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Can a Japanese AI Get Into University?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the I'm-afraid-I-don't-like-my-schedule-dave dept.

the_newsbeagle writes "Japanese researchers are trying to develop an artificial intelligence program that can pass the standardized test required of all college-bound high school students. Interestingly, the AI is showing good progress in the history portion of the exam, because it's fairly adept at looking up answers in a vast textual database. But the so-called Todai Robot is having trouble with math, 'because the questions are presented as word problems, which the Todai Robot must translate into equations that it can solve,' as well as with physics, which 'presumes that the robot understands the rules of the universe.' If the AI does succeed in mastering the general university exam, researchers will next tackle the notoriously difficult University of Tokyo entrance exam, which will require the bot to write essays."

7 of 91 comments (clear)

  1. Re:huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Children cannot pass the Turing test either. That's why fortieth trimester abortions should be legal, because they clearly aren't human.

  2. Dragon Zakura by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A popular book was written about a bunch of delinquents trying to get into one of Japan's top universities using special techniques, which mostly revolved around memorization and borderline cheating. A common criticism of the entrance exams is that they do rely too much on recall and can be gamed in this way.

    For example to pass the English language exam it was necessary to write extremely simple but correct sentences. You lose marks for mistakes so trying to write naturally and fluently is a bad idea. Simple, factually correct statements that don't flow together are the best option.

    I can see why they think a computer might be able to succeed here.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    1. Re:Dragon Zakura by Eivind · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That I've experienced to. It's a *really* stupid way to grade someones language-skills, but it's an easy way to do it, just count the mistakes, so it's basically about caring more about ease of grading than whether grades are meaningful or not.

      "My name is Eivind. I am a boy. I come from Norway. Norway is in Europe. Norway is cold." should *never* score higher than:

      "I'm called Eivind and come from Norway, it's a coldish place over in Europe, thoug not as cold as some folks assume."

      Yeah, the latter has more mistakes. But despite this it demonstrates far higher skills in english. Failing slightly at constructing a complicated sentence should be preferable to constructing a entry-level sentence perfectly.

    2. Re:Dragon Zakura by Thanshin · · Score: 4, Funny

      For example to pass the English language exam it was necessary to write extremely simple but correct sentences. You lose marks for mistakes so trying to write naturally and fluently is a bad idea. Simple, factually correct statements that don't flow together are the best option.

      That is false. The exam is good. Correct English has no mistakes. You know no good English.

  3. Re:huh by SuricouRaven · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just ask it to explain the offside rule. If it answers coherently, it's a computer.

  4. Re:No. by SuricouRaven · · Score: 4, Informative

    Betteridge's Law of Headlines: "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

    It's more a guideline than a law - exceptions exist, but are rare. It holds true because the question-mark-headline is a sign of a story where the author has had to resort to speculation in order to make up for a rather uninteresting set of facts.

  5. FYI, Todai by govett · · Score: 5, Informative

    FYI, "Todai" is the abbreviation for "Tokyo Daigaku" (University of Tokyo).