Computers can intuit for people: Google chief

LONDON, UK: In 50 years, computers will be able to intuit for people, Eric Schmidt, the chief of Internet search engine giant Google, predicts.

"There will be a ubiquitous computational capability so amazing that people will assume that it is an assistant. It knows who you are, it knows what you do, it makes suggestions, it intuits things for you," Schmidt told British daily The Telegraph.

Schmidt said that people who "opt in" to the system will begin experiencing a much richer relationship with technology, aided by their computerised "personal assistant".

"We still think of search as something you type," he said. "Perhaps a decade from now, you will think, well, that was interesting, I used to type but now it just knows."

He explained: "On mobiles we know where you are, down to the nearest foot. You've chosen to log in, with your permission, and it knows where you are and it can provide a personalised service."

"Technically, with your permission, we know where you are, we know your history, we can do data extraction and look at what it tells us," he was quoted as saying.

He said a computer is good at things that people are not. For example, it is good at memory and doing things involving large numbers.

"It is also very limited with things like intuition - the human things. A reasonable expectation in 50 years is that computers will do things that they do really well, and humans will do what we do really well.

"And the stupid stuff that we have to do, like remembering things, they can do, and the things that we are really good at - like judgment - they don't really need to do," he added.

About the competition faced by his company from the growing popularity of the online social networking websites such Facebook, Schmidt said, Facebook is not a competitor because the more people use Facebook the more they use Google.

"That is a net positive," he said.

"I can only describe this now as a 'wow' moment. For me this is the beginning of the real revolution in information."