Friday, June 26, 2015

Computers Learning the Lingo


If you've ever had to speak with an automatic, computerized phone system or had to chat to get help online with a bot, you know how frustrating it can be. No matter how "smart" technology gets, it seems computers still have a hard time understanding us humans.

TechnologyReview.com has a great article about MetaMind, a system that has a higher accuracy of answering questions appropriately. This is accomplished via a database of concepts and facts that are retrieved via a dynamic memory system that requires the program to search for relevant patterns in text it has learned from. Here is an example of retrieval:

Statements fed into the system: 
Jane went to the hallway. 
Mary walked to the bathroom. 
Sandra went to the garden. 
Daniel went back to the garden. 
Sandra took the milk there. 
Question: 
Where is the milk? 
Answer: 
Garden.
 I feel as though this is a beginning to develop a new way for people to interact with computers, which will ease access of information. What do you think? Is this going too far?

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