Here’s how Google’s artificial intelligence is already helping you in your everyday life, as well as other AI experiments from the internet giant
You may not have noticed it yet, but you already use the artificial intelligence of Google products daily. In our article, we show you 13 everyday functions that would not be possible in this form without artificial intelligence.
Some people get a rash just hearing the word artificial intelligence or AI. Google is listening, Google is spying on me, and other things can be heard. Of course, Google is snooping on your data, but no one is forced to use Google. However, no Internet user will be able to avoid artificial intelligence; every user already benefits from AI and its currently somewhat limited functions.
Artificial intelligence is behind many things in your daily life. For example, in the spam folder of your email inbox. Or why do you think all Joes, Peters, or Marias end up directly in the spam folder? Right, because Google has realized they all have the same goal: To sell you some useless junk. This is made possible by machine learning. The spam filter is trained until it knows which emails belong in the spam folder. That’s a very cool thing.
Of course, one should also be aware of the downsides of artificial intelligence. It’s not just about access to your data, but also about job losses. Because AI can do more automated and faster something, less of a human is needed for the same work step.
To polish up the bad image of AI a bit, here are a few examples from Google:
- In the search function of Google Photos, you can search for animals, people, women or other keywords. Even if no photo has a title, Google will likely show all pictures by the keyword you searched for.
- Google Play Music provides personalized suggestions to play the right music anytime. The recommendations can consider things like time of day, weather or others.
- The Pixel 2 Portrait Mode was also first made possible by artificial intelligence. The system was trained on a good million portraits to recognize and apply parameters and patterns for a perfect portrait with a blurred background.
- YouTube’s automatic subtitles have only become possible through speech recognition and artificial intelligence. As a result, they are now available for more than a billion videos in multiple languages.
- Replying quickly to an email is possible with Google’s Smart Replies. It saves time by showing you three possible choice replies through artificial intelligence, which is selected and sent with a finger tap.
- Nudging in GMail reminds you to edit emails older than two to three days.
- Google Play Protect automatically scans over 50 billion apps and devices daily and alerts users when suspicious apps or viruses are detected.
- Translations made easy with Google Translate. You select the Camera option in Google Translate and hold your smartphone to a text you want to translate. Google Translate displays the text in the target language of your choice. It works via optical character recognition and a translation system that has also been trained on millions of examples of existing translations.
- With Google Assistant, you can have conversations in several languages.
- Finding a parking space is becoming easier via Google Maps and the associated artificial intelligence, as Google Maps indicates, for example, when a specific area on the map is highly frequented and parking spaces are scarce.
- Google Maps also uses images from Google Streetview to improve the recognition of street names and addresses. In the future, this should also make it possible to navigate by announcing prominent buildings.
- Today, Google Lens can already be used to compare images or points of interest for additional information. Google Lens recognizes what is in front of the camera lens and searches the web for more details on your command.
- In Google Travel, an intelligent algorithm helps you plan your next vacation by suggesting destinations, itineraries, and more.
Crowdsourcing
With the Google app Crowdsource, you can train Google’s AI via smartphone. In Crowdsourcing, various small tasks of different categories await you. The tasks: such as taking photos, checking image descriptions, recognizing handwriting, translating and checking, assigning points of interest and others, can be completed by you quickly and thus help the AI train and build up Google’s databases. You’ll get points, achieve ranks, or collect badges for task you solve.
Emoji Scavenger Hunt
Another possibility to train artificial intelligence or Google’s augmented reality is Emoji Scavenger Hunt. Here, a real version of the emojis shown in the game has to be found. The game is best played on a smartphone. Tensorflow.js, an open-source framework for machine learning with Java Script, powers Emoji Scavenger Hunt. The game starts by clicking on the start button. An emoji is displayed at the top left of the screen, which you now have to find in the real world quickly. Once the emoji is captured with the smartphone camera, the timer increases and a thumbs-up emoji congratulates you on your find. The next emoji can now be searched with an increased timer.
Autodraw
With Autodraw, you start a drawing, which is recognized by artificial intelligence. You get suggestions at the top of the screen about what your drawing could represent and select the appropriate icon.
Google Teachable Machine
The Google Teachable Machine also teaches you the basics of machine learning. Programming skills are optional. All you need is your PC and a working webcam. Clicking on the Teachable Machine opens the camera, which “captures” you. You click on the green, purple or orange button and make various movements. For example, you are waving, shaking your head and other movements. Google selects a suitable gif, music or sound based on your movements. It only needs to be trained which action on your part triggers a reaction from Google. According to Google, the resulting images are not sent to a server, which makes the whole game so fast. However, I don’t believe in it. Google needs our brain cells 😉
Semantris
In the game Semantris, associations to certain words must be written in the box to score points. After the term is entered, the AI re-sorts the remaining words. The best match goes to the bottom of the list. The word marked by the AI has to land below the line to get the point. The more words appear, the more complex the game becomes. The game is over if the words pile up to the top of the screen. Another version of the game can be selected on the home screen in the form of stacking blocks.
On Google, you can find a lot of experiments that Google is doing with artificial intelligence.
Also, the Google Brain team is constantly working to make new improvements in artificial intelligence.
Summary
With all the AI experiments, you can put yourself in the world of Artificial Intelligence. However, it is also quickly apparent that AI still has many limitations and does not always work as desired.
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