Talk to books, play word association with Google AI
San Francisco, April 15: Google has been working extensively on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and now it has given users a (fun) glimpse of how far natural language processing -- that deals with machine reading comprehension -- in the technology has come.
Google Research division of the search-giant has rolled out Semantic Experiences, which are websites with interesting activities that demonstrate AIs' ability to understand how we speak.
It has two experiences to enjoy and the third one is for developers to help them create their own experience.
The first two experiences are called "Talk to Books" in which users can explore a new way to interact with books, and "Semantris" where people can play word association games powered by semantic search.
In "Talk to Books" experience, users can simply type in a statement or a question and the AI will find whole sentences in books related to what they have typed.
Google Research Director of Engineering Ray Kurzweil and Product Manager Rachel Bernstein said the system does not depend on keyword matching.
They trained its AI by feeding it a "billion conversation-like pairs of sentences," so it can learn to identify what a good response looks like.
For example, if you type "Best detective in the world", the AI responds with several paragraphs and sentences that are related to the word "detective".
This way users can find exact lines from books which they mildly remember.
The second section Semantris offers word association games like a Tetris-like break-the-blocks experience.
The AI would display random blocks with text written on them. Users have to "break" those blocks by typing a word which can relate to any of the text written on them.
For example, if the AI displays "Football" on any block, users could write "Lionel Messi" in the space provided below the blocks.
The AI processes and matches the word with the text displayed on the blocks. Once the AI matches with the word, it "breaks" the block and some points are awarded.
According to Engadget, the development in word vector, an AI-training model that enables algorithms to learn relationships between words based on actual language usage, led to the advancement in natural language processing over the past few years.
Kurzweil and Bernstein said that these websites show how AIs' "new capabilities can drive applications that were not possible before".
They said other potential applications include "classification, semantic similarity, semantic clustering, whitelist applications (selecting the right response from many alternatives) and semantic search (of which Talk to Books is an example)."
Google CEO Sundar Pichai has been "betting big" on advances in AI and machine learning.
Earlier this year, Pichai said that AI is one of the most profound things that humanity is working on right now and compared it to basic utilities in terms of its importance.
"AI is 'one of the most important things that humanity is working on. It's more profound than, I don't know, electricity or fire," The Verge quoted Pichai as saying.
Pichai also said that AI could be used to help solve climate change issues or to cure cancer.
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UN: India calls on international community to act together against ISIS, Al Qaeda
United Nations (PTI): India has called on the international community to act together against ISIS and Al Qaeda and their proxies, underlining that terrorism is an “existential threat” to international peace and security.
“Terrorism is an existential threat to international peace and security. It knows no borders, nationality, or race, and is a challenge that the international community must combat collectively,” First Secretary in the Permanent Mission of India to the UN Raghoo Puri said on Wednesday.
In remarks to the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT) annual ambassadorial level briefing to Member States, Puri recalled the April 2025 terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam, carried out by The Resistance Front, a proxy of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, a UN listed terror organisation. The terror attack led to the loss of lives of 26 tourists.
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“We must act together against ISIS and Al Qaeda and their proxies,” he said, adding that as a country which itself has been a victim of cross-border terrorism for the past nearly three decades, “India is acutely aware of the socio-economic and human cost of terrorism, especially for its victims.”
India added its voice in stressing on the importance of the Global Counter Terrorism Strategy (GCTS) as a central instrument for multilateral cooperation.
Puri said India will remain steadfast and engaged in the consultations for the 9th review of the GCTS, assuring full cooperation to co-facilitators Finland and Morocco during negotiations in the process.
Puri also highlighted that as Chair of the Counter Terrorism Committee in 2022, India has striven to bring these principles into the counter-terrorism architecture of the UN and into the debate on terrorism at the United Nations.
“Our follow up initiatives both in New York and around the world stand testimony to our commitment,” including the ‘Delhi Declaration’ - a landmark document to deal with the issue of countering the use of new and emerging technologies for terrorist purposes, an issue Puri said is of acute importance for several Member States.
In October 2022, the Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC), chaired by India that year, had organised a special meeting in New Delhi and Mumbai on the overarching theme of ‘Countering the use of new and emerging technologies for terrorist purposes’.
As an outcome of the special meeting, the committee had adopted the ‘Delhi Declaration’ on countering the use of new and emerging technologies for terrorist purposes.
India continues to work closely with the UN via its various entities to build capacity and make its partners future ready to take on the ever-evolving scourge of terrorism, he said.
