your day. We will move from mobile first to an AI first world.”

In short, behind the Google brain, a powerful technology empire has been built to create the daydream for the future of mankind. Whatever it is a business strategy or technology progress, AI has become an irreplaceable part for both Google and human’s life. It is no doubt closely connected with the lives and survival of mankind.

For tens of thousands of times, people have simulated the end of human beings in the world of artificial intelligence, in movies. But in real life, human will become smarter enough to solve this problem, hopefully.

After all, who doesn’t want a “Baymax”? But who wants to be killed by “Skyline”?