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How Clara Labs (YC S14) Is Using Humans to Build AI

blog.claralabs.com

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Re: How Clara Labs (YC S14) Is Using Humans to Build AI

#21

Post by Hydraulix989 »

Contemporary ML is really (and by that I mean human-level) good for some things: classifying images, guiding a car along prominently visible lane lines in perfect conditions, predicting timeseries that have latent patterns.

It's NOT good at the general "bot" problem (or should I say "true AI" problem), and some "features" of human assistants like EQ, generalized task completion, and complex planning are decades away from getting solved.

I would even argue that a mechanized/automated Clara would HAVE to pass the Turing test in order to work.

Re: How Clara Labs (YC S14) Is Using Humans to Build AI

#22

Post by jasonlaska »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #21

Contemporary ML is really (and by that I mean human-level) good for some things: classifying images, guiding a car along prominently visible lane lines in perfect conditions, predicting timeseries that have latent patterns. It's NOT good at the general "bot" problem (or should I say "true AI" problem), and some "features" of human assistants like EQ, generalized task completion, and complex planning are decades away…

Your last comment on the seemingly circular relationship between Clara and a "turing-test-passing bot" is especially salient. This reference (found in the second footnote in the post) http://www.ijcai.org/Proceedings/95-1/Papers/125.pdf has a lot of interesting perspectives on the role of machine learning vs. human intelligence.

Re: How Clara Labs (YC S14) Is Using Humans to Build AI

#23

Post by Hydraulix989 »

jasonlaska wrote: post #22
Hydraulix989 wrote: post #21

Contemporary ML is really (and by that I mean human-level) good for some things: classifying images, guiding a car along prominently visible lane lines in perfect conditions, predicting timeseries that have latent patterns. It's NOT good at the general "bot" problem (or should I say "true AI" problem), and some "features" of human assistants like EQ, generalized task completion, and complex planning are decades away…

Your last comment on the seemingly circular relationship between Clara and a "turing-test-passing bot" is especially salient. This reference (found in the second footnote in the post) http://www.ijcai.org/Proceedings/95-1/Papers/125.pdf has a lot of interesting perspectives on the role of machine learning vs. human intelligence.

I am going to read that actually, thanks.

On the note of bots and your denouncement of the Turing Test as a metric, I do remember an article on here a couple of days ago hinting that one of the biggest frustrations of customer service calls is dealing with scripted responses, bots if you will, instead of real humans.

I do wonder whether alleviating this user frustration will amount to passing some "similar" but possibly weaker test.

Re: How Clara Labs (YC S14) Is Using Humans to Build AI

#24

Post by jasonlaska »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #23
jasonlaska wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your last comment on the seemingly circular relationship between Clara and a "turing-test-passing bot" is especially salient. This reference (found in the second footnote in the post) http://www.ijcai.org/Proceedings/95-1/Papers/125.pdf has a lot of interesting perspectives on the role of machine learning vs. human intelligence.

I am going to read that actually, thanks. On the note of bots and your denouncement of the Turing Test as a metric, I do remember an article on here a couple of days ago hinting that one of the biggest frustrations of customer service calls is dealing with scripted responses, bots if you will, instead of real humans. I do wonder whether alleviating this user frustration will amount to passing some "similar" but possi…

"The customer service test" -- I like it.

Re: How Clara Labs (YC S14) Is Using Humans to Build AI

#26

Post by visarga »

jasonlaska wrote: post #9
PameVls wrote: post #2

This is SO interesting! I am surprised by how companies are trying to solve AI problems... Machines normally take you 80-90% there, and using humans for that 10-20% left is an amazing idea. It's also a great monetization model for many companies.!!! Also, Clara is awesome :)

We think it's a good idea too ;) Machines and humans truly have different talents: machines are great at memory, keeping track of state, distributing information while people are great at understanding subtle nuance in natural language.

And in another 3-5 years, AI will start understanding subtle nuances too (probably) judging by the number of papers in computer language understanding.

Re: How Clara Labs (YC S14) Is Using Humans to Build AI

#27

Post by igk »

sakabaro wrote: post #20
sakabaro wrote: post #18

That seems very cool and modern. I don't want to sound like nit-picking, but choosing Clara as a company name seems a bit misogynist.

By that, I mean it's hard to pick a more "girly name" than Clara.

So why is that misogynistic? Is girly a bad trait?

Re: How Clara Labs (YC S14) Is Using Humans to Build AI

#29

Post by jasonlaska »

visarga wrote: post #26
jasonlaska wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We think it's a good idea too ;) Machines and humans truly have different talents: machines are great at memory, keeping track of state, distributing information while people are great at understanding subtle nuance in natural language.

And in another 3-5 years, AI will start understanding subtle nuances too (probably) judging by the number of papers in computer language understanding.

Even modern methods today (deep recurrent networks, etc.) can do pretty well with these kinds of tasks (a very large ontology for instance) if you have enough annotations of the nuance!
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