Google Schools Its Algorithm

By STEVE LOHR New York Times

To humans, computer intelligence is a puzzle, as if the machines have split personalities. They can be so remarkably smart at times, yet so bafflingly dumb at others. This riddle of digital deduction has been center stage recently.

Just over a week ago, for instance, the Internet search giant Google announced that it was making a major overhaul of its formula for ranking Web sites. The company said it was demoting “low quality” Web sites, designed mainly to lure traffic from Google’s search engine and attract advertising revenue. It was a move to improve the quality of search, but also an admission that Google, the trusted curator of the Web, was being outwitted.

The week before, I.B.M.’s question-answering computer Watson drubbed two of the best human players in the history of “Jeopardy!” Yet on the way to victory, Watson occasionally gave answers so seemingly absurd that audience members were left laughing and shaking their heads.

Computers are only as smart as their algorithms — man-made software recipes for calculation, the basic building blocks of computerized thought. When running on powerful computers, a clever algorithm can perform amazing feats. Google’s algorithm handles one billion search queries a day. But algorithms are often brittle and simple-minded, doggedly following their step-by-step formulas as if with blinders. They can be amazingly good at set tasks — playing chess, scanning the Web, simulating weather patterns. But they are typically unable to process what humans effortlessly understand — nuance, background knowledge, common sense about things in the physical world.

Expanding the horizons of computer intelligence — mimicking human understanding in more realms — is one of the grand challenges in science. I.B.M.’s Watson and Google’s algorithmic makeover highlight not only the accelerating pace of recent progress, but also how much remains to be accomplished. Article