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No, machines can’t read better than humans

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Re: No, machines can’t read better than humans

#11

Post by cpfohl »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #4
iambateman wrote: post #2

Hmm, yes computers can’t outpace (highly literate) humans in reading comprehension today, but give it a couple of years and we will have a very different situation.

we're much farther away than 'a couple of years'. these reading comprehension bots basically cheat tests, using grammar rules and keyword matching. they don't actually build a body of knowledge based on what they read, they just go to the source text and search. it may look smart, but it isn't, which is what the article is saying

Yeah. They also don't carry with them the global context they'd need to correctly interpret these. When I say "Bush spent millions fighting his father's war." (For the record, this is a non-political statement: I'm using a sentence that conveniently explains my point). You and I both immediately gather from the context that "Bush" is not a shrubbery, it's a US president. You then gather that it was Bush Jr. Not H.W. You also gather that the war was the US involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Machines cannot do this in the general sense yet. If you specifically train the machine on data in the domain, and then set it loose on AP stories about the domain they do particularly well, but that's a long ways away from beating human reading comprehension.

Re: No, machines can’t read better than humans

#12

Post by [deleted] »

O_H_E wrote: post #6
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps once a computer can understand context to the point of the human and produce a worthy set of opinions, we could automate the Hacker News comments section and save us all some time.

And automate the readers and save the rest of the time Seriously: if bots can produce 'worthy set of opinions' we would be totally useless

[deleted]

Re: No, machines can’t read better than humans

#13

Post by Retric »

dtech wrote: post #10
erfgh wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've been hearing this for decades.

Much like Fusion energy, AI that is able to pass the Turing test is 30 years away and has been so for 50 years.

Fusion has gotten a lot closer over time, we simply don't fund it very much.

ITER will have net positive fusion thermal energy production capacity in 2019. We are not going to fuel it with tritium for years after completion. It could have generated electricity and put it on the grid, but we kept scaling it back to save money in large part because that electricity would have not been worth the investment.

Unfortunately, we have no path to cheap fusion power. Currently, we would be vastly better off building wind/solar/coal/nuclear etc than fusion.

Re: No, machines can’t read better than humans

#14

Post by ghaff »

AndrewOMartin wrote: post #9
iambateman wrote: post #2

Hmm, yes computers can’t outpace (highly literate) humans in reading comprehension today, but give it a couple of years and we will have a very different situation.

I've been waiting a couple of years since 1955 when McCarthy said he'd be done in a couple of months. This isn't just snark either, it's a justifiable exaggeration to say that since then all General AI projects have failed for exactly the same reason; failure to generalise from a specialised solution.

The current round is probably that deep learning can do some impressive things through some combination of CPU/GPU/TPU computing advances, the ability to collect and process a lot of data, and algorithmic/neural net architectural improvements in more or less that order. However, even some of the leading researchers are effectively cautioning that deep learning can probably only take you so far. [1] And we've arguably made very little progress on cognitive science generally.

[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608911/is-ai-riding-a-one...

Re: No, machines can’t read better than humans

#15

Post by danielam »

eeks wrote: post #8
TremendousJudge wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we're much farther away than 'a couple of years'. these reading comprehension bots basically cheat tests, using grammar rules and keyword matching. they don't actually build a body of knowledge based on what they read, they just go to the source text and search. it may look smart, but it isn't, which is what the article is saying

This. Where there is no ability to summarize or paraphrase there is no comprehension. We need to stop calling fast pattern matching intelligence.

If I'm being charitable, whenever I read headlines like "AI beats humans at reading comprehension", I interpret the headline as part sensational, part tongue in cheek. I am, however, surprised that to this day, people actually still believe in the idea of machine comprehension understood in the most literal sense. The whole idea of mechanizing symbol manipulation is significant precisely because it allows us to simulate computation mechanically without invoking comprehension.

Re: No, machines can’t read better than humans

#17

Post by onychomys »

cpfohl wrote: post #11
TremendousJudge wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we're much farther away than 'a couple of years'. these reading comprehension bots basically cheat tests, using grammar rules and keyword matching. they don't actually build a body of knowledge based on what they read, they just go to the source text and search. it may look smart, but it isn't, which is what the article is saying

Yeah. They also don't carry with them the global context they'd need to correctly interpret these. When I say "Bush spent millions fighting his father's war." (For the record, this is a non-political statement: I'm using a sentence that conveniently explains my point). You and I both immediately gather from the context that "Bush" is not a shrubbery, it's a US president. You then gather that it was Bush Jr. Not H.W.…

It's a fair point, but plenty of humans don't actually have the background to know all that stuff either. If you told a eight-year-old that Bush spent millions fighting his father's war, the kid would know that Bush was a person not a shrubbery, but that's about it. The child could read and understand every word of the sentence, but she'd lack all the same context the computer does.

Re: No, machines can’t read better than humans

#18

Post by Karnickel »

make3 wrote: post #16

One overhyping bullshitting magazine complaining about overhyping bullshitting magazines. The pot is calling the kettle black.

> I'm pretty sure no one is seriously remotely claiming that machines understand text better than humans.

Just some of the headlines:

- http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/15/technology/reading-robot-ali...

"Computers are getting better than humans at reading"

- http://fortune.com/2018/01/15/artificial-intelligence-ai-chi...

"Computer AI Can Now Read Better Than You Do"

- https://gizmodo.com/ai-used-to-sell-you-more-stuff-can-now-r...

"The AI Used to Sell You More Stuff Can Now Read Better Than a Human"

Re: No, machines can’t read better than humans

#19

Post by cooper12 »

iambateman wrote: post #2

Hmm, yes computers can’t outpace (highly literate) humans in reading comprehension today, but give it a couple of years and we will have a very different situation.

This unwarranted overhyping of the capabilities of machine learning needs to stop (HN is one of the places most guilty of this). All you're saying is "it just has to happen" without actually substantiating your belief; just as people thought we'd eventually have flying cars, unlimited energy, etc. Unless you have some empirical results to put where your mouth is, you're just contributing to the next AI Winter. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter)

Re: No, machines can’t read better than humans

#20

Post by disp1 »

Retric wrote: post #13
dtech wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much like Fusion energy, AI that is able to pass the Turing test is 30 years away and has been so for 50 years.

Fusion has gotten a lot closer over time, we simply don't fund it very much. ITER will have net positive fusion thermal energy production capacity in 2019. We are not going to fuel it with tritium for years after completion. It could have generated electricity and put it on the grid, but we kept scaling it back to save money in large part because that electricity would have not been worth the investment. Unfortunatel…

"It could have generated electricity and put it on the grid"

I don't think so. It may be approaching net positive energy production, but ITER was not designed to have that energy converted to electricity, it is lost. There is no way ITER was EVER going to generate electricity. (REF https://www.iter.org/proj/inafewlines)

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