Common sense internet
While the “World Wide Web” consists of billions of documents and links that link them together, developers and hundreds of companies creating new startups are looking for new ways to understand user needs.
Their goal is to put these needs “at the head of the Internet,” so that it becomes less like a catalog and more like a guidebook. Some of them even develop systems that understand human behavior. The problem of artificial intelligence, when machines can think instead of just executing commands, has been taking researchers for more than a dozen years.
“Web 3.0” is a “project” that is at the very initial stage of its development and which is already called skeptical “unreal”. But the corresponding technologies and their development have already found their followers in large corporations like IBM or Google , and in small firms. Their projects are now mostly focused on practical application possibilities, such as recommendations for planning vacations or forecasting future music hits.
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But in the future, more powerful systems will be able to work as personal advisers in the same heterogeneous and complex areas as financial planning: for example, drawing up a retirement plan for a married couple or educational consulting, when a particular service chooses a university that is optimal for admission. For all these projects, the progress of technology, more powerful computers - only on hand.
“This can be called the World Wide Database,” says Nova Spivak, the founder of the company that develops the technology that defines the relationship between pieces of information on the web. - "We want to go from the Internet related documents to the Internet related information."
Web 2.0, which implies the possibility of integrating web applications (for example, electronic geographic maps) and services (for example, photo hosting), has recently been the focus of Silicon Valley companies. But commercial interest in “Web 3.0” (or, as some call it, “semantic Web”) with its idea of “smart services” has already appeared.
The classic example of the “Web 2.0 era” is “mash-up,” a term that implies the integration of various services. For example, a property search site with integrated Google Maps is a new, more convenient service, through which each user can immediately see all the homes offered for sale on the map.
And the developers of the “Semantic Web” are asked how to create a system that can give a clear and complete answer to a simple query like this: “I am looking for a warm resort to relax during the holidays; I have $ 3,000 for this. And by the way, there will be an 11-year-old child with me. ” In the current environment, the search for such information may take more than one hour: you will have to look through the lists of flights, hotels, car rental companies. In the conditions of “Web 3.0”, the user ideally should immediately receive a full package of information as professionally and efficiently as if the agent of a travel company did it.
How exactly such systems will be built, how long they will be developed and how soon they will start issuing correct answers to requests - these are the main topics for the fierce disputes of scientists and developers. Some of them are focused on creating a new structure that will replace the current Internet, others on developing new applications that can "extract meaning" from existing information flows. But everyone agrees that these systems will generate more revenue than the current search engines, which give out thousands and even millions of documents, but do not directly answer questions.
To understand the potential of “understanding human desires” technologies, we can give an example of Page Rank: this technology allows Google to use the potential of human knowledge and solutions to rank search results. (She interprets the link from one web page to another as a “voice”, with “voices” on more popular pages having more weight.)
But researchers are moving on. The company of Mr. Spivak, already mentioned, Radar Networks , explores the content of social sites that allow users to post, collaborate and discuss different types of content, from travel descriptions to movies. The technology of this company is based on a new generation database system that defines and maintains associative links between pieces of information as well as links between different people (colleagues, friends, relatives).
An example of using this technology is KnowItAll, a project of the University of Washington research group funded by Google. Within its framework, the Opine system was created, which collects and sorts out the opinions of users from various thematic sites. The demo project dedicated to hotels “understands” parameters such as room temperature, bed comfort and prices, and also distinguishes between what is “great”, “good” and “good” to give useful answers to inquiries. On modern websites, the user will have to look through huge lists of comments and feedback from other users, and the “web-based” system will weigh and rank all comments itself to find the optimal, sensible solution and help the average user to quickly find the right hotel.
“The system will understand that“ perfectly clean ”is better than just“ clean, ”says Oren Etzioni, a researcher at the University of Washington, project manager. “We are trying to make it clear that the text on the Internet is just a huge source of information.”
The current Internet can be said to be in the “Lego phase”, the designer, in which parts of the information are mechanically linked with each other. Adherents of Web 3.0 see the “future version of the Internet” as an era in which machines will do intellectual work.
Researchers have already noted the emergence of intelligent technology. For example, special webcams record the illegal invasion of any territory, and the programs identify the date, time, place of the invasion, and sometimes even the identity of the criminals, transmitting data to the security panel. The researchers argue that this is the beginnings of "Web 3.0".
“This is an important topic: people still simply do not understand how much they depend on artificial intelligence,” said Daniel Hillis, an expert in this field, the founder of Metaweb Technologies . His company still does not disclose what products it is developing, although it is written on their website that “Metaweb is planning to build a new Internet infrastructure.”
Both Radar Networks and Metaweb are partly related to military and intelligence structures. Initial research at these companies was funded by the CIA, the NSA and other US government agencies; The work began shortly after the concept of “semantic Web”, created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1999, appeared.
Intelligence agencies have helped connect to the development of the researcher Doug Lanata, whose company Cycorp sells systems and services to the government and private corporations. The company's main development is the Cyc artificial intelligence system, which, as Lenat promises, will one day be able to answer any questions, both written and spoken verbally. Initially, the system was built on millions of facts entered into it, which it must “learn”, but at a lecture given last year at Google’s office, Lenat said that now Cyc “teaches” network content. This process, according to the researchers, should demonstrate the methods of building "Web 3.0".
Lenat says that at this point the system can already answer questions posed in ordinary human language, for example, “Which city in the US can be affected by a summer anthrax epidemic?”
At the same time, IBM employees say they regularly use the “digital cast” of 6 billion online documents to conduct research and answer various questions from corporate clients. The company used its system in marketing research for television networks, collecting and processing information from online communities. And with the help of information on the popularity of certain music tracks on various sites of university communities, researchers were able to predict the leaders of the next two weeks charts.
There are already debates about whether systems like Cyc will be able to create a “new version of the Internet” or whether human intelligence will be able to independently develop into a new style using these technologies. Proponents of the second point of view say that this is already happening, and examples of this are sites such as del.icio.us and Flickr (the bookmarks system and photo hosting acquired by Yahoo ), and Digg , a news service whose content form the users themselves.
For example, on Flickr, users tag photos with tags, thereby helping others find their images more quickly. “With Flickr, you can find those images that a computer would never have found,” says Prabhakar Ragnavan, head of research at Yahoo. “What we have been fighting for over the years has suddenly become so simple. And it would not have become so simple without the World Wide Web. ”
Their goal is to put these needs “at the head of the Internet,” so that it becomes less like a catalog and more like a guidebook. Some of them even develop systems that understand human behavior. The problem of artificial intelligence, when machines can think instead of just executing commands, has been taking researchers for more than a dozen years.
“Web 3.0” is a “project” that is at the very initial stage of its development and which is already called skeptical “unreal”. But the corresponding technologies and their development have already found their followers in large corporations like IBM or Google , and in small firms. Their projects are now mostly focused on practical application possibilities, such as recommendations for planning vacations or forecasting future music hits.
')
But in the future, more powerful systems will be able to work as personal advisers in the same heterogeneous and complex areas as financial planning: for example, drawing up a retirement plan for a married couple or educational consulting, when a particular service chooses a university that is optimal for admission. For all these projects, the progress of technology, more powerful computers - only on hand.
“This can be called the World Wide Database,” says Nova Spivak, the founder of the company that develops the technology that defines the relationship between pieces of information on the web. - "We want to go from the Internet related documents to the Internet related information."
Web 2.0, which implies the possibility of integrating web applications (for example, electronic geographic maps) and services (for example, photo hosting), has recently been the focus of Silicon Valley companies. But commercial interest in “Web 3.0” (or, as some call it, “semantic Web”) with its idea of “smart services” has already appeared.
The classic example of the “Web 2.0 era” is “mash-up,” a term that implies the integration of various services. For example, a property search site with integrated Google Maps is a new, more convenient service, through which each user can immediately see all the homes offered for sale on the map.
And the developers of the “Semantic Web” are asked how to create a system that can give a clear and complete answer to a simple query like this: “I am looking for a warm resort to relax during the holidays; I have $ 3,000 for this. And by the way, there will be an 11-year-old child with me. ” In the current environment, the search for such information may take more than one hour: you will have to look through the lists of flights, hotels, car rental companies. In the conditions of “Web 3.0”, the user ideally should immediately receive a full package of information as professionally and efficiently as if the agent of a travel company did it.
How exactly such systems will be built, how long they will be developed and how soon they will start issuing correct answers to requests - these are the main topics for the fierce disputes of scientists and developers. Some of them are focused on creating a new structure that will replace the current Internet, others on developing new applications that can "extract meaning" from existing information flows. But everyone agrees that these systems will generate more revenue than the current search engines, which give out thousands and even millions of documents, but do not directly answer questions.
To understand the potential of “understanding human desires” technologies, we can give an example of Page Rank: this technology allows Google to use the potential of human knowledge and solutions to rank search results. (She interprets the link from one web page to another as a “voice”, with “voices” on more popular pages having more weight.)
But researchers are moving on. The company of Mr. Spivak, already mentioned, Radar Networks , explores the content of social sites that allow users to post, collaborate and discuss different types of content, from travel descriptions to movies. The technology of this company is based on a new generation database system that defines and maintains associative links between pieces of information as well as links between different people (colleagues, friends, relatives).
An example of using this technology is KnowItAll, a project of the University of Washington research group funded by Google. Within its framework, the Opine system was created, which collects and sorts out the opinions of users from various thematic sites. The demo project dedicated to hotels “understands” parameters such as room temperature, bed comfort and prices, and also distinguishes between what is “great”, “good” and “good” to give useful answers to inquiries. On modern websites, the user will have to look through huge lists of comments and feedback from other users, and the “web-based” system will weigh and rank all comments itself to find the optimal, sensible solution and help the average user to quickly find the right hotel.
“The system will understand that“ perfectly clean ”is better than just“ clean, ”says Oren Etzioni, a researcher at the University of Washington, project manager. “We are trying to make it clear that the text on the Internet is just a huge source of information.”
The current Internet can be said to be in the “Lego phase”, the designer, in which parts of the information are mechanically linked with each other. Adherents of Web 3.0 see the “future version of the Internet” as an era in which machines will do intellectual work.
Researchers have already noted the emergence of intelligent technology. For example, special webcams record the illegal invasion of any territory, and the programs identify the date, time, place of the invasion, and sometimes even the identity of the criminals, transmitting data to the security panel. The researchers argue that this is the beginnings of "Web 3.0".
“This is an important topic: people still simply do not understand how much they depend on artificial intelligence,” said Daniel Hillis, an expert in this field, the founder of Metaweb Technologies . His company still does not disclose what products it is developing, although it is written on their website that “Metaweb is planning to build a new Internet infrastructure.”
Both Radar Networks and Metaweb are partly related to military and intelligence structures. Initial research at these companies was funded by the CIA, the NSA and other US government agencies; The work began shortly after the concept of “semantic Web”, created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1999, appeared.
Intelligence agencies have helped connect to the development of the researcher Doug Lanata, whose company Cycorp sells systems and services to the government and private corporations. The company's main development is the Cyc artificial intelligence system, which, as Lenat promises, will one day be able to answer any questions, both written and spoken verbally. Initially, the system was built on millions of facts entered into it, which it must “learn”, but at a lecture given last year at Google’s office, Lenat said that now Cyc “teaches” network content. This process, according to the researchers, should demonstrate the methods of building "Web 3.0".
Lenat says that at this point the system can already answer questions posed in ordinary human language, for example, “Which city in the US can be affected by a summer anthrax epidemic?”
At the same time, IBM employees say they regularly use the “digital cast” of 6 billion online documents to conduct research and answer various questions from corporate clients. The company used its system in marketing research for television networks, collecting and processing information from online communities. And with the help of information on the popularity of certain music tracks on various sites of university communities, researchers were able to predict the leaders of the next two weeks charts.
There are already debates about whether systems like Cyc will be able to create a “new version of the Internet” or whether human intelligence will be able to independently develop into a new style using these technologies. Proponents of the second point of view say that this is already happening, and examples of this are sites such as del.icio.us and Flickr (the bookmarks system and photo hosting acquired by Yahoo ), and Digg , a news service whose content form the users themselves.
For example, on Flickr, users tag photos with tags, thereby helping others find their images more quickly. “With Flickr, you can find those images that a computer would never have found,” says Prabhakar Ragnavan, head of research at Yahoo. “What we have been fighting for over the years has suddenly become so simple. And it would not have become so simple without the World Wide Web. ”
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/30866/
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