Google Previews MUM, Its New Tech That’s 1,000x More Powerful Than BERT

Google’s Prabhakar Raghavan showcased a new technology called Multitask Unified Model (MUM) at Google I/O on Tuesday. Similar to BERT, it’s built on a transformer architecture but is far more powerful (1,000 times more powerful) and is capable of multitasking to connect information for users in new ways. The company is currently running internal pilot programs with MUM, although no public rollout date was announced.

One of the differentiating characteristics of MUM is that it can handle tasks simultaneously. In fact, it is trained on 75 languages and numerous tasks all at the same time. This allows MUM to gain a more complete understanding of information and the world at large, Google said in its blog post.

At I/O, Raghavan used the query “I’ve hiked Mt. Adams and now want to hike Mt. Fuji next fall, what should I do differently to prepare?” as an example that would give present-day search engines some trouble providing relevant results for. In the simulated search leveraging MUM, Google could highlight the differences and similarities between the two mountains and surface articles for the right equipment to hike Mt. Fuji.

Since MUM is multi-modal, it can also understand images and video (in addition to text): “Imagine taking a photo of your hiking boots and asking ‘Can I use these to hike Mt. Fuji?’” Raghavan said, “MUM would be able to understand the content of the image and the intent behind your query.” In this hypothetical scenario, MUM would let the user know whether their gear is capable and point them to a list of recommended equipment on a Mt. Fuji blog.