Google eyes global leadership in machine learning
Greg Corrado, Google senior research scientist, speaks during a joint press conference with reporters from Asia-Pacific regions, at Google Japan headquarters in Tokyo, Tuesday. / Korea Times photo by Lee Min-hyung
By Lee Min-hyung
TOKYO ― Google is set to increase investments in artificial intelligence as part of its strong drive to lead what it calls “the era of machine learning.”
“Machine learning isn’t magic, but is just a tool, a new way of building software,” Greg Corrado, senior research scientist at Google, said during a joint press conference here with reporters from Asia-Pacific regions, Tuesday. “This is a new field where computers learn from data and experiences.”
Google organized the “Magic in the Machine” event to introduce its software that will be used in the machine learning framework, which the company believes will be a building block to establish infrastructure for the next-generation information technology (IT) industry.
The move comes as the company is seeking to leverage its machine learning platform as the new growth area amid surging demand for efficient data management that can be applied to tasks in real life.
“For real applications of machine learning, it takes billions of repetitions,” he said. “The old way of machine learning was to write a computer program with explicit rules to follow, but the new way helps a computer program itself by learning from examples and repetitions.”
Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence which helps computer software make predictions when exposed to new datasets. A growing number of multinational tech giants, including IBM, Apple and Microsoft, are betting big on developing machine learning-based software as a pillar for their new revenue sources.
Asked about Google’s partnership with Korean companies, the Google executive anticipates that Google will extend its partnership with Korean tech giants such as LG over the development of Android-based machine learning software.
“I think all of the companies recognize that machine learning is helpful and innovative for products,” he said. “All of the companies are already using the technique and I believe that it will continue.”
Google Photos through computer vision
Among a variety of programs using its machine learning software, Google picked Google Photos application as an example of machine learning applied to real life.
Chris Perry, product manager at Google Photos, said, “Computer vision is teaching computers how to see.”
The image-recognition application was introduced in May, with more than 100 million people using Google Photos every month.
“It automatically recognizes me in the photo library,” he said. “This app helps you organize and bring moments to life, and makes it easy to share and save what really matters.”
If users type the name they want to search on their image library, Google Photos automatically shows lists of photos related with the name.
The Google Photos representative said this is made possible through its own artificial neural networking system, which the company developed after being inspired by animals’ nervous systems.
Google Photos uses 22 layers to recognize a certain person, product or image. The first layer picks out basic features like colors, and the layer-screening process gets more sophisticated with more layers, the company said.
Chris said the image-recognition process will become more complicated in the next few years, as the set of layers is expected to require more detailed analysis with accumulated datasets.
“But this has nothing to do with robots, it has everything to do with the Internet.”
Top challenge with Internet
Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google parent company Alphabet, stressed the importance of getting all the people around the world connected through the Internet.
“I think the greatest challenge is getting every human being on the Internet,” he said during a keynote speech at the press conference. “The Internet was designed for everyone, and is a modernizing force that will make the world happier and healthier. We should also have the goal of getting everything connected, not just certain people.”
Regarding machine learning, he expressed excitement over the future that machine learning will bring.
“This technology is good at predicting the sequencing of things,” he said. “We have more than one hundred teams using the machine learning. Google is the leader in this technology.”