Official: Brains are better than computers – but not for long
Scientists develop better Web search program
Posted in Business, 1st November 1999 13:48 GMT
Free whitepaper – Optimizing the data center for cost and efficiency
We may be looking at the 1GHz processor but the human brain is still better at data processing.
Not for long though. Two Korean-American scientists have developed a computer program that mimicks the way the human brain recognises patterns in images and text. They hope the program will improve Web searches and data processing by recognising recurring elements in an intelligent manner.
Daniel Lee, 29, and Sebastian Seung, 33, both researchers at Lucent's Bell Labs, tested the program with pictures of human faces and an encyclopaedia database. The program was able to recognise the main elements and then look for similarities, fitting the data into smaller sub-categories.
The technology could mean a vast improvement in Internet search engines, which currently work virtually blind to context. The latest search engine, Google, rates site importance according to how many other sites are linked to it. An intelligent engine would be an improvement on both these approaches.
Lee and Seung have a lot to learn about marketing, however. The report in which they announced the program was titled "Learning the Parts of Objects by Non-negative Matrix Factorization."
Now that's a catchy name... ®
Free whitepaper – PowerEdge M1000e, M600 and M605 spec sheet

The Register Agile Data Center Summit
10 Steps to a Successful CRM Implementation
Market Primer: ERP Systems
Analyst Keynote: The Register Agile Data Center Summit
Hosted CRM Can Be Your Secret Weapon to Success!

Dirty, dirty PCs: The X-rated picture guide
Top 500 supers - rise of the Linux quad-cores
Early adopters bloodied by Ubuntu's Karmic Koala
Sign up, sign up for The Register IT security newsletter