Alternative to the top dog
How Richard Socher attacks Google with you.com
By Frauke Holzmeier and Andreas Laukat
03/09/2022 10:57 am
Richard Socher is Germany’s figurehead for artificial intelligence. Because the American by choice is one of the best-known and most renowned AI explainers in the world. Now the scientist wants to stir up the search engine world with his startup you.com.
“Search engines are incredibly interesting and important,” Richard Socher is convinced. The American by choice is one of the best-known and most renowned AI researchers in Germany. Some call him the “German child prodigy of the AI” – whose dialect shows that he has been living and working in the USA for many years.
Richard Socher founded the search engine platform you.com.
(Photo: picture alliance/dpa)
“We are in the information age,” he says in the ntv podcast “So techt Germany”. It is about “not only finding and searching for information, but also summarizing it”. With his own search engine you.com, the science entrepreneur wants to challenge top dog Google in the long term.
Ultimately, search engines are one of the most important AI applications, explains Socher. It is about understanding language and understanding the intention of a search. Data protection is an important issue, he emphasizes. However, 90 percent of Internet users would prefer convenience to data protection. That’s why his search engine offers its users different modes, including an optional private mode where nothing is saved: “A search for nearby restaurants doesn’t work because the private mode doesn’t even know where you are,” explains socher The user can decide how privately he wants to be on the net.
Personally, he thinks AI research is great “because it covers a broad spectrum,” says Socher. There are many practical applications. “In almost every industry, as an AI researcher, you see applications to make that industry more efficient, cheaper and more automated,” he explains. In the meantime, there is also a lot of hype: “If people want to earn more money and simply put a label on it, then suddenly every simple statistic is AI.”
However, Socher worries that many medium-sized companies in Germany have completely missed the trend and are not innovative enough. If China and other countries soon take over this production completely, then “it will be difficult for Germany to be far ahead again in the next industrial revolution based on AI,” warns Socher.
In “So techt Deutschland” the ntv moderators Frauke Holzmeier and Andreas Laukat ask founders, investors, politicians and entrepreneurs how things are with Germany as a technology location. All episodes can be found in the ntv app, at AudioNow, Apple Podcastsand Spotify. Also at Amazon Music and Google Podcasts you will find it.