I don't understand his point. In the video he says "We will get better at understanding what user is asking us. Therefore backlinks will become less important

I don't understand his point. In the video he says "We will get better at understanding what user is asking us. Therefore backlinks will become less important as a measure of how important / trustworthy a website is." But these are two separate issues. Namely when user goes to Google and asks something, Google has to perform two tasks: 1) Figure out exactly what the user is asking 2) Based on what was asked, provide a list of websites that answer the user's question (sorted by the order or relevance / authority) I don't understand how getting better at (1) should change how Google does (2). They still have to have a way of sorting sites that offer answers - even if they can achieve a perfect understanding of user intent.