Generative adversarial network

Google is injecting its search engine with new technology to better interpret the billions of web queries it handles every day, a change top executives say is one of the most significant in the company's history. This shift, announced Friday, moves the world's biggest search engine from spitting out results based on keywords to "something closer to language," according to Ben Gomes, the search chief for Alphabet Inc.'s Google. "We're very far from solving the problem fully, but this is a huge step forward," he said at a press briefing. Google has no peers in web search. But improvements to its core search technology are critical for keeping an edge in adjacent areas, primarily voice-computing, where Google competes with Amazon.

In scripted environments like video games, you can train an AI based on a limited number of pre-defined actions, reading the code of the game and in this kind of environment, machine learning algorithms can make decisions based on that. In open and non-scripted environment, things are a little bit more complicated. For example, in social media AI's have to deal with fake news, self-reported data, bots and so on. You can create algorithms that are smarter enough to recognize some of them, but, remember in this case you need a lot, I mean "A LOT" of computational power to run every calculation, so at the end of the day it's incredibly expensive and at the same time with a vast percentage of errors. Usually, the most useful AIs in open environments are made by the same Company that owns the platform, because they can read their scripts that they own servers are running every time users make specific actions, understanding the quality of data and how to use it as well.

The highly contentious and arguably irresponsible comments from Alibaba founder Jack Ma around AI and its likelihood of creating athird World War– will have done little to inspire confidence in those that harbour fears around the subject of intelligent machines. For some, the two words placed together spark a sense of dread, trepidation or even fear. For others, it represents the beginning of an exciting new digital world with untold benefits and opportunities. Unfortunately, however, it's often the former,which seems to seep more into people's consciousness. It's perhaps then of little surprise that in recent survey by the British Science Association (BSA) that 36% of respondents believe that AI will eventually takeover or destroy humanity.

With self-driving cars cruising around, robots doing backflips and helping each other open doors, computers learning how to play GO in a few days and then beating experts who spent their lives mastering the game, we are definitely witnessing an exciting era in human history. Like Enova's CTO John Higginson said in his blog post, as an analytics and technology company we want to use and even seek to extend these technologies to invent the future, but for credit. That's exactly why our executive team picked'advancing our machine learning capabilities' as one of our strategic initiatives this year. Usually when people see these amazing advancements in technology the first thing they think about is how machines are taking over our jobs. In the lending industry, however, the takeover has already happened.

The highly contentious and arguably irresponsible comments from Alibaba founder Jack Ma around AI and its likelihood of creating a third World War – will have done little to inspire confidence in those that harbour fears around the subject of intelligent machines. For some, the two words placed together spark a sense of dread, trepidation or even fear. For others, it represents the beginning of an exciting new digital world with untold benefits and opportunities. Unfortunately, however, it's often the former,which seems to seep more into people's consciousness. It's perhaps then of little surprise that in recent survey by the British Science Association (BSA) that 36% of respondents believe that AI will eventually takeover or destroy humanity.

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