> they actually put models like T5 into production on search
Google search does not show signs of using a decent language model. If they did, then questions like this should work:
> "What is the world record for crossing the English Channel entirely on foot?"
This is the quote it gives on top of all results:
> And it was a Towson University graduate to do it the fastest. Two weeks ago, Nik Haynes '00 became a world-record holder by backstroking the English Channel in an astounding 12 hours, 52 minutes. Haynes bested the mark set by Tina Neill in 2005 of 13 hours, 22 minutes.Aug 27, 2020
And the rest of the page is anything but crossing on foot.
Ok, so it missed the core semantics of the question completely. In reality there have been crossings through the Channel Tunnel. And at some point in the distant past the sea level was low enough people could cross on foot.
This kind of problem happens in many searches - if you search topic X which is not very popular, and there is a topic Y close to X that is very popular, Google will reply to Y instead of X. Topic blindness.
Google search does not show signs of using a decent language model. If they did, then questions like this should work:
> "What is the world record for crossing the English Channel entirely on foot?"
This is the quote it gives on top of all results:
> And it was a Towson University graduate to do it the fastest. Two weeks ago, Nik Haynes '00 became a world-record holder by backstroking the English Channel in an astounding 12 hours, 52 minutes. Haynes bested the mark set by Tina Neill in 2005 of 13 hours, 22 minutes.Aug 27, 2020
And the rest of the page is anything but crossing on foot.
Ok, so it missed the core semantics of the question completely. In reality there have been crossings through the Channel Tunnel. And at some point in the distant past the sea level was low enough people could cross on foot.
This kind of problem happens in many searches - if you search topic X which is not very popular, and there is a topic Y close to X that is very popular, Google will reply to Y instead of X. Topic blindness.