Archive for October 30th, 2005
Google Books not for humans
Sunday, October 30th, 2005
From George Dyson’s “Turing’s Cathedral,” an essay on his recent visit to Google.
“We are not scanning all those books to be read by people,” explained one of my hosts after my talk. “We are scanning them to be read by an AI.”
They understand. No one else does. Everyone’s bickering over copyrights and competition and all these stupid little things, and we’re all shooting way too low!
I’m sorry, I’m stunned by that. I never thought of it that way before. It half scares me and half excites me that a company would put so much investment into the good of a future AI, recognizing how much of our knowledge is stored in books, and how useless it would be to a computer unless someone makes it digital.
Man… what a mind blow. Let’s hope Google sticks to “Don’t be Evil.”