Ray Kurzweil, populist futurist and a director of engineering at Google, has an article highlighting three developments in machine learning:
Google DeepMind in London said it has developed a way to teach machines to read natural-language documents and comprehend them, and like Watson, answer complex questions with minimal prior knowledge of language structure — at least for CNN and Daily Mail websites. As noted by the researchers in an arXiv paper (open access), these websites have summaries (such as bulleted lists) and paraphrase sentences. The researchers were able to use these for creating context–query–answer triples for each document. In the process, they generated two new corpora (collections of data) of roughly a million news stories with associated queries to serve as training sets.
Facebook has launched Moments, an app that uses facial recognition technology to group the photos on your phone based on when they were taken and, using facial recognition technology, which friends are in them. You can then privately sync those photos quickly and easily with specific friends, and they can choose to sync their photos with you as well... But an experimental algorithm created by Facebook's FAIR lab can recognize people in photographs even when it can't see their faces. Instead it looks for other unique characteristics like your hairdo, clothing, body shape and pose, New Scientist notes.
Amazon has developed a machine learning algorithm that will "learn which reviews are most helpful to customers" — that is, which reviews are real and which ones are fake. (Amazon sued a number of websites that specialized in creating fake Amazon reviews in April.) Amazon will give greater weight to newer, more helpful and verified customer reviews and ratings (their 5-star system). Amazon Web Services began offering its Amazon Machine Learning service in April to make "it easy for developers of all skill levels to use machine learning technology... without having to learn complex ML algorithms and technology."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2015, @05:04AM
If we have these AI capabilities embedded into our brains/minds, will it feel like our own intelligence?
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday June 26 2015, @05:33AM
Depends on how well-versed in history you are. Ask it about something that really happened that they don't like and if your query is politically incorrect enough they'll return your mind a nice shiny historically nonfactual null pointer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2015, @09:52AM
Sure, if we can't tell the difference.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday June 26 2015, @05:08AM
Google Deepmind?
said it has developed a way to teach machines to read natural-language documents
And
Facebook's FAIR lab can recognize people
Or
Amazon has developed a machine learning algorithm that will "learn which reviews are most helpful to customers"
All I can say is, "Stormtroopers? Here? I must warn the others . . . " End Transmission
(You know why they called it Google? Skynet was already taken. )
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2015, @05:21AM
i(){ for (; 1 ;) welcome(), R( "Language Comprehending", "Lineup Selecting", "Helpfulness Rating" )->ROBOT_OVERLORD(); };
(Score: 3, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday June 26 2015, @06:08AM
A high school friend not only disbelieved me but grew furiously angry when I told her I could recgnize every girl in the school by the shapes of their butts.
Rather more seriously is my concern for applications other than classifying photos of friends. What will become of those working for legitimate regime change? Human rights activists?
The popular singer Sia wears a wig when she goes out in public because she does not want to be recognized.
However...
On the desktop of my linux box is a photo of the most beautiful wman who was ever walked the earth. I am sure I knew her once but cannot remember her name nor where we met.
All I have is "captivating-smile.jpg"
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2015, @08:06AM
Sia should wear a wig while performing instead, then no one would recognize her real head.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2015, @06:38AM
when it catalogues jews for the Nazis...
(Score: 2) by SlimmPickens on Friday June 26 2015, @06:51AM
So databases are evil?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2015, @07:57AM
Is it possible these algorithms do not work at all? Instead, you are sending your data to se asia somewhere where humans are doing it. For example, do all of these services require an internet connection?
(Score: 3, Funny) by ticho on Friday June 26 2015, @09:43AM
That just means the system is modular, and individual modules can be replaced at will. Hey, more buzzwords, let's crank up the price for the whole thing!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2015, @08:00AM
He has a bullshit token position to make evil Google assholes feel famous by association, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2015, @08:14AM
Ray Kurzweil is a what?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2015, @08:18AM
Ray Kurzweil is a "director" at Google
Soystain ate the fucking subject.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2015, @08:20AM
New AC. You cant vote down that post for being anti-Kurzweil w/o saying "Kurzweil is a score:-1". And they who enjoy the post but dislike him are put in a similar position. That post was clearly designed to break any AIs that read it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2015, @08:25AM
You're overthinking this shit, mate.
Fucking Soylent shows a correct preview then fucks up the final submission form. Fuck.
(Score: 3, Funny) by ticho on Friday June 26 2015, @09:45AM
So, which one of these "developments" is Roko's Basilisk?
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Friday June 26 2015, @10:51AM
Why does Google want their name associated with the crackpot Ray Kurzweil? What do they get out of it? Kurzweil gets more self promotion, of course, but Google just gets a black eye in the media every time this guy says anything. No such thing as bad publicity, I guess, but ... still ... I don't get it.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)