Barack Obama is a politicianus

[philw]

Computer learning to speak
Scans internet for patterns
Has own Twitter account
IN a basement in Pittsburgh, US, a computer is teaching itself how to talk.
Not only talk, but write, comprehend, and most importantly, tweet.
Supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Google, a team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed the Never-Ending Learning System.
They prefer to call her NELL, along with a rapidly growing online fanbase of geeks, language experts and AI fanboys dreaming of a Skynet-controlled future.
For years, they've waited for reality to catch up with science fiction and deliver a self-aware computer that comprehends and obeys our every word.
However, the problem with teaching a computer how to understand our language is that comprehension relies heavily on things like context, emotions and history, i.e. the type of things that don't sit well with anything that relies on programmable logic.
Language defies logic. It does not compute, so to speak.
“For all the advances in computer science, we still don’t have a computer that can learn as humans do, cumulatively, over the long term,” the team’s leader, Tom Mitchell, told The New York Times.
But NELL is doing her best, and after 10 months of crunching letters, she's starting to make some sense.
Her trick to understanding the way we speak is to understand how we learnt to speak.
For the main part, that means getting out there and learning for herself - on the web.
After giving NELL some language basics, she's been virtually left alone in a basement to churn through, so far, some 400,000 web pages.
She's searching for patterns in the words she scans which will enable her to place them all into 280 groups with increasing accuracy.
Recently, she figured out that the words "John MCain" most likely referred to the politician.
That gets filed away as a category fact.
With that established, it's only a matter of time before she learns there is a link between "politician" and "political parties". The link may be "is a member of the" or "represents the" and it will get filed away as a relation.
When she has gathered enough evidence that John MCain is most often referred to in association with the words "Republican Party", she will come to the conclusion that "John MCain" (category) "is a member of the" (relation) "Republican Party" (category).
Just as her vocabulary increases, so too does NELL's library of categories and relations, which in turn will help the entire process speed up exponentially.
She's not perfect, though - recently, the team realised it would have to step in every couple of weeks and correct any misinterpretations that had sent NELL hurtling towards incomprehension.
The Times reports one such instance occurred recently when NELL first came across the term "Internet cookies".
She filed it under "baked goods", but when she then came across a similar sentence referring to computer files, she decided "files" was a baked good too and had to be put back on the right track before every computer-related term from there on became a baked good.
Then, inevitably, NELL discovered Twitter.
"Please follow me, and reply with corrections so I can improve!" she asks at @cmunell.
So far, 938 followers have heard the call and now get hourly updates on their digital baby's first half a million words.
It hasn't all gone well.
Recently, NELL's shown she can be clever, understanding that "insulin treatment" is a #medicalprocedure but steering a little wide of the mark in understanding "food shopping" is a #hobby.
And as recently as Saturday, she even ventured into political satire territory - or at least, something that sounded very much like it when she decided that "US President-elect Barack Obama" is a #politicianus.
Nobody seems to know exactly what a politicianus is, but for now we're assuming they're like opinions - everyone's got one, even NELL.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/meet-nell-the-computer-thats-taught-itself-to-call-barack-obama-a-politicianus/story-e6frfro0-1225940246565

haha   must be a smart puter

[rojawe]

I prefer to call him a  professional BSer

[fightingquaker13]

Funny story, but, does NELL scare anyone else? AIs going through the web. HAL, HAL, open the door HAL.
FQ13 who has obviously watched Terminator one too many times. Still, I can barely work my freaking cell phone. The last thing I want is a politically active computer.

[alfsauve]

Funny story, but, does NELL scare anyone else? AIs going through the web. HAL, HAL, open the door HAL.

It does at first, if you only read the hype.   But then when you get into the details you find that NELL is extremely slow at assimilation.  Weeks to figure out that computer files were backed goods.   It may be a big step for scientists, who are easily impressed with their findings, but a long way towards AI on a human level.

[Solus]

With the advances in speed of computers and the compactness they have achieved, this task may be getting closer to reality for a computer.

A computer able to calculate the trajectory of an non-powered object launched in the earths atmosphere with a range of 400 yards or less and then be able to move itself along the ground to intercept and retrieve the object in flight.

Not an easy task at all for a computer but generally done regularly by 10 year old kids playing baseball.

Once the computer is capable of catching it, then we can work on the throw to second.


BTW, does anyone recognize this example from a novel?

[Sponsor]

[Teresa Heilevang]

Shes wrong on this one.    .Barack Obama" is a #politicianus?

Nope... Barack Obama is an Anti Americanus assholenus.... 

[SwoopSJ]

M'ette and I were thinking along the same lines.  I believe NELL's statement was a victim of the common typo and what she really meant was,  BHO is a political anus.   

Swoop

[tombogan03884]

M'ette and I were thinking along the same lines.  I believe NELL's statement was a victim of the common typo and what she really meant was,  BHO is a political anus.  

Swoop

That was my thinking as well.

It does at first, if you only read the hype.   But then when you get into the details you find that NELL is extremely slow at assimilation.  Weeks to figure out that computer files were backed goods.   It may be a big step for scientists, who are easily impressed with their findings, but a long way towards AI on a human level.

I have to disagree with Alf,  It does not need to be "AI on a human level.
As intelligent as HAL may have sounded, it's only real power was deciding to obey input commands, yes or no.
A system does not have to make an INTELLIGENT decision to screw up the whole human world, it just has to decide to do as it pleases.
Congress makes a good example of unintelligent systems getting the bit in their teeth.

[rat31465]

Shes wrong on this one.    .Barack Obama" is a #politicianus?

Nope... Barack Obama is an Anti Americanus assholenus.... 

I added emphasis as needed to make these titles truly fit.  Hope you don't mind?

[jaybet]

That seems redundant in a repetetive sort of way.