INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Authors: Super UserUnless we specifically disable them, trackers are constantly watching us move around the web, building up a picture of
Then, algorithms reflect these opinions back at us, presenting us with news, articles and answers that support what we already think.We're
more likely to click things that fit our existing thoughts and interests – but wouldn't objectivity be betterJordi Ribas, corporate vice
president of AI products at Bing, thinks so Ribas manages Microsoft's search engine from its headquarters in the US, but lived in the UK for
three and a half years while he established the Bing team in Europe."Obviously as a search engine, our mission is the provide results that
are as comprehensive, as objective and as trustworthy as possible," Ribas told TechRadar
"If anything, in a world of fake news and misinformation on the web, I think objectivity in search couldn’t be more important."Identifying
multi-perspective questionsTo that end, Bing has launched a new feature called Intelligent Answers
When you enter a question with several valid answers, the search engine summarizes them all in a carousel to give a balanced overview.Ask it
whether coffee is good for you and Bing will realize there are two main sentiments – both expressed by authoritative sources – and
present them both as Intelligent Answers"Sometimes there's a single answer for a query, but sometimes we’re able to understand and
identify that there are multiple perspectives," said Ribas
"We use advanced AI techniques based on deep learning that essentially read the entire web, then try to find which passage or set of
passages are most relevant to that question
With machine reading comprehension, or MRC, we are sometimes able to identify multiple perspectives, where multiple sources converge into
the same answer."Identifying questions with multiple answers involves several techniques, including sentiment analysis, which identifies the
opinions expressed in a piece of text – positive, negative or neutral.Our mission is the provide results that are as comprehensive, as
objective and as trustworthy as possibleJordi Ribas"Take a simple query like ‘Is coffee good for you’" said Ribas
"There are plenty of reputable sources that tell you that there are good reasons for drinking coffee, but there are also some very reputable
ones that say the opposite
Deep learning allows us to project multiple queries in the passages to what we call the semantic space and find the matches."Then we find
that there are documents that cluster separately when you apply the sentiment analysis technique
There’s a set of documents that cluster towards positive reasons for coffee, and some that cluster around negative reasons for coffee
If we find that there are authoritative sources on both, then we realise that this question really deserves a multi-perspective answer
And that’s what we call it."Bursting the bubbleAlthough the Intelligent Answers might challenge our expectations, Ribas says the response
so far has been very positive."I think what’s happening today – because of a lot of the personalised feeds on the web, social media,
trying to reinforce some of the same articles and the same information that users click on, people end up living in a bit of a bubble.I feel
like search engines have a responsibility to be more objectiveJordi RibasAnd so if you have certain political views, or you have certain
biases, you interact with technology in a certain way, and then the alorithms learn that, and they end up reinforcing the same biases that
That’s what’s making society a little bit further apart these days, and it’s helping polarize society
I feel like search engines have a responsibility to be more objective, and ultimately our goal is to provide as trustworthy and objective
information as we can."Ribas says industry professionals are pleased with the results as well
"A lot of the feedback we got from analysts in the US was ‘Aha, finally someone is taking responsibility and taking a step forward, and
not just saying the answer is negative because that’s what the algorithm tells us.’"No, we need to work harder and invest in these more
advanced algorithms that help us understand that a given question has multiple perspectives
We do feel that it is our responsibility to provide those perspectives, and kind of get people out of their bubble."Intelligent Answers
aren't influenced by your browsing history either, and don't contain any ads or 'sponsored' articles."The ads follow a different process,"
"In fact, even our ads team is separate from what we call the algorithmic team, and we have a specific location for ads
Usually it’s at the top of the page, as you can see, sometimes on the right rail, and we label them as ads
This part has no signal from ads whatsoever."Feedback and the futureIntelligent Answers only form a small percentage of search results at
the moment, but Ribas and his team are plans to build it up – though not too fast.The danger of any algorithm that uses AI is that it will
make mistakes sometimes.Jordi Ribas"We’re still learning a lot, and we’re still trying to improve it, and we also want to be cautious
not to go overboard," he said
"We want to make sure that precision is high, because the danger of any algorithm that uses AI, since it’s a machine learning algorithm,
is that it will make mistakes sometimes."We want to make sure that users have a quick way to tell us
We can take a look at what happened and how we can improve the algorithm
And so that’s why we started small, but you will see more coverage as time goes on."You can offer feedback on Intelligent Answers (and any
other aspect of Bing) using the link at the bottom of the results page, and the option might be made more prominent in future, appearing up
alongside the answers themselves.Bing is soliciting feedback on Intelligent Answers, and you can give your thoughts via a link at the bottom
The option might be made more prominent as IA rolls out more widelyYou might soon see Intelligent Answers in other places too – including
"If you ask Cortana whether coffee is good for you, I think today Cortana probably doesn’t have an answer because there isn’t just one,"
"But every time you have a single answer at the top in Bing, that actually flows through Cortana, and so we’re working now so that Cortana
would say ‘Actually, there are different perspectives on this
According to this source there a few things that coffee is good for, but according to this other source, if you drink too much coffee it can
be harmful for you.’ And so that is definitely is in the works."Hopefully the slow-but-steady approach means the team won't need too much
caffeine to see them through late shifts.Lr8yshgZBGRgKaiTvUbGJm.jpg#
