Artificial intelligence (AI) is constantly advancing and is present in more and more spaces. One of them is Google, which has been using it for a long time to improve its search results. However, the Mountain View company has announced at its 2021 annual developer event that it is working on an AI called MUM that will be able to use the deep knowledge existing in the network to answer complex questions, in more than 75 languages .
Google explains on its blog that MUM refers to Multitask Unified Model, or Unified Multitasking Model . It is a proposal built under the same artificial intelligence architecture that is currently used in the search engine. So why create a new artificial intelligence system? According to the company, the current search engine is not good enough to answer questions like a person would .
Traditional Google Search Engine VS MUM
Photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash Let's take a search example. Last year you have been on vacation in Europe and you have chosen the Vallnord ski resort, in Androrra , to do an activity that you have never done before. You liked the experience so much that you intend to go back to skiing, but instead of going back to Vallnord you decide to go to North America to test yourself at the Aspen Snowmass resort, in Colorado. So, you go to Google and ask: “what should you do to prepare for the new adventure?”
With the traditional Google search engine, you would receive a series of results oriented according to the keywords you have entered, your location and other factors, mainly in your language . It would not be a reflective answer that takes into account different personal nuances and other parameters to consider. This is precisely what the new artificial intelligence is looking for: to provide useful answers instead of generic search results .
If we take the MUM search as an example, artificial intelligence could understand that you are comparing two ski sites . I would calculate the elevation of the seasons, the temperature according to the season of the year, your physical background and other information. In this way, when asked about “how to prepare”, I could recommend that you change your equipment, that you buy clothes that protect you from the cold or that you modify the travel dates .
One of the pillars of MUM is the ability to defeat language barriers . The system would be able to take knowledge that it is available in more than 75 languages to provide the answers. Google indicates that it is a multimodal solution. What does this mean? That it is able to understand the information of different web pages, images and videos simultaneously.
The company assures that it is a responsible artificial intelligence development. Each of the improvements is strictly evaluated to guarantee relevant and useful results. MUM is just taking its first steps and Google says they will continue to improve it in the “coming months and years”.
