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AI Bookworms Seek To Predict Human Behavior (thestack.com)

Posted by timothy on from the but-fiction-has-to-make-sense dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Creating virtual assistants that can understand and anticipate human behavior and needs is one of the current lodestars of artificial intelligence research. Now, researchers at Stanford University have decided to approach the problem by using descriptions of everyday human activities found in online fiction, namely 600,000 stories from 500,000 writers at online writing community WattPad – input totalling 1.8 billion words – to inform a new knowledge base called Augur, designed to power vector machines in making predictions about what an individual user might be about to do, or want to do next. The scientists suggest that crowdsourcing or similar user-feedback systems would likely be necessary to amend some of the more dramatic associations that certain objects or situations might inspire. As the research notes, 'If fiction were truly representative of our lives, we might be constantly drawing swords and kissing in the rain.'

14 of 26 comments (clear)

  1. Input, more input! by slashping · · Score: 1

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

  2. intriguing yet boring by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

    honestly, intelligent machines are great but intelligent machines that are fucking crazy are way more interesting. show me how an AI acts that's only read youtube comments and you'll have our attention!

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  3. Why do I keep getting this feeling by jenningsthecat · · Score: 1

    that we humans are both building and training our eventual replacements? Talk about outsourcing and off-shoring - sheesh!

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    'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
  4. Re:A writer's desciption of humans is the way to g by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

    This project is also going to need a carefully balanced mix of genres. What impression would the AI form of human behavior from noir, bodice-rippers, SFF, police procedurals, or academic fiction? If you fed it Infinite Jest, would it explode?

  5. Re: A writer's desciption of humans is the way to by rayzat · · Score: 1

    If you fed it the scripts from some Rom-coms you would have some weird stalker bot. I don't think movies and fiction could get much more anti reality.

  6. averaging behavior/prejudices/stupidity/etc? by sittingnut · · Score: 2

    basically take a large sample of alleged interactions of humans as imagined by a particular group of writers, make statistical analysis of them, make predictions based numbers and averages spewed out.

    in other words, average of prejudices of writers who chose to use a website, is going to to be, so called artificial intelligence's, idea of human behavior.
    oh my! how artificial! how the science has advanced!
    -
    btw just imagine this.
    how will so called artificial intelligence do if while playing chess, it played the move that average human will take(as derived from all human player games as stored in chess databases) in a given position .

    1. Re:averaging behavior/prejudices/stupidity/etc? by Bite+The+Pillow · · Score: 1

      For fuck's sake, the last two sentences address this. They have software that successfully trained on a corpus of fiction. They need reliable non fiction (not dramatized memoirs or other horseshit), and a lot of it.

      Now, try again. And leave chess out of it or I'll have to mansplain why that makes no sense.

    2. Re:averaging behavior/prejudices/stupidity/etc? by sittingnut · · Score: 1

      'non fiction'? or alleged facts selectively chosen to fit particular interpretations and prejudices?

      -
      why leave chess out ? chess databases of human player moves are in fact sort of 'non fiction'. i will ask again, how will so called artificial intelligence perform by choosing average human moves in such databases? lol

      -
      do you have anything to say about non chess part of my comment?

  7. Hmmm by koan · · Score: 1

    Wonder if AI's will suffer from meme.

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    "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
  8. But that's what I want! by SunTzuWarmaster · · Score: 1

    To be fair, I really do want to draw a sword, defeat my enemies, get the girl, and kiss her in the rain.

  9. Re:A writer's desciption of humans is the way to g by michelcolman · · Score: 1

    These AIs are certainly going to be very suspicious of butlers.

  10. Re:Spoiler alert by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

    And your residual self image is a momsbasmentdwellingfatass, for some reason.

    (Ok you can do this you can do this) "Hi, Trinity!"

    "Hey. You're 'Smeghead', right?"

    "YES!!" (She knew my name she kew my name!) "Wanna go out to dinner some time?"

    "Hehe, no..nooooooo."

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    (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
  11. What is the gender balance of WattPad authors? by dsmatthews9379 · · Score: 1

    This does matter because if it is dominated by one gender the insights will be skewed by the experiences and attitudes, not to mention the agendas, of that gender.

  12. name collision by JeffreyBPetersen · · Score: 1

    Unfortunately there's also a prediction market in the works by the same name: http://www.augur.net/