(FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 2/4/16) 
   By Alistair Barr 

Alphabet Inc.'s Google named the head of its artificial-intelligence research to run its search engine, demonstrating the importance of the rapidly evolving technology to the company's main profit engine.

John Giannandrea, who has run Google's artificial-intelligence efforts since late 2013, will take over from Amit Singhal, who said Wednesday he is leaving in late February after 15 years at Google to "give back to others."

Google and others increasingly view artificial intelligence -- advanced software that more closely mimics the human brain -- as central to their products and services. In one technique, called deep learning, the software evolves by studying patterns, with minimal human involvement.

Google used deep learning to create RankBrain, a system it introduced last year to handle complex or rare queries, including the 15% of searches that are new to the search engine each day. RankBrain is now considered the third-most-important of more than 200 tools that Google uses to rank search results.

Other deep-learning programs can identify objects in images more consistently than humans can. Google also uses artificial-intelligence techniques in searches for photos, voice-based searches and a planned mobile-messaging service.

Google rivals are also investing in the field. Facebook Inc. has an artificial-intelligence research lab and uses these techniques to understand photos users post on its social network and help decide what content appears in their news feeds. Apple Inc. last month acquired Emotient, a startup that uses artificial intelligence to read people's emotions. Microsoft Corp. Wednesday agreed to buy the company behind SwiftKey, a popular app that uses A.I. to simplify typing on mobile keyboards.

"A.I. is becoming increasingly important to extract knowledge from Google's sea of data, particularly when it comes to classifying and recognizing patterns in videos, images, speech and writing," said Carlos Kirjner, an analyst at Bernstein Research. "Of course an A.I. guy would be perfect for this."

Google's DeepMind artificial-intelligence division developed a program that recently beat one of the world's best players of the board game Go, a challenge that experts thought wouldn't be met for a decade.

DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis said the technology will power new smartphone features, such as recommendations based on location signals collected from the devices. He and others also hope to use the technology to improve medical diagnoses.

Mr. Giannandrea has been leading efforts to incorporate machine intelligence into Google products, including its Photos storage service, automated replies sent by its Inbox email app and Now on Tap, which offers users of Android phones who are using one app links to relevant content and services in other apps.

He came to Google through the 2010 acquisition of Metaweb Technologies, a startup he co-founded. This formed the basis for Google's Knowledge Graph, a database that Google taps to provide quick answers to searches on smartphones.

At a meeting with reporters in November, Mr. Giannandrea said artificial intelligence will be crucial to Google expanding its presence on mobile devices and in non-English-speaking countries.

"Machine learning is a rocket engine. Data are the rocket fuel," he added. "You tell the computer how to learn from its mistakes and get better."

Mr. Singhal helped Google Search adjust to a world dominated by smartphones and improve the quality of search results through algorithm updates.

He has said his dream was to make search like the computer on the TV show Star Trek, which answered spoken questions. A person familiar with his thinking said Mr. Singhal had been talking about leaving Google for some time.

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 04, 2016 02:47 ET (07:47 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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