Google's AI wins final Go challenge. Google's DeepMind artificial intelligence has secured its fourth win over a master player, in the final of a five match challenge. Lee Se-dol, one of the world's top Go players, won just one of the matches against the AlphaGo program, missing out on the $1m prize up for grabs. Demis Hassabis, founder of DeepMind, said the match had been the "most exciting and stressful" for his team. Lee Se-dol said he felt "regrettable" about the result of the contest. Image copyright Google In Go, players take turn placing stones on a 19-by-19 grid, competing to take control of the most territory. The game is considered to be much more challenging for computers than chess. At a press conference held after the final match, Mr Lee said he did not necessarily think AlphaGo was superior to humans. But he said he had more studying to do, and admitted the matches had challenged some of his ideas about the game Go. Analysis: Stephen Evans, Seoul correspondent Image copyright Reuters Expertise What is Go?
Google's AlphaGo AI beats Lee Se-dol again to win Go series 4-1. After suffering its first defeat in the Google DeepMind Challenge Match on Sunday, the Go-playing AI AlphaGo has beaten world-class player Lee Se-dol for a fourth time to win the five-game series 4-1 overall. The final game proved to be a close one, with both sides fighting hard and going deep into overtime. AlphaGo is an AI developed by Google-owned British company DeepMind, and had already wrapped up a historic victory on Saturday by becoming the first ever computer program to beat a top-level Go player. The win came after a "bad mistake" made early in the game, according to DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis, leaving AlphaGo "trying hard to claw it back. " By winning the final game despite its blip in the fourth, AlphaGo has demonstrated beyond doubt its superiority over one of the world's best Go players, reaffirming a major milestone for artificial intelligence in the process.
Read more: Why Google's Go win is such a big deal. CITI: Google should buy AIG and turn it into a fintech lab. REUTERS/Eduardo MunozLarry Page, CEO of Google's parent company Alphabet. Now here's some blue sky thinking. In a note circulated on Tuesday, Citi financial analyst Todd Bault and his team have this suggestion: There is a real opportunity for a major tech firm like GOOGL and an investment bank to buy AIG and turn it into an insurance FinTech laboratory. There would be great benefits to all parties, investors, the insurance industry, and society itself by making insurance a better product. Citi admits that the idea is "audacious, but that doesn't mean it's wrong. " For those not up to speed, AIG is an American insurance Goliath perhaps best known for its central role in the 2008 financial crisis.
AIG pumped out huge amounts of credit default swaps — insurance against loan packages defaulting — and ended up needing a $180 billion (£125 billion) bailout from the government when the loans it had insured did indeed go belly-up. Investing.com REUTERS/Brendan McDermidA tie-up between AIG and Google? AI Is Transforming Google Search. The Rest of the Web Is Next. Yesterday, the 46-year-old Google veteran who oversees its search engine, Amit Singhal, announced his retirement.
And in short order, Google revealed that Singhal’s rather enormous shoes would be filled by a man named John Giannandrea. On one level, these are just two guys doing something new with their lives. But you can also view the pair as the ideal metaphor for a momentous shift in the way things work inside Google—and across the tech world as a whole. Giannandrea, you see, oversees Google’s work in artificial intelligence.
This includes deep neural networks, networks of hardware and software that approximate the web of neurons in the human brain. By analyzing vast amounts of digital data, these neural nets can learn all sorts of useful tasks, like identifying photos, recognizing commands spoken into a smartphone, and, as it turns out, responding to Internet search queries. If AI is the future of Google Search, it's the future of so much more. Sticking to the Rules Losing Control. Google's next push: Virtual reality in your pocket. I'm standing on a balcony in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood with a sweeping view of the Bay Bridge, and I have to crane my neck to take in the whole view.
It's a stunning sight that the employees at Google's offices here see often. The search giant now wants to make moments like this accessible to everyone, and it's decided that taking a mere photograph is not enough. So the company on Thursday launched a new virtual-reality camera app for smartphones that are powered by its Android mobile software. The app lets you take a 3D panoramic photo that you can view in Cardboard, Google's no-frills virtual-reality headset made of, well, cardboard. You pop your phone into the boxy headset, and once you hold it up to your eyes, you can view the entire scene as if you're there, looking around and behind you.
(But not up and down. Google said it's still working on making the experience even more "immersive. ") Virtual reality has become the next frontier for Silicon Valley. Google Glass patent shows that specs may become a monocle. Google Glass could return in the form of a monocle. A potential version of the techie specs has made an appearance in a patent, granted to Google this week by the US Patent and Trademark Office. The device appears to rest on one side of the face, tucking over one ear with the display perched just above the eye.
Images are included with documentation for the new patent, titled "Wearable Device with Input and Output Structures. " The patent describes a device that could adjust to each user's head and recall that configuration for later use. The first generation of Google Glass, announced in 2012 and released to developers in 2013, failed despite initial excitement and endorsements from the tech world. Google stopped selling Google Glass in January and said it needed a chance to pause and reset its plans. As with all patents, there is no guarantee that the technology pictured in this new patent, granted Tuesday, will ever see the light of day. Google open-sources machine learning to smarten up our apps. One day in the not-so-distant future, an app might make a dinner reservation for you before you realize you even want to go out, or your smartphone might suggest tourist sights you'd enjoy when you land in a new city.
It's possible -- and it's really not so far away, say analysts, who were encouraged today by Google's announcement that it's open sourcing an enhanced machine learning system. The system, dubbed TensorFlow, is smarter, faster and more flexible machine-learning software than Google has ever had before, according to Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, in a blog post . "Just a couple of years ago, you couldn't talk to the Google app through the noise of a city sidewalk, or read a sign in Russian using Google Translate, or instantly find pictures of your Labradoodle in Google Photos," wrote Pichai.
"Our apps just weren't smart enough. But in a short amount of time they've gotten much, much smarter. Now the new machine learning system should take intelligent systems even further. Alphabet, now Google’s overlord, ditches ‘Don’t be evil’ in favor of ‘do the right thing’ Google’s logo at an office in Zurich in 2008. (Keystone, Walter Bieri/AP) In 2001, Eric Schmidt was Google’s newly-minted chief executive. He was sitting in a meeting discussing a change in Google’s advertising policies — one that had the potential to bring the company quite a bit of money. A no-brainer, right? But there was a problem, one of the engineers, pounding the table in the meeting, said. “We can’t do that, it would be evil.” “The room suddenly got quiet; it was like a poker game in an old Western, when one player accuses another of cheating and everyone else backs away from the table, waiting for someone to draw,” Schmidt, with former Google vice president Jonathan Rosenberg, wrote in “How Google Works” in 2014.
In the salad days of the Internet, “Don’t be evil” was a mantra — a motto closely held, if casually phrased. Alphabet — which begins trading Monday under Google’s old symbols GOOG and GOOGL — is offering something a little different: “Do the right thing.” Revamped Google Wallet Arrives on iOS. Google this week launched a revamped version of Wallet for iOS, making it easier for iDevice owners to send or request payment via email.
The new Google Wallet for iOS lets users split expenses with friends, manage money on the go, and cash out to a bank account. Just add any U.S. debit card—snap a photo in the app, or manually type the details—then choose the appropriate function and enter one or more email addresses. The service works even when those receiving the payment don't use Google Wallet. Google updated the Android version last week with a new icon, sleeker design, and more functions—including an activity stream to highlight the sender or recipient, amount, and date of transaction. On Android, the app is known as Google Wallet (New).
The old Google Wallet app is now Android Pay, so those who want to continue using Google Wallet must install the new app. But why operate two separate services? One thing Google Wallet cannot do: loyalty cards. Chart of Alphabet, Google's new parent company - Business Insider. Google has announced a massive organisational overhaul: The search giant will now be controlled by Alphabet, a newly created parent company. Meanwhile, many of Google's projects less related to its core internet business — including its investment and human-longevity research arms — are being spun out into separate companies under the Alphabet umbrella, each with its own CEO. Larry Page, formerly Google's CEO, is now heading up Alphabet, while Sundar Pichai is taking up the reins of a "slimmed down" Google.
The new structure isn't yet implemented; according to SEC filings, it "will be introduced in phases over the coming months. " Accordingly, we don't yet know everything about exactly what will be kept under the Google umbrella and what will be spun off to become a separate Alphabet company. Some of the major divisions have been confirmed, however, in a blog post by Larry Page and in the accompanying SEC filings. Unclear on some of the divisions? What else does Google's Alphabet do? - BBC News. When the word Google entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2006 it was widely seen as proof that the chirpy US tech firm, with its primary-coloured logo and "do no evil" mantra, had officially captured the zeitgeist of the internet age. The word alphabet - well that's been around a little longer. As have Google's ambitions for growth - Wikipedia lists 182 acquisitions alone, in addition to the company's core business.
Alphabet Inc - Google's new parent company - will make the tech giant's activities "cleaner and more accountable", said its chief executive (and one of Google's original founders) Larry Page in a blog post announcing the news. Mr Page admitted that from the outset, some of Google's interests "might seem very speculative or even strange" for the firm. "We are still trying to do things other people think are crazy but we are super-excited about," he said. Google Google X Calico Nest Google bought thermostat maker Nest Labs for $3.2bn (£2bn) in early 2014. Fiber Google Robotics. Google Gmail users hit by software glitch - BBC News. Gmail users around the world saw errors and safety warnings over the weekend after Google forgot to update a key part of the messaging software.
Google said a "majority" of users were affected by the short-term software problem. While people could still access and use Gmail many people saw "unexpected behaviour" because of the problem. Many reported the errors via Twitter seeking clarification from Google about what had gone wrong. The error messages started appearing early on 4 April and hit people trying to send email messages from Gmail and some of the firm's messaging apps.
The problems arose because Google had neglected to renew a security certificate for Gmail and its app services. The certificate helps the software establish a secure connection to a destination, so messages can be sent with little fear they will be spied upon. Google's own in-house security service, called Authority G2, administers the security certificates and other secure software systems for the search giant. Google to 'start again' with Glass project. 6 February 2015Last updated at 08:31 ET The Glass project had the backing of Google founder Sergey Brin Google is starting again from scratch with its Glass project, reports the New York Times. Sales of the controversial smart spectacles were halted in January and development of the prototype was also believed to have been stopped. Glass development is now being driven by former Apple gadget designer Tony Fadell, who has "reset" the project.
The new version will be developed internally and only released when finished, the newspaper said. Poor performer First revealed in 2011, Google Glass made a big impact in mid-2012 when the company demonstrated it at its developers' conference using skydivers and stunt cyclists. But, said the Times in a lengthy article about the project's life, many working on the device were unhappy with this exposure because it meant its final development had to take place in public.
Google Plans To Offer A Cell Phone Service: Reports. SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google is planning to sell wireless phone service directly to consumers using the networks of Sprint and T-Mobile, according to reports published Wednesday. If everything falls into place, Google Inc. could offer discounted wireless data plans that would pressure other major carriers to offer better deals and services or risk losing customers to a powerful rival.
More affordable plans, in turn, could bring more people online, something that Google is trying to do because it runs the Internet's dominant search engine and largest advertising network. The Mountain View, California, company would profit from a potentially larger audience for its services. Google also implants its services in its Android mobile operating system, the mostly widely used software on smartphones. Both the technology news site The Information and The Wall Street Journal reported Google's intention to become a wireless service provider. Google’s Secret Study To Find Out Our Needs — Backchannel. Google search really isn’t threatened by competition from other search engines.
But the people on the search team constantly worry that they may be falling short in satisfying the needs of their users. To address that problem, of course, Google needs to know what those needs are. One way to do this is by examining the logs to see what queries are unsatisfied. But there are lots of things people want to know that they aren’t asking Google about. How does Google know what those needs are? It asks them. Every year since 2011 Google has run an annual study to learn what people really, really want to know, whether it’s something Google provides or not. Here’s how the DIN study works: Google recruits subjects who agree to report their information needs to Google on demand. It turns out that people have a wide variety of needs.
But even such clearly defined categories can be a little tricky, as people in different countries have different needs, even when it comes to weather. Google Search Will Be Your Next Brain — Backchannel. Google Glass Never Really Had A Fighting Chance. Google calls end to Google Glass experiment. Google got it wrong. The open-office trend is destroying the workplace. The Spanish War Against Google - Bloomberg Politics. Google to shut Spanish news service. Former Android boss Andy Rubin leaves Google.
What Happened to Motorola | Chicago magazine | September 2014. Google sells Motorola Mobility unit to Lenovo for $3bn. Google Buys Boston Dynamics, Creator Of Big Dog. Nest - a 'crazy idea' at a crazy price? Nest acquisition: Where next for 'new' Google? Google Employees Confess The Worst Things About Working At Google. Why I won’t work for Google | qnrq. Google unveils major upgrade to search algorithm. Google Calico: Everything You Need to Know About TIME's Cover Story. Digital Indians: Ben Gomes. Google launches Chromecast low-cost TV dongle. At Google, a Place to Work and Play.
Google offers social log-in feature. Google Glass Will Change Your Branches. Rumor: Google negotiating $1 billion acquisition of WhatsApp. Google Retail Stores Planned In Los Angeles And San Francisco. Eric Schmidt: television is 'already over' Send money to friends with Gmail and Google Wallet. Google Said to Consider Buying Waze Presaging Bidding War.