Summary
It is a skill that a bright four-year old can acquire without excessive difficulty, but it is almost impossible for machines: reading a sentence or paragraph and extracting its information content. Researchers funded by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency are trying to build a computerized machine that can learn by reading. Although artificial intelligence has made strides in recent years, reading remains a very difficult hurdle because of the complex ambiguity of natural language.
Original source:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,66446,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_6
Details
Among the handiest villains in science fiction are computers that know too much.
Narrowing that cognitive gap between humans and machines -- creating a computer that can read and learn at a sophisticated level -- is a big goal of artificial intelligence researchers.
The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, or DARPA, granted a contract worth at least $400,000 last fall to two Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute professors who are trying to build a machine that can learn by reading.
Down the road, professor Selmer Bringsjord believes such artificial intelligence, or A.I., machines might be able to read military plans or manuals and adjust on the fly in the heat of battle.
Bringsjord and fellow RPI professor Konstantine Arkoudas want to create algorithms, or mathematical formulas, that allow their Poised-for-Learning machine to convert sentences into formal logic.
The next step would be to create an additional set of algorithms that would allow the machine to use the information it takes in to figure things out -- to reason, in other words.
For example, if the machine reads up on the planets, it should be poised to answer the question "What is the largest planet?"
Bringsjord envisions AI robots of the future taking in information in real time, by either reading or listening to spoken instructions.
Machines that understand spoken words, recognize faces and make inferences based on experience already exist, says Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor Tom Mitchell.
But Mitchell, past president of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence, offers a big caveat: Even though researchers have made a lot of progress in different areas of cognition, there is still a big mystery about how the pieces go together.
About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health researcher, author and award-winning journalist with a mission to teach personal and planetary health to the public He has authored more than 1,800 articles and dozens of reports, guides and interviews on natural health topics, and he is well known as the creator of popular downloadable preparedness programs on financial collapse, emergency food storage, wilderness survival and home defense skills. Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes. In mid 2010, Adams produced TV.NaturalNews.com, a natural health video sharing website offering user-generated videos on nutrition, green living, fitness and more. He also founded an environmentally-friendly online retailer called BetterLifeGoods.com that uses retail profits to help support consumer advocacy programs. He's also a noted pioneer in the email marketing software industry, having been the first to launch an HTML email newsletter technology that has grown to become a standard in the industry. Adams also serves as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a non-profit consumer protection group, and enjoys outdoor activities, nature photography, Pilates and martial arts training.
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Monday, February 07, 2005
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