Fortune January 20, 2020
This article is part of a Fortune Special Report on Artificial Intelligence.
In October, Google announced the biggest change to the way its search engine works in five years. Given its centrality to Google’s business, the tech giant doesn’t tinker with its search algorithm lightly. But the new algorithm added capabilities Google had been trying to achieve for years without success.
Thanks to the overhaul, the algorithm finally understands how prepositions, such as “for” and “to,” alter meaning. A search for “2019 brazil traveler to usa need a visa” no longer returns, as it did previously, irrelevant results about Brazilian visa requirements for U.S. visitors. Searching “Can you get medicine for someone at the pharmacy” now returns results specifically related...