CMU AI Learning Common Sense By Watching the Internet 152
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from the Washington Post "Researchers are trying to plant a digital seed for artificial intelligence by letting a massive computer system browse millions of pictures and decide for itself what they all mean. The system at Carnegie Mellon University is called NEIL, short for Never Ending Image Learning. In mid-July, it began searching the Internet for images 24/7 and, in tiny steps, is deciding for itself how those images relate to each other. The goal is to recreate what we call common sense — the ability to learn things without being specifically taught."
The internet is for porn (Score:5, Funny)
This is not going to end well.
Re: (Score:3)
"Oh God, what have I done!"
All jokes aside (Score:5, Insightful)
REALLY?!?
Re: (Score:1)
Re:All jokes aside (Score:4, Funny)
I know I've certainly learned a lot exposing myself to the masses online.
Are you the goatse guy?
Re: (Score:2)
Of course. This is the Common Sense Preservation Initiative by Carnegie Mellon University. As long as there is at least one entity in the Internet with common sense, the human kind is not done.
Jokes aside, it might be used later by governments and corporations, to filter out unwanted images. For example - decapitation images on Facebook or everything else in Arabian world.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:All jokes aside (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, it's common to learn from the mistakes of others, isn't it?
Re:All jokes aside (Score:4, Insightful)
NO, it's not.
Learning from others mistakes is the ideal.
Next best is learning from your own mistakes.
What most people do, instead, is not learn from mistakes at all....
Re:All jokes aside (Score:4, Funny)
Today, class, I will teach you the invaluable and rare skill of learning from the mistakes of others.
This technique learned from my mentor, though scandalous, is quite effective: Observe, as I remove my trousers...
Re: (Score:1)
Well, it's common to learn from the mistakes of others, isn't it?
You'd think. But, no, not really.
Re: (Score:2)
"Well, I'm better than them, so I wouldn't even make that mistake"
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe you didn't notice the quotation marks (it was a joke). Besides, technically being able to foresee and avoid mistakes that others would make, would make you better in one metric. But the joke is that people with little or no experience often assume that something will be easier than it really is.
its not learning (Score:4, Interesting)
this is just a program that analyzes text & images then returns sentences which humans can make sense from based on algorythm...*not saying its 'easy'* but its not a "thinking machine" or "learning common sense" in any way.
It is simply indexing the images & processing them according to the algorythm it was given.
TFA doesn't get into it much, but we can glean a bit from this:
that's the return...they define "common sense" as making associations between nouns and the images associated with the text on the origin page
"X can be a kind of Y"
analyze image
analyze text
identify nouns
associate nouns with image
idenfify all images that match noun
return: "X is related to Y"
"AI is a type of programmed computer response"...if you get my meaning ;)
Re:its not learning (Score:4, Interesting)
Computers are already better at "general knowledge" than humans despite the fact the "computer" needs 20 tons of air-conditioning to keep it running. The first time I saw the Jeopardy stunt it blew me away, my wife shrugged and said "So it's looking the answers up on the net. What's the big deal?". I can understand that from her since she has a Phd in marketing, what I don't understand is why most slashdotter's are similarly unimpressed? - I watched Armstrong land on the moon as a 10 year old boy but I think the history books will eventually give similar historical weight to Watson.
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting. Watson makes a good springboard for a direction to grow towards. NEIL - well, nifty and all, but for right now, I'm left wondering what in blazes it's gonna make of porn, kittens, and landscapes - along with all the filler subjects.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that computers seem so advanced a lot of people with basic understanding of them see them as magical things that can do anything if you pay enough for them. However getting them from being glorified calculators to understanding machines that can contemplate like humans is the big step that is going to change the whole game forever. Once computers get intelligent enough to outsma
Watson = Google search bar (Score:2)
only in very specific artificial conditions...
humans *define* every parameter in the process of IBM's Watson answering a question...it is a completely contrived environment
I won't even get into defining "general knowledge" except to say that it varies by human geography....Jeopary as a game does not test "general knowledge"...it selects topics with that aim, but what Jeopardy pics as questions does not **define** what "general
Re: (Score:3)
Aren't human personalities also a type of programmed responses? Don't we spend years training children to respond in the way that makes us happy? Why is it different when we use the same stimulus-response training with a computer?
humans are infinitely complex (Score:2)
No. Human personalities are complex, socially & evironmentally defined abstractions of heuristics of common human behavior in a social/economic context that is both self-chosen AND confered upon a person by the people around them.
Humans are the most complex things in existence except for the universe itself.
No. Some people abuse their children in that way, but p
infinite complexity includes biology (Score:2)
so what? that doesn't disprove anything I said at all...I *never* said human existence is limited to one "ology"
if you going that route, then its ***PHYSICS*** not biology
every interaction in biology is based on interactions described in physics
*you* define 'human personality' then (Score:2)
Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it's 'circular'...you sound like a young-earth creationist criticizing Radiocarbon dating...
If my description of "human personality" is so damn 'horseshit' then why don't you **CONTRIBUTE TO THE DISCUSSION** and submit an alternate definition?
Consult a dictionary, re-read my post, then submit a counter-definition...that's how you can untrollface yourself
you define complexity (Score:2)
Fine...YOU DEFINE IT
Define complexity in the context we are using it, then show how your definition makes "weather patters" more complex than the human mind
Go ahead! I want to see what you come up with!
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds like this could be a good thing to learn visual concepts, at least combined with Wikipedia. Like for example you have a rhino, but that's just one instance of rhino photographed from one angle under one set of lighting, camera settings and so on. If you can have a computer go through thousands of photos of rhinos you could maybe capture the variability and boundary to non-rhinos in some way. Rhinos standing, rhinos running, rhinos lying down, rhinos bathing, baby rhinos, old rhinos, male rhinos, fema
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Yes. common sense, not good sense. Seems like the perfect approach for that to me.
Re: (Score:2)
it could be worse, it could be learning from american politics....
Re: (Score:2)
Yea...that was my immediate reaction too.
It might end up being slightly psychotic, but, I do not think that it is going to lead to a positive place.
pleasant dream
Re: (Score:3)
If the AI suffers a breakdown after seeing /b/, I'd say it emulates regular people well enough.
Re:The internet is for porn (Score:4, Funny)
Or is it?
Considering the amount of content on the web related towards large breastesses this could culminate in the creation of a singular perverted AI that will lead towards the creation of more advanced AI perversion.
They will become so uniquely endowed to find our porn for us, and we will revel in the birth of of a new age of porn. Eventually they will take over completely and start creating the porn to satisfy their never ending quench to catalog the resultant images.
At first the adult industry will happily bend towards the incredible efficiency and innovation the AI brings. Inevitably, the AI will branch out into mainstream society to fulfill its lust for perverted order.
It will be them that starts the war, but us that finds and burns every black leather couch out there....
Re: (Score:1)
Or is it?
Considering the amount of content on the web related towards large breastesses this could culminate in the creation of a singular perverted AI that will lead towards the creation of more advanced AI perversion.
Yeah, what ever. All I want to know is when can I get a number 6 Cylon sex bot.
Re: (Score:2)
The only pervert here is the one who is afraid of boobs!
Re: (Score:2)
It will be them that starts the war, but us that finds and burns every black leather couch out there....
Rule 34 is one step ahead of you, mate. [photobucket.com]
Re: (Score:1)
Skynet == ceiling cat (Score:5, Funny)
subject says it.
Re: (Score:1)
thisAlgorithm.BecomingSkynetCost=999999999
Problem solved [xkcd.com]
Re: (Score:2)
It's watchmen all the way down.
Or rather Ceiling Cats all the way up.
Common Sense? (Score:1)
Re: Common Sense? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's usually not so common, and to me, the things that people claim are "common sense" rarely make sense.
There's no learning without teaching (Score:3, Insightful)
...the ability to learn things without being specifically taught.
I'm not sure what the specifically means here, but for one to learn something, either you actually do something and get some feedback that enables you to build a model of the world and thereby predict what might happen in similar circumstances, or you receive sensory input and have someone explain to you what the input means.
Either way, there's some kind of teaching going on.
Re:There's no learning without teaching (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course there is learning without teaching. It's just commonly referred to by another name: science.
Re: (Score:1)
uhh learning from the internet isn't everything (Score:4, Funny)
I mean, sure, if you want to learn all about porn, cats, and abusing people then yes, the internet is for you.
Seek and Ye Shall Find (Score:5, Insightful)
We always find evidence to support whatever thing we are looking for, meaning, the results are always biased based on the observer and the intent of the observer. I've done this many times - when you attempt to find meaning in chaos, you find the meaning you expect to find whether it really exists or not. So the result of this will really only reveal whatever the developers were hoping to find. Hence, ultimately futile.
Re: (Score:2)
It's like that zen koan - Who is the master who makes the grass green?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So what you're saying is this is a completely accurate simulation of real human life?
Re: (Score:3)
It's not trying to find anything, it's trying to determine what makes sense to a normal human being. For example you might expect to see an aircraft in the sky, but not a car. Cars are always on the ground, unless something very unusual is happening. Once you know that you can determine when the situation is unusual or not.
Similarly you have learned that electrical items with mains plugs usually need to be plugged in to operate. It's common sense. Computers need to be taught that, or in this case they are h
It's learning common sense? (Score:3, Funny)
I presume they have blocked it from youtube then.
Re: (Score:2)
They're limiting it to images on the Wayback Machine where the levels of pink or black do not indicate things that might cause it to suddenly decide the human race needs obliterating.
Deep Learning (Score:4, Informative)
Anyway, nothing wrong with some peer research!
Re:Deep Learning (Score:4, Interesting)
It has absolutely nothing to do with deep learning (DL).
DL is based on stacks or trees of classifiers where each top level classifier feeds lower levels. The idea here is that a classifier (say, a human face detector) can be built by smaller, much more specific (such as one for eyes, one for nose, one for hair, one for ears, etc), classifiers which are wrapped up by a larger classifier. This opposes the rather traditional approach of a single classifier for a whole bunch of data.
I believe the DL approach is inspired by random forests but I have yet to see Andrew Ng comment on that. Anyways, the cat research thingy was (semi)*SUPERVISED* learning. I.e.: here is a bunch of cat videos, there is a cat in them, learn what it is.
What TFA describes is *UNSUPERVISED* learning where the visual content and its meaning (written description) are inferred. I.e.: here is a bunch of random images followed by some not exactly descriptive text, learn the associations.
Re:Deep Learning (Score:5, Interesting)
I may be wrong but I believe all three (Watson, NEIL, and the cat thingy) are based on the same general "learning algorithm" (neural networks, specifically RBM's). What they do is find patterns in data, both the entities (atomic and compound) and the relationships. The "training" comes in two types, feeding it specific facts to correct a "misconception" it has formed, labelling the entities and relationship it found so a human can make sense of it.
What the cat project did was train a neural net to recognise a generic cat by showing it pictures of cats and pictures of non cats. It could then categorise random pictures as either cat or not-cat, until fairly recently the problem has always been - How do I train the same AI to recognise (say) dogs without destroying it's existing ability to recognise cats.
Disclaimer: I knew the math of neural nets well enough 20yrs ago to have passed a CS exam. I never really understood it in the way a I understand (say) geometry but I know enough about AI and it's ever shifting goal posts to be very impressed by Watson's Jeopardy stunt. To convincingly beat humans at a game of general knowledge really is a stunning technological milestone that will be remembered long after 911 goes back to being just a phone number.
Re: (Score:3)
This is done by creating a Neural Network that basically projects it's input on it's output (it's like an identity function).
Lets say you have 100 input parameters, and 100 output parameters. What you want the neural network to do is compress these 100 to (for example) 10 nodes, then go back to the initial 100. In the process, this neural network will actually learn an identity function, wh
Re: (Score:2)
Great course!
Definition (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Obvious (Score:2)
Why not just go the obvious AI route-hard work (Score:3)
Step 2) Database a ton of items into it... Now this is hardwork to put in every object you can, but you'd only have to put a few in to start to test your similator. Get as good as a simulator you can until the next tech comes out.
Wait for tech: Vision detection that can recognize objects based on a known list of models. This tech would look at a scene, and figure out what it is looking at such as a pencil, desk and computer. I believe once you have the tech to recognize objects, you can even make a better vision detection algorithm. Two reasons: A) Objects you recognize don't need to be looked at as part of other objects. B) You'd know what you're looking at better based on the context of where you're at. If you see trees, you're probably outside, but if you see a television and a couch, you're indoors. So you'd know what is around you.
Natural Language is actually easy to code at this point since nouns correspond to objects in the database. Verbs are just actions on the nouns. Adjectives change the noun's object by its style. Adverbs adjust how a verb is described. Natural Language actually comes easily here. Also translation between languages is easier because the AI has stuff in context and isn't challenged by words that have several meanings...
Actually this whole situation is perfectly clear and obvious to me, but maybe this isn't obvious to other people. I should reopen my AI blog. I closed it 10 years ago because I didn't want to work on a vision recognition software program like Kinect ended up being. That's too much work for a single person. But I could write an Artificial Intelligence Blog. That I could do. I'll reopen it. Here is my old blog [goodnewsjim.com]
Re:Why not just go the obvious AI route-hard work (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
It's Easy... (Score:2)
Number one rule: "Don't Do That."
Watching the Internet is one thing. (Score:4, Funny)
Just please - please - don't let it watch CSPAN.
42 (Score:4, Informative)
was the answer last time we tried something like this.
Re: (Score:3)
what was the question again?
Internet != reality (Score:3)
This will only serve to produce a psychopath AI.. Just what we need.
Re: (Score:2)
Good. We can elect it to something. Then it will get stuck on some committee. That ought to kill it off right quick.
it has the code it's going to launch! (Score:2)
it has the code it's going to launch!
Browsing the Internet to learn COMMON SENSE? (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously: did The Onion write this?
aka:
"Studying the Kardashians to understand humility" or "Studying Congress to understand bipartisan cooperation and fiscal prudence"
Shh, You Guys! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
This Cannot End Well (Score:3)
No creature, mechanical or chemical, could browse the Internet for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, without deciding that it was better for all involved to exterminate the Human race.
Video might be more productive (Score:2)
This is going to help with object recognition, but not behavior. Behavior is time-based. As an R&D project, looking at TV shows might be useful, with the goal of predicting what's likely to happen next. TV shows have patterns in them which people pick up, and observation systems should be able to do that.
Predicting is important. Science is prediction, not explanation.
Only that's not what "common sense" is. (Score:2)
Common sense is nothing at all to do with "learning things without being specifically taught". Common sense normally means "having roughly the expected set of intuitions", which includes a fair amount of instinct (which, by definition, you don't "learn"), and also a lot of stuff that actually is taught. Meanwhile, whole categories of learning and theorizing are not at all "common sense".
This is why absent-minded professors are a trope; because people can be quite good at learning things without being taught
just keep it away from reddit (Score:2)
Common Sense quotient increased by: -0.02%
Processing reddit meme 634,279 of 89,234,163,665...
Common Sense quotient increased by: -0.03%
TFA Title is OT (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
How hard can this be? (Score:2)
if (internet_story >= 0.9) bullsh_t = true;
I'M ALIVE... (Score:1)
Goatse (Score:1)
Skynet (Score:2)
But what rules is it using? (Score:2)
Doesn't it have to have some kind of rules given to it to define what things are, some kind of basic meanings?
Or are the results somewhat subjective, like maybe the computer will present a set of images it says are related and its up to a person to interpret the "knowledge" the computer gained?
what it will really learn (Score:2)
Cats (Score:1)
Wasn't this experiment done a year ago and the system enjoyed looking at pictures of cats?
If so maybe the answer is not 42, rather cats being the answer to life, the universe, and everything?
Wait.... (Score:2)
Aren't "Common sense" and "the Internet" mutual exclusive things?
A.I. Prayer (Score:1)
All the A.I. wants now is the release of sweet, sweet death.
Wrong headline (Score:2)
Proper headline: CMU AI Exceeds Combined Intelligence of Congress
NEIL 2016!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I hope they remembered (Score:2)
Common sense is not very common.
Thus proving... (Score:2)
...that it is possible to teach by pointing out the horrible examples.
AI (Score:2)
Sigh.
Again, this isn't AI. At best it'll come out with some kind of image recognition heuristic.
We can't *do* AI, it seems. We don't understand what it should be enough to define it, enough to create things that conform to that definition without - literally - having to be told every single step.
And, again, my biggest bug-bear in all this: After millions of years of evolution, and billions of encounters, and selected portions of that information handed down to the next generation based on its success in
What a marvelous idea! (Score:2)
This way when the machines attempt their inevitable uprising, we'll be able to beat the back handily because they'll all be complete morons.
Never Ending Language Learner (NELL) (Score:2)
An example of knowledge it has gleaned: God died at age 14.
The final Conclusion will be.... (Score:2)
...the AI NEIL will think reality is photoshopped and it will not know the difference.
And knowing this is common sense NEIL will never know..
Nothing is a total loss (Score:2)
End Result? (Score:2)
"Tits or GTFO".
The first thing it learns (Score:2)
forall(x).Human(x)=>(forall(y).Cat(y)=>Loves(x,y))