From Search to Shopping: 11 new Artificial Intelligence apps in Google

Not only MUM: during Google I/O the scene was dominated by the applications of the near future made possible by the development of artificial intelligence systems, which has become an integral part of the work that the Mountain View company is leading. Fundamental advances in computing are helping to address some of the biggest challenges of the century, such as climate change, while AI finds application in Big G ecosystem product updates, including Search, Maps and Images, proving how machine learning can improve the lives of users in large and small ways.

Eleven fields of AI use within Google products

In particular, there are 11 new updates based on artificial intelligence announced at last week’s event, which we will soon be able to see and use in our daily lives. An overview of these innovative applications comes from a summary post written by Christine Robson, Director of Product of Google Research: from MUM, which could change the way the search engine includes queries, up to Maps and Shopping, through futuristic solutions that will allow you to have early health diagnoses through your smartphone.

LaMDA, a breakthrough in natural language understanding for dialogue

The first system presented is LaMDA – short for “Language Model for Dialogue Applications”, defined as a machine learning model designed for dialogue and built on Transformer”, or the neural network architecture that Google invented and made open source, already used for Google BERT.

LaMDA is a vocal search and dialogue feature and can be trained to read terms, understand the relationship between words in a sentence and predict which word might come next. Compared to previous systems, it is trained to produce reasonable and specific answers and not simply generic. In the presentation of the CEO Pichai was shown an example of its operation, which showed greater efficiency than the current Google Assistant, with answers with complex nuances and, in some cases, even witty.

According to Google, “this search in the early stages could unlock more natural ways of interacting with technology and completely new categories of useful apps”, which come close to the complexity of human conversations that are “rooted in concepts that we have learned during our life, composed of answers that are both sensible and specific”.

MUM will contribute in making Google Search smarter

The article recalls that already in 2019 the company had launched BERT, a Transformer AI model that can better understand the intent behind the search queries, compared to which the Multitask Unified Model (MUM) is 1000 times more powerful.

For now, “we are still at the beginning of MUM’s exploration” and there is not yet a possible launch date in the Search – but, in the words of