Search Gives Us Superpowers [Excerpt]

Search, in its enlightened form, has the potential to be the hinge that finally connects humanity with machines in a way that lets us transcend our biological limitations. We are at a point in technical history where we have the pieces necessary to augment human abilities in ways that will give superpowers to those of us with access to these systems. The capacity to know anything that can be known and do anything anywhere in the world, no matter where your physical body lies, is as close to a reality as it has ever been. Machine Learning and Intelligence Machine learning--an area of AI focusing on systems that "learn" from data in order to navigate future similar scenarios--is one of the ways we've managed to give systems like search the ability to make sense of our analog world. Many of the seemingly magical experiences we have with technology, such as the incredible advances in speech recognition and the more personal interactions we have with retail sites like Amazon, come from this field of study.