Global technological growth has changed everyone. We were never as plugged in, switched on, or even accomplished things as fast as we do today. Besides putting us all into 24/7 overdrive, what good has come out of it? Just how advanced can technology become? And how quickly?
Well Artificial Intelligence looks like it’s here – and here to stay.
What is artificial intelligence?
Artificial intelligence falls amongst three classifications. These being:
1. Artificial Narrow Intelligence – The intelligence is designed for one specific purpose.
2. Artificial General Intelligence – It is designed to perform and serve for a variety of different purposes, meaning human-like.
3. Artificial Superintelligence – This intelligence is capable of performing way beyond any level or form of human intelligence, meaning superhuman-like.
When it comes to talking SEO and Google’s RankBrain, we’re talking about an ANI learning about algorithms.
ANI’s have actually been around forever and a day, you just didn’t know it. But in the world of SEO, Google keeps us guessing, and keeps the AI discussion sparked.
Data scientists examining AI are grouped into five ‘tribes’, as they are known. These are:
1. Symbolists
2. Connectionists
3. Evolutionaries
4. Bayesians
5. Analogisers
RankBrain is studied by Connectionists. They live by the concept that knowledge is embedded between our brain’s neurons. They also say that RankBrain uses a technique called a back propagation technique, aka deep learning.
Connectionists believe this technique can learn and automate absolutely anything from raw data, which is also what Google hopes is true. So, we now know what RankBrain as an ANI is potentially capable of.
So how is all this ‘deep learning’ stuff changing, or hopefully helping SEO?
How have we gotten to this point?
When we try and predict where technology is going, we’re generally all wrong in terms of underestimation. What feels like slow advancement is actually exponentially more rapid. Technological advancement, in a sense, compounds over time – the expansion rate multiplies quicker and quicker as time goes by. This also applies to the laws of artificial intelligence, which is what we’re starting to see now.
The scariest things about all of this, is that in some point in the future, computational processing will exceed the capabilities of all humans! This has the potential to happen somewhere between the years 2040 and 2060. Experts assume we will have the abilities to achieve AGI approximately somewhere around 2025 – so let’s just focus on that!
Superintelligence is on its way too
Compared to other ANI’s, Google’s RankBrain is a relatively rudimentary version. But something like this has the potential to learn and grow substantially, and at lightning-fast rates. We may not be realising it now, but forms of ANI like RankBrain will surpass us in no time. The questions is, will we be ready for it?
So, how does any of this link to SEO, let alone change it?
Put simply, RankBrain has literally changed SEO forever. RankBrain decides what algorithmic mixture best-suits a certain search result.
This means that each search entered is integrated within a completely different set of algorithms. It has now become useless to conduct regression analysis on each site without having a particular search result’s context available. This means that analysis has to be done by each particular search result. The bottom line is that RankBrain basically operates on a keyword level, with each one having a different algorithm set.