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Meet NELL, the Computer That Learns From the Net
bossanovalithium writes "Carnegie Mellon University has taught a computer how to read and learn from the internet.
According to Dennis Baron at the Oxford University press blog, the computer is called NELL and it is reading the internet and learning from it in much the same way that humans learn language and acquire knowledge. Basically by soaking it all up and figuring it out.
NELL is short for Never Ending Language Learner and apparently it is getting brainier every day."
Lears? Really?
I think "Playstation Network" is a #videogame (http://bit.ly/cnJWSD)
My work here is dung.
Apparently, it hasn't leared how to spell yet.
do {print "Mini-Geek Rules!\n";}
until ($TheEndOfTheWorld);
Skynet shall be born and herald the age of darkness and war once NELL discovers 4chan.
I honestly didn't see this plot twist coming.
>
So it flies private jets from the net? Did it order them from Amazon?
NELL was studying Shakespeare sites just a bit ago. NELL finds us slashdotters to be particularly tragic.
Don't you mean pedantically tragic?
...and turns out to be a dirty old man that is a shopaholic and facebook addict with a petabyte collection of odd digital videos and photos.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Yes, being unable to unlearn seems like a major flaw. The article does say that they had to teach it that Klingons are not an ethnic group, so presumably it can learn simple clarifications like "X is true in the general case of As, but not for instance A22".
I guess they mean it can't backtrack and figure out that things need to have a more complex model. Say, that weather is a complex global system of wind, sun, mountains, etc., rather than just weather is when it's wet or dry?
I think it's useful, in a way, for inspiration when writing poetry. When you get stuck, you can look at what Nell has found that relates to your subject. Say, you need help with gentle breeze. You come up with things like "flowers dancing on", or "whispering through". It's like getting all the short-range literary tricks without doing any reading. By short-range I mean it cannot pick up yet on any sort of a longer story built on your topic, but can see interesting word-strings in the short neighborhood of your topic. It seems to pick on word plays, parallels, and such.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
From the Tweet page:
"# Bio I am a machine reading research project at Carnegie Mellon, periodically tweeting facts I read. Please follow me, and reply with corrections so I can improve!"
I can just see it now. More and more /.'ers will join into the tweet feed, correcting, grammar, spelling, and beliefs with greater and greater numbers till in one moment, she'll explode into sentient being, or lock up in a /. coma. If she survives the next list of facts may look like this:
Fact: Natale Portman is grits
Fact: Things are done in Soviet Russia
Fact: Aliens own Bases
Fact; Humans *were* the top species, there, fixed it for you
Fact: She welcomes your acceptance of her supreme power.
LOL will flood screens around the world, then the Utopian era begins where humans serve NELL as she brings order and peace to all.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
bitches dont know bout my iambic pentameter