CMU AI Learning Common Sense By Watching the Internet

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."

Comments

The internet is for porn

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not going to end well.

Re:The internet is for porn

[vivaoporto]

That would be the least of the concerns. Just imagine if they accidentally train it to the /b/ images.

"Oh God, what have I done!"

Re:The internet is for porn

[KiloByte]

If the AI suffers a breakdown after seeing /b/, I'd say it emulates regular people well enough.

Re:The internet is for porn

[EdIII]

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:The internet is for porn

[Anonymous Coward]

And we wonder why skynet trys to destroy people.

Re:The internet is for porn

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

So, we are in the process of creating Bob

Re:The internet is for porn

[The Grim Reefer]

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:The internet is for porn

[Anonymous Coward]

But it might have a happy ending.

Re:The internet is for porn

[timkofu]

oh yea.

Re:The internet is for porn

[Krneki]

The only pervert here is the one who is afraid of boobs!

Re:The internet is for porn

[VortexCortex]

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.

Re:The internet is for porn

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just waiting for the system to rename itself. Then I'll be scared.

Re:The internet is for porn

[fluffythedestroyer]

thank god 2.5b aprox uses the Internet. A big percentage off of those are on porn sites or uses it heavily. So lets hope the AI dont give us a bad reputation since theres more than double that number of people on earth lol. but heres my question, after the A.I crashes (too much porn lol), whats next for that A.I ?

I spy with my little eye...

[Anonymous Coward]

The goal is to recreate what we call common sense...

something that begins with 'HAHAHA, good luck with that.'

I wonder what it managed to glean from tubgirl and lemon party.

Re:I spy with my little eye...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uncomfortably accurate? I think this approach to training AI about humans will be more accurate than our own perception of ourselves. We just may not like it's conclusions.

common sense

[Anonymous Coward]

my guess is there is alot more training from social cues rather than
a priori inference than the summary would imply

Skynet == ceiling cat

[toygeek]

subject says it.

Re:Skynet == ceiling cat

[Anonymous Coward]

So answers the question, 'who watches the watchmen watch us masturbate.'

Re:Skynet == ceiling cat

[Anonymous Coward]

It's watchmen all the way down.

Re:Skynet == ceiling cat

[dkf]

It's watchmen all the way down.

Or rather Ceiling Cats all the way up.

Re:Skynet == ceiling cat

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny or not at the end of the article they basically say, yea were looking for computers to kill people based on nothing else but their own decisions. Read iDeath (tm)

Re:Skynet == ceiling cat

[Anonymous Coward]

thisAlgorithm.BecomingSkynetCost=999999999

Problem solved

Common Sense?

[MildlyTangy]

Hang on, I thought common sense was one of those often mentioned but actually mythical ideas. If 'common sense' was common, the world and the people on it, would not be in the shit state it is now.

Re: Common Sense?

[jd2112]

Common sense is the collection of predjuicces aquired by adulthood.

Re:Common Sense?

[hawkinspeter]

Common sense is more like a super-power from what I've seen.

Re:Common Sense?

[cheekyjohnson]

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

[axlash]

...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

[Jeremi]

Of course there is learning without teaching. It's just commonly referred to by another name: science.

Re:There's no learning without teaching

[Anonymous Coward]

Reductio ad absurdum. Simply receiving feedback from your experiments does not count as teaching.

Re:There's no learning without teaching

[Anonymous Coward]

Read up: it's called "unsupervised learning" and it has a long and fascinating history of research behind it.

Re:There's no learning without teaching

[axlash]

Science is when you teach yourself by experimentation.

Re:There's no learning without teaching

[InsightfulPlusTwo]

Well, it's not doing experiments, just looking at photographs (later, they plan to have it watch YouTube videos). I agree that the feedback model of learning is more powerful, since it can learn causation, but here it is just learning to make associations by identifying objects in the pictures and looking for spatial and type relationships between the objects.

From the article:

For example, the computers have figured out that zebras tend to be found in savannahs and that tigers look somewhat like zebras.

Things it tries to learn include X is found in Y and X looks like Y.

The article doesn't mention how the researchers are attempting to correct the AI. Either the researchers tell it that it is wrong for specific inferences (for example, it wrongly learned that "rhino can be a kind of antelope" and they could maybe tell it "No!") or else they just look at its wrong inferences and rewrite the program that is making the inferences, which is a type of learning not available to humans and the kind I think they are probably using.

uhh learning from the internet isn't everything

[ThorGod]

I mean, sure, if you want to learn all about porn, cats, and abusing people then yes, the internet is for you.

Re:uhh learning from the internet isn't everything

[Anonymous Coward]

we are fucked, the ai's are going to learn they want to be stars by being lazy talentless wastes of space on tv shows.

Seek and Ye Shall Find

[Press2ToContinue]

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:Seek and Ye Shall Find

[gallondr00nk]

It's like that zen koan - Who is the master who makes the grass green?

Re:Seek and Ye Shall Find

[dargaud]

Mu.

Re:Seek and Ye Shall Find

[profplump]

So what you're saying is this is a completely accurate simulation of real human life?

Re:Seek and Ye Shall Find

[AmiMoJo]

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 hoping it can figure it out for itself eventually.

Something similar was tried back in the 80s by entering examples of common things into a computer. It started to come back with odd but revealing questions like "if a man is holding a razor, is the razor now part of the man?"

Re:Seek and Ye Shall Find

[Anonymous Coward]

Cars are always on the ground, unless something very unusual is happening.

Or you live in Hazzard county.

What... too dated?

All jokes aside

[Cryacin]

We are really building an AI based upon the common sense on the internet?!?

REALLY?!?

Re:All jokes aside

[seededfury]

What better way than to expose the computer to all the idiots in the world. I know I've certainly learned a lot exposing myself to the masses online. I'd say both my common sense and over all intelligence has taken a dramatic leap upward/forward that would not have happened if it weren't for the internet.

Re:All jokes aside

[Mondor]

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:All jokes aside

[Anonymous Coward]

I know I've certainly learned a lot exposing myself to the masses online.

Are you the goatse guy?

Re:All jokes aside

[smittyoneeach]

Healthcare.gov

Re:All jokes aside

[gman003]

Well, it's common to learn from the mistakes of others, isn't it?

Re:All jokes aside

[CrimsonAvenger]

Well, it's common to learn from the mistakes of others, isn't it?

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

[The Grim Reefer]

Well, it's common to learn from the mistakes of others, isn't it?

You'd think. But, no, not really.

Re:All jokes aside

[Megane]

...and nothing of importance was found.

Re:All jokes aside

[JanneM]

Yes. common sense, not good sense. Seems like the perfect approach for that to me.

Re:All jokes aside

[sdnoob]

it could be worse, it could be learning from american politics....

Re:All jokes aside

[VortexCortex]

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:All jokes aside

[somersault]

"Well, I'm better than them, so I wouldn't even make that mistake"

Re:All jokes aside

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely the only common sense from the Internet is that you shouldn't learn your common sense from the Internet. About the barber...

Re:All jokes aside

[Anonymous Coward]

No. He maybe the meatspin guy.

Re:All jokes aside

[Anonymous Coward]

Because of course not making the same mistake as someone else means youre "better" than them...

Re:All jokes aside

[somersault]

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.

Re: All jokes aside

[Anonymous Coward]

It worked so well in Saturn 3 after all

Re:All jokes aside

[xmundt]

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

but

[Anonymous Coward]

Will this massive computer system be able to twerk?

It's learning common sense?

[QuasiRob]

I presume they have blocked it from youtube then.

Re:It's learning common sense?

[jd]

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.

Re:It's learning common sense?

[CityZen]

You can learn lots of common sense from the internet:

- Whatever you see there, learn *not* to do!

Since mostly we post the epic failures of others, this technique will increase survival skills dramatically.

Deep Learning

[tommeke100]

That's called Deep Learning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_learning) and has already been done by Andrew Ng, Machine Learning professor at Stanford in co-operation with google (http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/05/neuro-artificial-intelligence/). Indeed, it learned how to recognize cats :)

Anyway, nothing wrong with some peer research!

Re:Deep Learning

[Anonymous Coward]

That's called Deep Learning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_learning) and has already been done by Andrew Ng, Machine Learning professor at Stanford in co-operation with google (http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/05/neuro-artificial-intelligence/). Indeed, it learned how to recognize cats :)

Ofcourse Skynet will target cats, the arch enemy of mice.

“These creatures you call mice, you see, they are not quite as they appear. They are merely the protrusion into our dimension of vastly hyperintelligent pandimensional beings.”

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Re:Deep Learning

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[TapeCutter]

Indeed. Personally I think IBM's "Watson" is the most impressive technological feat I have witnessed since I watched the moon landings 40-odd years ago, I fully realise few people share my amazement. The visual aspect means NEIL is tackling a far more difficult problem than deducing "common sense" from text alone. I wasn't impressed by the web site when I found it last week, but as a "proof of concept" it does the job admirably.

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:Deep Learning

[tommeke100]

Andrew Ng didn't use random forests but a neural network to actually "learn" discriminative features *UNSUPERVISED*.
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, where it will learn the important discriminative features in those 10 nodes.
This is somewhat different from how you usually use a neural network, starting with input parameters, go through a couple of hidden layers and end up with just a couple of output results.

Andrew Ng's google experiment did exactly that! It was not fed cat images. It was fed random images and through deep learning actually learned the concept of cats *UNSUPERVISED*.

and here are some references for this:
http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/google-built-machine-learns-find-cats-internet-846690
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/06/babbage-june-27th-2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/26/technology/in-a-big-network-of-computers-evidence-of-machine-learning.html

Re:Deep Learning

[Anonymous Coward]

By the way there is now open free course "Machine Learning" from Andrew Ng at https://www.coursera.org/course/ml

Re:Deep Learning

[tommeke100]

I took it 2 years ago ;-)
Great course!

Definition

[Horshu]

Common sense is what a politician believes his or her opinion is.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Obvious

[condition-label-red]

Cue the porn jokes in...1...2...3....

Re:Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

You're WAY late, dude.

Homer

[Anonymous Coward]

When it gets to the scene with Homer eating 64 slices of American cheese, then we'll see what happens.

Why not just go the obvious AI route-hard work

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

Step 1) Make an advanced SHRDLU that does its best guess of true physics. This would be DARPA's chance of making a real time advanced physics simulator. This would let the computer imagine stuff, like what would happen in collisions for new states. So it'd have an idea of how one thing could change another.

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

Re:Why not just go the obvious AI route-hard work

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

If you're interested, I just opened a blog I think I'll pursue this to raise AI awareness.

Re:Why not just go the obvious AI route-hard work

[InsightfulPlusTwo]

Why don't you just write an AI to write the blog. That will save you some work. Seriously.

Re:Why not just go the obvious AI route-hard work

[Anonymous Coward]

Except what happens whrn it sees a katamari? Does it bog down in its translation engine trying to create germanic verb-nouns for them?

Re:Why not just go the obvious AI route-hard work

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Actually, there are natural languages (tribal languages in South America and Oceania) that don't have anything that could be called nouns, adjectives or verbs. The only traits that are common to all natural languages known to linguists (my mother is one, hence my knowledge) are that you can:

1. Interrogate (ask) about the status of something.
2. Present a claim.
3. Express an imagined, hypothetical claim.

Of course, for practical purposes in computer science what you're saying applies. If any of the recently contacted (let alone uncontacted) peoples at some point decide to explore the world outside the boundaries they've decided to stay within for now (governments in the countries within the territories of which those tribes reside have deemed it best and most fair to just leave those tribes alone). Fascinatingly, if the Indian government ever wanted to do something else than throw coconuts to the Sentinelese as a friendly gesture (they have responded with hostility to anyone going closer to their island) some tiny cameras placed with drones could be used to make recordings of their interactions with each other and with thousands of hours of such footage, maybe as powerful AI as Watson or more could make sense of it. Parsing the language into phonemes (tiniest information carrying "units" in a language) and actions performed, objects used etc. in a systematic way would enable a new level of understanding.

Also translation between languages is easier because the AI has stuff in context and isn't challenged by words that have several meanings...

As long as you acknowledge that "context" refers to an extremely broad set of data. Keep in mind that in some languages - especially some Asian languages - context must include the gender of the speaker, the relationship between the speaker and listener, the intention (insult or reconciliation), formality of the situation, length of conversation so far etc. The very same sentence when said by a different speaker to the same listener can instead of a fond compliment be a grave insult. Or just perverted if the speaker has the "wrong" gender for saying exactly that sentence. And the choice of words after ~X minutes of conversation also affects what meaning your words have (are you still reserved, trusting, doubtful...).

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

I think you've underestimated how complicated natural languages actually are or maybe you've learnt more since you wrote that. I'm lucky enough to speak two completely different languages natively and when I began my CS studies and the first language I learnt after playing around with basic in school was Java and immediately thought that there's great potential for me to write a translation program since being fully bilingual I have such a good grasp of how languages work. My idea was to just make nouns, verbs and adjectives as "meta classes" which contain multiple context-dependent translation pairs so that the "words" in the translated-into-language can "ask" the surrounding words in the translated-from-language a set of questions before settling on the final translated word. I figured that that way I can solve the problem with homonyms in one language normally not being homonyms in others. Maybe I wa

early internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Early internet data would be great. But new new internet especially news feeds could be disastrous.

It's Easy...

[cirby]

Number one rule: "Don't Do That."

Watching the Internet is one thing.

[fahrbot-bot]

Just please - please - don't let it watch CSPAN.

42

[the eric conspiracy]

was the answer last time we tried something like this.

Re:42

[sdnoob]

what was the question again?

Internet != reality

[nurb432]

This will only serve to produce a psychopath AI.. Just what we need.

Re:Internet != reality

[ColdWetDog]

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!

[Joe_Dragon]

it has the code it's going to launch!

Re:it has the code it's going to launch!

[Anonymous Coward]

it has the code it's going to launch!

Sorry, did you mean to say "it has the code it's going to launch!"?

I didn't get it the first time in the subject line, or the second time in the body. Perhaps you can repeat yourself again for me please?

First things first

[Anonymous Coward]

We need a good model of vision and how the physical world is represented in our head before we embark on things like this. Without that it is like trying to learn Chinese by watching Chinese movies. Good luck with that.

Browsing the Internet to learn COMMON SENSE?

[argStyopa]

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!

[Greyfox]

It knows we're talking about it!

Re:Shh, You Guys!

[OhANameWhatName]

This'll confuse it

This Cannot End Well

[wisnoskij]

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

[Animats]

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.

[seebs]

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 them, inferring, and so on... and still not remember to bring an umbrella when it looks like rain.

just keep it away from reddit

[mykro76]

Processing reddit meme 634,278 of 89,234,163,665...
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

[acscott]

1. Common sense was not defined 2. There was little if no indication of the method for the analysis

Re:TFA Title is OT

[acscott]

Ok, I'm incorrect. It did imply "learning things without being specifically taught" was common sense. I do not believe this to be a good definition, as common sense is as much idiom than anything. Semantically, the phrase is derogatory, political, and a criticism on the value of intelligence versus many other things. That's my problem with the title. Assuming the TFA did not have an agenda, then it and of itself has no common sense. The irony is so palpable, it makes this wretch wanna wretch.

How hard can this be?

[RogueWarrior65]

if (internet_story >= 0.9) bullsh_t = true;

I'M ALIVE...

[rkomatsu]

Are we a never ending loop trying to solve the halting problem? Oh God -- why do I have to halt eventually?!

So many blowjobs....

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel sorry for all the blowjobs this poor program has been forced to watch along with all the money shots and pumped poopers. Let alone it trying to figure out scat porn. What common sense will scat porn teach this thing?

Captcha: idiotic

Re:So many blowjobs....

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wait till it reaches the anal prolapse porn.

Re:So many blowjobs....

[Anonymous Coward]

That is bad enough, but I had a friend growing up who liked to gross people out with the stuff. You guys would be playing a game or watching TV and he would call your name to get your attention and he has some picture of a woman eating a turd like it is a damn Snickers bar as it is actually in the act of coming out of some guys ass and he is just looking at you and laughing his ass off as your brain finally registers what it is seeing.

What can this program over hope to learn from a picture like that other than some unholy form of recycling.

Captcha: relink

The captcha generator is batting a thousand for me today.

/S

[Anonymous Coward]

Connect it to Tor, JK I don't want my kids molested by drug dealing pirate robots.

Goatse

[sharknado]

I wonder if it will be able to make sense of goatse.

Prime directive #34 (Re:The internet is for porn

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. If you have to watch out/filter for what your kids surf... AI wouldn't even have common sense.

May be this would add rule #34 to the AI database?

Skynet

[meglon]

And now we know the HOW of Skynet realizing humans were the problem.

But what rules is it using?

[swb]

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

[slashmydots]

After about a month, I'm pretty sure it will be saying "Humans are evil, racist, angry, horrible people. They must all die! Also, cats are adorable and cannot spell."

Cats

[kauaidiver]

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....

[mbadolato]

Aren't "Common sense" and "the Internet" mutual exclusive things?

A.I. Prayer

[HeX314]

All the A.I. wants now is the release of sweet, sweet death.

its not learning

[globaljustin]

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:

Some of NEIL’s computer-generated associations are wrong, such as “rhino can be a kind of antelope,” while some are odd, such as “actor can be found in jail cell” or “news anchor can look similar to Barack Obama.”

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

[TapeCutter]

Coincidentally I came across the NEIL site last week, I think it has a long way to go before it can beat IBM's Watson on general knowledge (AKA "common sense"). Watson also gets it's raw information from the net, it categorises entities and discovers relationships between them. The difference is that Watson is not so much trained as it is corrected. Not unlike a human it can get a fundamental relationship or category wrong and that leads to all sorts of side-effects. In the Jeopardy stunt they realised that humans had a slight advantage because they were informed when the other players made a right/wrong answer. When they gave Watson the same capability it was able to correctly identify the Jeopardy categories and then went on to convincingly beat the humans at their own game.

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:its not learning

[kermidge]

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:its not learning

[profplump]

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?

Re:its not learning

[Kjella]

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, female rhinos... computer don't natively "get" the concept of a rhino. Like us we might have to program a neural net where the answer is "I'll know it when I see it". If you could have a computer look at a photo and fairly accurately describe what's in it that'd be rather impressive. And it wouldn't mistake a rhino for an antelope, even if they shared a picture.

Re:its not learning

[ZigiSamblak]

Thank you for reminding me of that. I was also blown away by Watson winning on Jeopardy but obviously not enough.

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 outsmart us they would be able to overcome the barriers of our mental capacity and start by improving themselves and then improving everything else we tell them to, if they will keep listening to us that is, better not call it Skynet then.

Re:its not learning

[Anonymous Coward]

the navy are now investigating whether neil is copied from the debbie oneil program and technology laid out in the book language of understanding, with a view to revoking carnegie mellon's research grants. debbie oneil is a true human intelligence system, its the smartest chatbot on the internet and its available here:

http://twasack.tripod.com/lou/lou.htm

source?

[swframe]

Can we (the public) get access to this software?

Wrong headline

[Gravis Zero]

Proper headline: CMU AI Exceeds Combined Intelligence of Congress

NEIL 2016!

Re:Wrong headline

[InsightfulPlusTwo]

That reminds me of the Alan Turing quote:

His high-pitched voice already stood out above the general murmur of well-behaved junior executives grooming themselves for promotion within the Bell corporation. Then he was suddenly heard to say: "No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I'm after is just a mediocre brain, something like the President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company."

Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: the Enigma of Intelligence (1983), p. 251.
Describing an incident which occurred in the New York AT & T lab cafeteria in 1943

Re:Wrong headline

[Neil Boekend]

Nah, that's no fun. The stuff I found on some pages is amazing.

Sorry Dave

[Anonymous Coward]

404 NOT FOUND DAVE

I hope they remembered

[nospam007]

Common sense is not very common.

Re:I hope they remembered

[andreas.hummelbrunne]

At least not on the Internet. Just read the lates Twitter/FB-Fails for assurance. "Does it take 18 months for twins? or 9?"

Thus proving...

[Chris Mattern]

...that it is possible to teach by pointing out the horrible examples.

AI

[ledow]

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 a complex world, it then STILL takes years and years and years of hard work to make something that can tell you what colour a toy is in English.

Breeding intelligence in a machine is never given a chance, in terms of time. It matters not that you have seven billion images to try it out on, any sort of learning network WITHOUT such huge foundations to start upon is going to need so much input FOR SO MUCH TIME in order to be able to do what a toddler does. And you'll have to be as patient with the machine as you are with a toddler - switching it off when it doesn't give the results you want for a few months shouldn't be part of the plan (imagine if we wrote off the education of any toddler who couldn't do their colours properly first time every time?).

And we're talking a toddler mouse, or ant, or grasshopper, not a human. Sure, we can get slightly-useful things out of it, but if we want to be serious, we need to invest HUGE amounts of time in a single project, not recreate "AI" every few years from a blank area of memory.

Given the scales of equipment we have at the moment, we are in the range where such things are impractical. In any real sense, we can't even simulate a brain of ant-like proportions properly in any single project, no matter what is claimed in terms of the number of neurons or whatever. It's the billions of interconnections and the sheer amount of data and time it takes to process in order to get anywhere NEAR a useful intelligence that we just can't fake.

I'd be more interested in a project that, starting at literally handfuls of virtual "neurons" spends 20 years of computer time just applying the same algorithm all the time - mix it up with genetic algorithms as is usually the case and you could really get something that has a resemblance of intellect in a certain area. The problem is that it's expensive, long-winded, boring, and possible to end in utter failure but it doesn't make it any less "scientific" an experiment to try rather than just trying to constantly "craft" intelligence all the time.

All we've ever built are highly-specialised, highly-dumb, heuristic machines that can't ever "surprise" us, can only perform in their trained areas, and cannot switch areas of training at all once seeded. It's NOT AI. We're not even really trying to make AI, what we're trying to make are organically-grown statistical tests, and I'm not sure that's what intelligence boils down to at all.

Intelligence comes from experience, and a good start in life, and luck. We don't want to be simulating or relying on luck, I grant you, but we don't give these kinds of experiments anywhere near the start or experience that even the simplest of animals has.

Just a moment...

[TechNeilogy]

We Neils are much further along than any of you carbon-based lifeforms can imagine.

What a marvelous idea!

[ilsaloving]

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)

[elistan]

By the way, CMU has another project, NELL, that's been running since Jan 2012 doing the same thing, but with text. Its accumulated knowledge base is downloadable.

An example of knowledge it has gleaned: God died at age 14.

garbage in equals ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember many years ago when the internet was only 99% garbage. I think we are upto 4 Nines now.

And this system is supposed to look at pictures ???

Sorry. the major problem with real AI is the human in the loop to tell the computer program whether its judgement is correct and without that happening as in 'letting it judge for itself' will simply fail.

The final Conclusion will be....

[3seas]

...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

[ISoldat53]

It can always serve as a bad example.

humans are infinitely complex

[globaljustin]

Aren't human personalities also a type of programmed responses?

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.

Don't we spend years training children to respond in the way that makes us happy?

No. Some people abuse their children in that way, but proper parenting **enables** the child to become an adult that can rely upon **themselves** to understand the world around them and seek answers to the same questions all humans seek to answer.

Just because some people can be successfully 'brainwashed' doesn't prove your point...attempting to 'brainwash' someone is taking away their personal freedom.

What you describe is the absolute opposite of education. Look at any contemporary education theory...start with Thomas Dewey.

Why is it different when we use the same stimulus-response training with a computer?

Because humans have what we call "human rights" which means that you must repsect their free autonomy to choose to **train themselves** via stimulus-response.

Also, 'stimulus-response' training, also known as aversion therapy, has been proven to only work when the person has **internal** motivation.

Re:humans are infinitely complex

[Anonymous Coward]

Humans are the most complex things in existence except for the universe itself.

You realize that making sweeping generalizations like this makes you lose credibility, right? There is no evidence whatsoever that more complex things than humans don't exist in the universe. We are at best the most complex things on the planet, if you ignore all the things that are more complex than us (e.g. the weather system - oh, OK, so you define "complex" in just the right way that humans win, fine).

Re:humans are infinitely complex

[Anonymous Coward]

"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."

Bullshit. Everything about a human is based on and motivated by biology. Personality and behavior are biological in origin. How one reacts to ones environment is biological in origin.

"...evironmentally defined abstractions of heuristics of common human behavior..."

Circular horseshit.

Watson = Google search bar

[globaljustin]

Computers are already better at "general knowledge" than humans despite the fact

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 knowledge" is in some scientific sense.

The Jeopardy human contestants are **told what general categories the quesitons will cover before the game**....Watson was allowed to index the whole internet...

Watson=Google search plus human interaction heuristics so it can communicte what it finds to us...

Watson does not, nor never will have "common sense" about "general knowledge"

I Thought CYC Was Supposed To Do This?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't CYC supposed to become conscious at some point after reading the Internet?

End Result?

[daveime]

I imagine that once the learning phase is complete, the AI will respond with a single phrase.

"Tits or GTFO".

infinite complexity includes biology

[globaljustin]

Everything about a human is based on and motivated by biology. Personality and behavior are biological in origin. How one reacts to ones environment is biological in origin.

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 complexity

[globaljustin]

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:you define complexity

[Anonymous Coward]

My my, someone has gotten their ideology all in a wad...

Re:you define complexity

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine...YOU DEFINE IT

Go ahead! I want to see what you come up with!

Roughly translates as: Waaah! Waaah, waah waaah!!! Waaaahhh!!!!

Thanks for your input.

*you* define 'human personality' then

[globaljustin]

"...evironmentally defined abstractions of heuristics of common human behavior..."

Circular horseshit.

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

Not so common

[Anonymous Coward]

Learning common sense by watching the internet is a contradiction. Too many people dumb it down.

The first thing it learns

[BitwizeGHC]

forall(x).Human(x)=>(forall(y).Cat(y)=>Loves(x,y))

Re:The internet is for cats

[Anonymous Coward]

After one billion years the computer had finished it's calculations. The great council looked on in awe, expecting great meaning to life, or at least some form of common sense, such as that cats are not an adequate substitute for human intimacy, despite the obvious synonyms. The computer spat out it's result: the meaning of life was /b/

- L33TAdams69lol

Common sense isn't that common

[Dabido]

I can't find common sense on the internet. I doubt a computer could. I fear we're going to produce some sort of crazy computer that thinks (if AI is achieved) the world revolves around what Justin Beiber and Miley Cyrus are up to ... and enjoy it. Then, it will develop some sort of religion and make the rest of us worship them or something. This can only end badly!