Page 24 - ARUBA TODAY

A24 TECHNOLOGY
Friday 26 January 2018
AI can read! Tech firms race to smarten up thinking machines

By MATT O’BRIEN LIMITS OF UNDERSTANDING
AP Technology Writer The tech industry’s col-
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — lection and digitization
Seven years ago, a com- of huge troves of data,
puter beat two human combined with new sets
quizmasters on a “Jeopar- of algorithms and more
dy” challenge. Ever since, powerful computing, has
the tech industry has been helped inject new energy
training its machines even into a machine-learning
harder to make them bet- field that’s been around for
ter at amassing knowledge more than half a century.
and answering questions. But computers are still “far
And it’s worked, at least up off” from truly understand-
to a point. Just don’t ex- ing what they’re reading,
pect artificial intelligence said Michael Littman, a
to spit out a literary analysis Brown University computer
of Leo Tolstoy’s “War and science professor who has
Peace” any time soon. tasked computers to solve
Research teams at Micro- crossword puzzles.
soft and Chinese tech com- Computers are getting bet-
pany Alibaba reached ter at the statistical intuition
what they described as a that allows them to scan
milestone earlier this month Stanford doctoral student Pranav Rajpurkar, who helped develop the Stanford Question Answering text and find what seems
when their AI systems out- Dataset, poses for photos in an office of The Gates Computer Science Building in Stanford, Calif., relevant, but they still strug-
performed the estimated Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2018. gle with the logical reason-
human score on a reading Associated Press ing that comes naturally to
comprehension test. It was quickly “reading” hundreds HUMAN VS. MACHINE just find factoids, but better people. (And they are of-
the latest demonstration of of Wikipedia entries and It’s not uncommon for comprehend the mean- ten hopeless when it comes
rapid advances that have coming up with accurate machine-learning com- ing of multi-sentence pas- to deciphering the subtle
improved search engines answers to questions about petitions to pit the cogni- sages. wink-and-nod trickery of a
and voice assistants and Genghis Khan’s reign or the tive abilities of computers Like the other tests, the clever puzzle.) Many of the
that are finding broader Apollo space program. against humans. Machines Stanford Question Answer- common ways of measur-
applications in health care The computers, however, first bested people in an ing Dataset, nicknamed ing artificial intelligence are
and other fields. also made mistakes that image-recognition compe- Squad, attracted a rivalry in some ways teaching to
The answers they got wrong many people wouldn’t tition in 2015 and a speech among research institu- the test, Littman said.
— and the test itself — also have. recognition competition tions and tech firms — with “It strikes me for the kind of
highlight the limitations of Microsoft, for instance, last year, although they’re Google, Facebook, Ten- problem that they’re solv-
computer intelligence and fumbled an easy foot- still easily tricked. Comput- cent, Samsung and Sales- ing that it’s not possible to
the difficulty of comparing ball question about which ers have also vanquished force also giving it a try. do better than people, be-
it directly to human intelli- member of the NFL’s Caro- humans at chess, Pac-Man “Academics love competi- cause people are defining
gence. lina Panthers got the most and the strategy game Go tions,” said Pranav Rajpur- what’s correct,” Littman
ERROR! ERROR! interceptions in the 2015 . kar, the Stanford doctoral said of the Stanford bench-
“We are still a long way season (the correct answer And since IBM’s “Jeop- student who helped de- mark.
from computers being able was Kurt Coleman, not Josh ardy!” victory in 2011, the velop the test. “All these “The impressive thing here
to read and comprehend Norman). A person’s care- tech industry has shifted companies and institutions is they met human perfor-
general text in the same ful reading of the Wikipedia its efforts to data-intensive are trying to establish them- mance, not that they’ve
way that humans can,” passage would have dis- methods that seek to not selves as the leader in AI.” exceeded it.”q
said Kevin Scott, Microsoft’s covered the right answer,
chief technology officer, in but the computer tripped
a LinkedIn post that also up on the word “most” and Apple poised to expand into
commended the achieve- didn’t understand that sev-
ment by the company’s en is bigger than four. speaker market with HomePod
Beijing-based researchers. “You need some very sim-
The test developed at ple reasoning here, but the SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — product.
Stanford University dem- machine cannot get it,” Apple is finally ready to Both Amazon’s Echo and
onstrated that, in at least said Jianfeng Gao, of Mi- launch its attempt to com- Google’s Home speakers
some circumstances, com- crosoft’s AI research divi- pete with the internet-con- have been expanding their
puters can beat humans at sion. In this Monday, June 5, 2017,
nected speakers made reach into people’s homes file photo, the HomePod
by Amazon and Google since Apple announced speaker appears on display
with the release of its long- the HomePod last June. during an announcement of
awaited HomePod. Amazon and Google also new products at the Apple
Worldwide
Developers
Pre-orders for the Home- are selling their speakers Conference in San Jose, Calif.
Pod will begin Friday in the for substantially less, with Associated Press
U.S, U.K. and Australia, two streamlined versions of their commands while Amazon
weeks before the speaker devices available for be- leans on Alexa and Google
goes on sale in stores for low $50. features the eponymous
$349. Like its rivals, the HomePod Assistant.
Apple had intended to re- includes a voice-activated All three companies are
lease the HomePod last assistant to help people trying to build digital com-
month during the holiday manage their homes and mand centers within homes
shopping season, but de- the rest of their lives. Ap- in an attempt to sell some
layed its debut to refine the ple relies on Siri to process of their other products. ”q