Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Thu, 9 May 2013 17:00:00 PDT Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110226/12421713271/dailydirt-can-computers-grade-written-essays.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110226/12421713271/dailydirt-can-computers-grade-written-essays.shtml calls for automated grading software from various organizations (like the Hewlett Foundation). But at the same time, the National Council of Teachers of English argues that computers simply can't grade essays. Here are just a few more links on this debate over the use of algorithms over English professors (or grad students).

• EdX, the non-profit started by Harvard and MIT, is releasing some software to automagically grade human-written essays. Some see this software as just another tool for educators to use for more immediate feedback to students, while others are worried that these algorithms will be used incorrectly and lead to disastrous educational policies and outcomes. [url]
• There are studies that show algorithms are statistically comparable to humans when it comes to ranking essays on a 5 point scale. There are things machines can do better and things humans do better -- just make sure you know the differences and automated essay grading can be done productively in the right context. [url]
• Automated essay readers can grade 16,000 essays in 20 seconds. The Educational Testing Service is testing out automation, so students may soon be facing algorithmic grading for their college entrance exams. [url]
• Grading a few sentences can be harder than it might look. Professional (human) teachers are obviously better at interpreting the insights and ideas behind the words a student writes, but computers scale much better and never tire of horrible spelling mistakes or misplaced modifiers.... [url]

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110226/12421713271 Thu, 18 Oct 2012 17:00:00 PDT Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101011/11401111368/dailydirt-computers-becoming-more-like-us.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101011/11401111368/dailydirt-computers-becoming-more-like-us.shtml

Algorithms deep inside the secretive Google X lab have been watching millions of YouTube videos -- and have learned to identify cat faces. This feat was accomplished with unsupervised learning -- so no one explicitly programmed anything to look for cat faces. Maybe those computers figured out for themselves that kittens are good for productivity... [url]

Eugene Goostman is a chatbot that has come very close to passing the Turing Test by fooling a panel of human judges into thinking it was a real boy 29% of time (Passing the Turing Test requires a 30% fooling rate). This chatbot was given the fake personality of a 13yo boy living in Odessa, Ukraine -- so expect next year's competition to include a lot of fake teenagers with strange idiosyncrasies. [url]

DeeChee the iCub robot is learning how to talk like a human baby by listening to adults speaking and babbling until recognizable words form. DeeChee is a project in the field of embodied cognition -- which asserts that cognitive processes are shaped by the bodies in which they occur. This robot doesn't think like a human baby, but it could help understand how biological brains create language. [url]

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101011/11401111368 Thu, 11 Oct 2012 17:00:00 PDT Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101011/04435411362/dailydirt-games-played-computers.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101011/04435411362/dailydirt-games-played-computers.shtml

French researchers are working on software that can learn how to play a game just by watching humans play -- and their software has mastered games like tic-tac-toe and connect4. More complex games like chess are a bit too difficult, but maybe someday learning algorithms will be able to take on arbitrary games. [url]

Playing Rock-Paper-Scissors with a robot hand doesn't sound like a particularly winnable game -- especially when the robot cheats all the time. This robot only takes about a millisecond to detect what a human hand will play, so the only winning strategy for humans is to try to come up with deceptive ways to play RPS. [url]

A panel of judges couldn't tell the difference between a computer player and a human player in an Unreal tournament (in a strange kind of Turing test). Non-player characters controlled by algorithms are getting more and more human-like, and pretty soon humans won't even need to play video games anymore.... [url]

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101011/04435411362 Tue, 3 Jul 2012 17:00:00 PDT Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100811/03353510583/dailydirt-computer-generated-music.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100811/03353510583/dailydirt-computer-generated-music.shtml every song, but technology is accelerating the process of creating music with algorithms that can compose songs faster than any human musician and robots that can play non-stop. If virtual monkeys can re-create Shakespeare (albeit in short snippets), it's only a matter of time before virtual musicians are churning out pop hits. Here are just a few recent accomplishments of our new robot musician overlords.

• "Evolution of Music by Public Choice" is the title of a paper that describes how a genetic algorithm -- along with input from volunteers -- made some not-unpleasant-sounding music. Check out Darwin Tunes to participate in the project and become part of the evolutionary record for this. [url]
• If you really want to surround yourself with your favorite music, there's some software that'll turn your tunes into a carpet pattern for you. But for some practical reasons (and copyright law?), only 5 carpet patterns from this algorithm have been manufactured: classical, ambient, jazz, electronic and silence. [url]
• Sound Machines 2.0 (a robotic string quintet) listens to whatever music you play for it, re-interprets your musical choice, and then plays its own musical composition based on what it heard. However, it might be better to wait for Sound Machines 3.0 for all the bugs to be worked out.... [url]

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100811/03353510583 Wed, 11 Apr 2012 17:00:00 PDT Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100410/0505558955/dailydirt-lets-play-global-thermonuclear-war.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100410/0505558955/dailydirt-lets-play-global-thermonuclear-war.shtml playing games against humans. Pretty soon, we'll just let computers play games for us -- because they'll be better at them. Here are just a few more interesting links on AI research playing with games.

• Space Station Invaders is a video game created by a computer program named Angelina -- a piece of software meant to help human game designers. Angelina's creator says, "In theory there is nothing to stop an artist sitting down with Angelina, creating a game every 12 hours and feeding that into the Apple App Store." [url]
• A machine-learning system from MIT has "understood" the meanings of some words only by playing Civilization and having access to the player's manual for the game. This algorithm plays better if it has read the manual -- just like human players? [url]
• Dr. Fill is a crossword-player program that performed better than a lot of humans at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Brooklyn. It finished 141st out of 600 (if it had been ranked officially with human players), and after losing, it said bluntly, "I'll be back." [url]
• To discover more interesting tech-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100410/0505558955 Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:00:00 PST Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100310/1540038513/dailydirt-robot-scientists.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100310/1540038513/dailydirt-robot-scientists.shtml

Robot mathematicians like Graffiti have been around for a very long time, generating far more interesting conjectures than any human could. Interesting mathematical conjectures should be surprising, not too closely related to an existing conjecture, and not too specific. [url]

Software dubbed Eureqa is analyzing (without help from humans) experimental data from biological systems to derive mathematical models for processes like glycolysis -- and could potentially find new biological discoveries. And I'm sure we'll see stories of robots found cheating by plagiarizing from Wikipedia soon. [url]

Adam is the first automated scientist -- successfully developing a hypothesis, performing experiments, refining its hypothesis into a novel discovery. Adam found three yeast genes that coded for an orphan enzyme. [url]

A newer version of Adam, called Eve, is sifting through some of Adam's data and looking to find her own discoveries about yeast genetics. Unfortunately, some intellectual property issues are delaying some of Adam and Eve's latest publications. [url]

To discover more interesting robot-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100310/1540038513 Wed, 2 Nov 2011 17:00:00 PDT Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101215/03505112285/dailydirt-weve-got-droids-youre-looking.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101215/03505112285/dailydirt-weve-got-droids-youre-looking.shtml

Software called Decaptcha is getting better at solving CAPTCHA challenges. Decaptcha can't foil CAPTCHAs from Google and reCAPTCHA, so it's not going to help digitize books (but maybe someday it will). [url]

Google's indexing spider, GoogleBot, can now execute AJAX or JavaScript to get into dynamic commenting systems from Facebook and Disqus. When GoogleBot achieves self-awareness, hopefully it won't judge the human race from what it's read in blog comments... [url]

Socialbots are infiltrating social networks and collecting as much personal information as they can, using fake accounts with attractive profile pictures to befriend unsuspecting people. If a man you've never met before suddenly gives you flowers... (or pokes you on Facebook) Guess what? It's probably spam or an ad for something. [url]

To discover more interesting robot-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101215/03505112285 Wed, 22 Jun 2011 17:00:00 PDT Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110524/13572414416/dailydirt-computers-are-getting-to-know-you-getting-to-know-all-about-you.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110524/13572414416/dailydirt-computers-are-getting-to-know-you-getting-to-know-all-about-you.shtml

Google is sponsoring an AI project to develop an algorithm for minimizing regret in decision-making. So basically, it'll spit out advice like: "the only way to win is not to play" and "liquor before beer." [url]

Researchers from New Jersey have a gender-analysis algorithm that tries to determine an author's gender (male/female/neuter) from just 50 words of text he/she writes. And the researchers are preparing to set this algorithm loose on Twitter and Facebook updates. [url]

DARPA is looking to create a C3PO-like robot to translate various languages for soldiers. It won't actually walk around, but it will be annoying and cowardly... [url]

To discover more interesting AI-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110524/13572414416 Wed, 23 Mar 2011 17:00:00 PDT Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101220/19333112348/dailydirt-to-serve-mankind.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101220/19333112348/dailydirt-to-serve-mankind.shtml personhood to artificial intelligence. (And also deal with crazy folks who'll want to marry their laptops....) Progress, FTW!

• Remote-controlled, radiation-proof robots are preparing to enter the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in order to scope out the most dangerous parts of the facility. These robots will hopefully be able to inspect the containment systems and help keep any more nuclear materials from escaping. [url]
• Other robots are being used to help find survivors (or casualties) and to assess the damage of hard-to-access infrastructure. This may be one of the few non-creepy-looking applications of "snake-like" robots... [url]
• For fire-fighting missions, the US Navy is building some humanoid robots. The Navy will be spending about $2M a year to develop these Terminator precursors. [url]
• As always, there's also humanoid robots just waiting to take over manufacturing jobs, and the newest models will even look bored if you don't give them enough work to do. These bots will smile happily as they replace human workers. Great UX! [url]
• To discover more interesting AI-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101220/19333112348 Wed, 9 Mar 2011 17:00:00 PST Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110307/14562913390/dailydirt-computers-are-beating-us-our-own-games.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110307/14562913390/dailydirt-computers-are-beating-us-our-own-games.shtml

Microsoft Research is working on AI that can play the ancient game of Go -- and incorporating it into an XBox Live game called The Path of Go. This is a pretty cool project to try to get more people playing go, but adding avatars and some storyline about finding your missing twin doesn't sound like a more fun way to play Go to me. [url]

Starcraft is another AI challenge that requires more than fast reflexes and a pulse. Instead of creating supercomputers that play MMORPGs perfectly, I'd settle for AI that just happily mines gold for me all day. [url]

Computers can also beat us at really simple games that you wouldn't think need any intelligence to play. So don't play Rock-Paper-Scissors to the death, and never wage a land war in Asia. [url]

Maybe football coaches should be replaced by computers, too. When your fantasy league is short human players, try a few bots as competitive players. [url]

If only the neural nets that play 20 questions were a bit more useful... These kinds of programs were supposed to help diagnose medical diseases, but now they just play trivial games and advertise for Whoppers. [url]

To discover more interesting AI-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110307/14562913390 Wed, 2 Mar 2011 13:44:01 PST Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110302/02425613325/finally-found-human-that-can-beat-watson-it-turns-out-to-be-rep-rush-holt.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110302/02425613325/finally-found-human-that-can-beat-watson-it-turns-out-to-be-rep-rush-holt.shtml winning its big national TV challenge against two Jeopardy stars, apparently, IBM is taking the Jeopardy playing machine on tour, with a key stop being Congress. It got to play against a group of our elected officials... and one of them actually beat Watson. Say hello to Rep. Rush Holt -- who was a bit of a ringer, since he's actually a five-time Jeopardy champion. Holt apparently outscored Watson $8,600 to $6,200, though all the other Congressional Reps who went up against Watson were unable to master the computer. I guess this means that we should make Rep. Holt our new leader when the machines come to try to enslave us.

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]]> bow-down-to-the-superior-mind http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110302/02425613325 Wed, 16 Feb 2011 17:00:00 PST Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110216/13575213130/dailydirt-add-jeopardy-to-list-games-that-ai-is-better-than-you.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110216/13575213130/dailydirt-add-jeopardy-to-list-games-that-ai-is-better-than-you.shtml

Deep Blue won its first game of chess against Garry Kasparov in 1996. The computer didn't win the match that year, but it won the re-match in 1997. [url]

Checkers was declared "solved" in 2007 by the Chinook project. Chinook was actually stronger than any human player by 1996, but it took a few more years for Chinook to realize checkers was a futile game (like tic-tac-toe) and retire. [url]

A few years ago, the Polaris poker bot beat a few professionals at Texas hold'em. So be careful playing poker online... [url]

The famous long bet between Mitchell Kapor and Ray Kurzweil has $20,000 riding on the question of whether or not AI will pass a Turing test by 2029. The bet started in 2002, and Kapor even suggested back then that a machine might win at a Jeopardy! game show. [url]

To discover more interesting stuff on artificial intelligence, check out what the robots at StumbleUpon suggest. [url]  

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110216/13575213130 Fri, 14 Jan 2011 01:32:00 PST Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110113/14193812659/first-test-computer-jeopardy-player-goes-well-watson-beats-mere-humans.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110113/14193812659/first-test-computer-jeopardy-player-goes-well-watson-beats-mere-humans.shtml take on real Jeopardy contestants in February of this year (just a few years after the project first came to life). While the big test isn't until Valentine's Day, apparently they had a dry run, and things are looking pretty good for Watson, who beat Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. It wasn't a complete domination. Apparently Watson just narrowly edged out Jennings, though Rutter couldn't keep up. Of course, between now and the real test, Watson can be tweaked. Jennings' and Rutters' brains are pretty much set, and I'd imagine that their ability to cram more useless trivia in their brains is outmatched by Watson.

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]]> show-off http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110113/14193812659 Tue, 28 Apr 2009 02:22:50 PDT Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090427/0021364654.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090427/0021364654.shtml chess, Go and poker -- where evaluating strategies for winning could be approached using vast computational resources. Another historical challenge for AI projects is the classic Turing Test, which requires an understanding of human communication in order to pass the test. So it's interesting to see IBM starting a project called Watson (named after IBM's founder, not Sherlock's assistant) to create a computer to compete on Jeopardy! against human contestants -- because doing so combines the goals of natural language processing and strategic game planning.

Obviously, though, Watson is more of a product demonstration than a serious research project to advance the field of computer science, but it's still a brilliant move, nonetheless, since the effort can be understood by anyone who watches popular game shows, and at the same time, the project studies a practical problem for algorithms. However, the game of Jeopardy! is somewhat trivial (no pun intended, honest) since Jeopardy's given answers all have matching questions -- and it doesn't really require true comprehension to guess (apparently, human contestants respond correctly about 85% of the time). Granted, Jeopardy! is a bit harder to play than Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, but Alex Trebek doesn't seem quite as computationally demanding as search engines can be (unless you count the audio/video Daily Doubles?). Still, IBM should be applauded for supporting its research as eye-catching PR campaigns -- while other companies like Microsoft are getting more attention for downsizing their research divisions.

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]]> the-only-winning-move-is-not-to-play? http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090427/0021364654 Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:33:25 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090420/0228044558.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090420/0228044558.shtml Slashdot points us to an interview with Luis von Ahn (who we're a big fan of), where he talks about how spammers who are frustrated by various types of CAPTCHA tests have set up their own sort of "innovation prize," offering up somewhere in the range of $500,000 for software that can automatically pass CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA reading tests (the things where you have to fill in a series of letters to sign up for a service or post a comment). As von Ahn points out: "If [the spammers] are really able to write a programme to read distorted text, great -- they have solved an AI problem." It is, effectively, an "X Prize" for optical character recognition. Not that we like to encourage spammers, but it is rather fascinating how the underground business seems to mirror the above ground innovation world as well.

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]]> fascinating http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090420/0228044558 Thu, 26 Jul 2007 10:03:21 PDT Joseph Weisenthal http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070725/101223.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070725/101223.shtml human vs. computer poker, the human players managed to outlast and outwit the bot. It was by no means an easy task, as the computer performed strongly on day one. But, by the second day, the human players seemed to have a pretty good feel for the way the machine played the game, giving them the leg up. Assuming that computer, dubbed Polaris, represents the vanguard of AI poker, it would seem that it'll still going to be a long time before computers can compete at the top level, as they can do in chess. This particular match offered the computer optimal conditions, as it faced an opponent heads up in limit poker; in a no-limit game with a full table of opponents (conditions that would make it even harder to calculate proper strategy), its performance would have likely been significantly worse.

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]]> one-last-redoubt http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20070725/101223