Getting smarter...

Most people regard computers as really smart. In reality, they are no more smart than the programs, and hence the programmers, that tell them what to do. (Reserve the philosophical debates about Hal for later please).

That being said, even the really, really smart programmers at Google, and countless other prestigious companies and universities have yet to really make a computer as smart as a fifth-grader with regard to certain tasks. According to their own blog, Google says that "we can't write a program to identify objects in a photo or understand a sentence with anywhere near the precision of even a child."

Lest you feel like taking all of your Google stock and funneling it to a company who can program computers better, there is visible progress to report. Google has forever used synonyms to help return the data that you're looking for when searching. It's a fundamental necessity, but a very difficult one to master.

They cite other examples in their post, but here's a snippet showing why it's so difficult to get it right.

Another example is the term "GM." Most people know the most prominent meaning: "General Motors." For the search [gm cars], you can see that Google bolds the phrase "General Motors" in the search results. This is an indication that for that search we thought "General Motors" meant the same thing as "GM." Are there any other meanings? Many people can think of the second meaning, "genetically modified," which is bolded when GM is used in queries about crops and food, like in the search results for [gm wheat]. It turns out that there are more than 20 other possible meanings of the term "GM" that our synonyms system knows something about. GM can mean George Mason in [gm university], gamemaster in [gm screen star wars], Gangadhar Meher in [gm college], general manager in [nba gm] and even gunners mate in [navy gm].

They're getting much better at using synonyms, and now they're showing you where they're used in your search results by bolding the text in the results set. Are they smarter than a fifth-grader yet? I've not done any quantifiable tests, but I'd still rather ask Google than my fifth grader just in case.

If any of you want to funnel your Google stock anywhere, I'd be happy to take the proceeds off your hands. I'm just sayin'