Frank Bandach, Chief Scientist, eeggi on Semantics and Search
February 2, 2009
An Exclusive Interview by Infonortics Ltd. and Beyond Search
Harry Collier, managing director and founder of the influential Boston Search Engine Meeting, interview Frank Bandach, chief scientist, eeggi, a semantic search company, on January 27, 2009. eeggi has maintained a low profile. The interview with Mr. Bandach is among the first public descriptions of the company’s view of the fast-changing semantic search sector.
The full text of the interview appears below.
Will you describe briefly your company and its search technology?
We are a small new company implementing our very own new technology. Our technology is framed in a rather controversial theory of natural language, exploiting the idea that language itself is a predetermined structure, and as we grow, we simply feed new words to increase its capabilities and its significance. In other words, our brains did not learn to speak but we were rather destined to speak. Scientifically speaking, eeggi is mathematical clustering structure which models natural language, and therefore, some portions of rationality itself. Objectively speaking, eeggi is a linguistic reasoning and rationalizing analysis engine. As a linguistic reasoning engine, is then only natural, that we find ourselves cultivating search, but also other technological fields such as Speech recognition, Concept analysis, Responding, Irrelevance Removal, and others.
What are the three major challenges you see in search in 2009?
The way I perceive this, is that many of the challenges facing search in 2009 (irrelevance, nonsense, and ambiguity) I believe are the same that were faced in previous years. I think that simply our awareness and demands are increasing, and thus require for smarter and more accurate results. This is after all, the history of evolution.
With search decades old, what have been the principal barriers to resolving these challenges in the past?
These problems (irrelevance, nonsense, and ambiguity) have currently being addressed through Artificial Intelligence. However, AI is branched into many areas and disciplines, and AI is also currently evolving and changing. Our approach is unique and follows a completely different attitude, or if I may say, spirit than that from current AI disciplines.
What is your approach to problem solving in search? Do you focus on smarter software, better content processing, improved interfaces, or some other specific area?
Our primary approach is machine intelligence focusing in zero irrelevance, while allowing for synonyms, similarities, rational disambiguation of homonyms or multi-conceptual words, dealing with collocations as unit concepts, grammar, permitting rationality and finally information discovery.
With the rapid change in the business climate, how will the increasing financial pressure on information technology affect search?
The immediate impact of a weak economy, affects all industries, but the fore long impact will be absorbed and disappeared. The future belongs to technology. This is indeed the principle that was ignited long ago with the industrial revolution. It is true, the world faces many challenges ahead, but technology is the reflection of progress, and technology is uniting us day by day, allowing, and at times forcing us, to understand, accept, and admit our differences. For example, unlike ever before, United Sates and India are now becoming virtual neighbors thanks to the Internet.
Search systems have been integrated into such diverse functions as business intelligence and customer support. Do you see search becoming increasingly integrated into enterprise applications? If yes, how will this shift affect the companies providing stand alone search / content processing solutions? If no, what do you see the role of standalone search / content processing applications becoming?
Form our stand, search, translation, speech recognition, machine intelligence, … for all matters, language, all fall under a single umbrella which we identify thorough a Linguistic Reasoning and Rationalization Analysis engine we call eeggi.
Is that an acronym?
Yes. eeegi is shorthand for “”engineered, encyclopedic, global and grammatical identities”.
As you look forward, what are some new features / issues that you think will become more important in 2009? Where do you see a major break-through over the next 36 months?
I truly believe that users will become more and more critical of irrelevance and the quality of their results. New generations will be, and are, more aware and demanding of machine performance. For example, while in my youth to have two little bars and a square in the middle represented a tennis match, and it was an exiting experience, in today’s standards, presenting the same scenario to a kid, will be become a laughing matter. As newer generations move in, foolish results will not form part in their minimum of expectations.
Mobile search is emerging as an important branch of search. Mobile search, however, imposes some limitations on presentation and query submission. What are your views of mobile search’s impact on more traditional enterprise search / content processing?
This is a very interesting question… The functionalities and applications from several machines inevitably begin to merge the very instant that technology permits miniaturization or when a single machine can efficiently evolve and support the applications of the others. Most of the times, is the smallest machine the one that wins. It is going to be very interesting to see how cell phones move, more and more, into fields that were reserved exclusively to computers. It is true, that cell phones by nature, need to integrate small screens, but new folding screens and even projection technologies could do for much larger screens, and as Artificial Intelligence takes on challenges before only available through user performance, screens them selves may move into a secondary function. After all, you and me, we are now talking without implementing any visual aid or for that purpose, screen.
Where can I find more information about your products, services, and research?
We are still a bit into stealth mode. But we have a Web site (eeggi.com) that displays and discusses some basic information. We hope, that by November of 2009, we would have build sufficient linguistic structures to allow eeggi to move into automatic learning of other languages with little, or possibly, no aid from natural speakers or human help.
Thank you.
Harry Collier, Managing Director, Infonortics Ltd.
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