Vint Cerf on the “intelligent cloud”

Vint Cerf came to a lunchtime Q and A at work this last Wednesday – something I was not going to miss for the world.  Google’s post on the “intelligent cloud” left me wondering about Google’s relationship with AI.  So, given the chance, I asked Mr Cerf about it, concentrating on John Battelle’s jokey ideas that this may eventually turn the world into the Matrix(!)

Here’s part of his reply:

I don’t believe that we will see arising out of the current internet the kind of conscious artificial intelligence, but we will probably see the system become easier to interact with – for example, voice interaction is becoming increasingly easy to accomplish. I’m almost certain you’ll see products emerging that will allow you to orally interact with the network or to say something, ask for something, or demand something, or command something and have something happen. It might not happen right there, it might happen another place on the network, we may feel that this system is more intelligent because we are interacting with it in ways that don’t require us to point, click and type. The semantic web idea will make the internet seem more intelligent because we are extracting knowledge that other people put into it in a way that looks pretty intelligent.

Read some more of his comments:

• The Guardian: Vint Cerf visits the Guardian…

LHC now up and running

Last week the LHC went live with a level of media interest that probably hasn’t been seen around a science project since the moon landings. I have a special place in my heart for Cern (my first job), so it is great to see it – even if most stories concentrated on the possibility of accidentally blowing up the world.

The Guardian has done an excellent job of tracking its progress and launch – the audio Cerncast is a good place to start. (The weekly science podcast is very good too and comes highly recommended.)

• The Guardian: Cern coverage

• The Guardian: Cerncast

• National Geographic: The God Particle

• The Guardian: Into the unknown

UPDATE: 20 Sept:  Did I speak too soon?..

• BBC: Hadron Collider halted for months

Article: The intelligent cloud

This was going to be just a link in my Up in the Clouds post, where I wrote:

Google’s ultimate aim to meld the search engine with the human brain to create a new artificial intelligence (that was news to me…).

But this article from the Google blog gives us an idea about how Google sees the future. John Battelle has this to say, and whether you think this is very scary or just the coming of the next stage of the internet, we are very close to the petabyte age.