Google's Knowledge Vault: Storehouse of Knowledge

Google's Knowledge Vault: Storehouse of Knowledge

Google is on the prowl again and this time, it's a hunt for knowledge. The Internet giant will be storing information from all across the world in its Knowledge Vault. What is unique about the Knowledge Vault is that it is the biggest information storage in the history of humankind. Another distinctive feature of the Knowledge Vault is that it will be readable by machines as well as humans. This is a knowledge base which can gather data from around the world.

Wikipedia is the leading treasure trove of information on the Internet currently, but Google is set to provide stiff competition to them with its knowledge vault. Unprecedented access to information from all over the world will now be available thanks to the Knowledge Vault.

Currently, Google is relying on crowd-sourcing for its data storage. Google's current knowledge base is known as Knowledge Graph. The Knowledge Vault will be its more advanced version. Google commenced with the building of the Knowledge Vault using algorithms to automate the information culling out process. The algorithms operate to get information from all over the web. Machine learning has been employed to convert raw data into knowledge that can be put to good use.

Google is not alone in its quest to build the largest store of information in the world. Other Titans such as Microsoft, Amazon, FB and IBM are not far behind. The aim is to bring information to all and help people to come up with new and innovative ideas.

So, how big is the Knowledge Vault? According to media reports, the Knowledge Vault currently has around 1.6 billion facts from which 271 million are the “confident facts”. The confident facts are those which have higher than 90% chance of being correct and true, according to Google.

Google's researcher Kevin Murphy and his team who have worked on the Knowledge Vault presented a paper on it at the Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining. The conference was held in New York on 25th August, 2014.

The Knowledge World has a lot of applications in the real day world. It can enhance user interaction with augmented reality. The Knowledge Vault can serve as a useful repository of information for everyone from a student to an employee. Even people conducting high level research can use the Knowledge Vault as a starting point.

So, what could be future applications of such technology? Tom Austin who is a technology analyst from Boston has been quoted as saying that a probable application of the Knowledge Vault type technology will be the rise of the virtual personal assistant.

He has estimated that this technology will supersede Siri, Cortana and even Google's homegrown Google Now. Smart priority email in-boxes which sort out the hay from the chaff will be next on line, says Austin. Till then, we can look forward to sorting out emails the old fashioned way.