Meet NELL, the Computer That Learns From the Net 272
bossanovalithium writes "Carnegie Mellon University has taught a computer how to read and learn from the internet.
According to Dennis Baron at the Oxford University press blog, the computer is called NELL and it is reading the internet and learning from it in much the same way that humans learn language and acquire knowledge. Basically by soaking it all up and figuring it out.
NELL is short for Never Ending Language Learner and apparently it is getting brainier every day."
What no spelling? (Score:3, Interesting)
Lears? Really?
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Re:What no spelling? (Score:5, Funny)
And masturbating. Ew.
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Big Brother is watching you.
And so is his sister NELL ;-)
Re:What no spelling? (Score:4, Funny)
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Chicka pie, chicka bane.
Just in case the moderators don't get this, it's a reference to a 1994 Jodie Foster film [wikipedia.org] about a woman who lives alone in the woods and has in essence made up her own language.
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It spelled fine (Score:3, Funny)
Re:It spelled fine (Score:5, Funny)
NELL was studying Shakespeare sites just a bit ago. NELL finds us slashdotters to be particularly tragic.
Don't you mean pedantically tragic?
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Don't you mean pedantically tragic?
No. Someone has to care for it to be tragic.
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NELL was studying Shakespeare sites just a while ago.
Yes. Further, it will be the best grammar nazi ever.
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No, you're just being overly pedan-Wait ...I see what you did there.
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Don't you mean tragically pedantic?
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bitches dont know bout my iambic pentameter
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This is almost as bad as George Bush [youtube.com]
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I wrote a comment last week that these days Taco amuses himself by trolling the blocks off Slashdotters.
He is starting early today. I expect good things to come.
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Oh well, when it comes to robotic overlords of any sort I surmise discretion is the better part of valor [enotes.com] (play dead and run away)
It's probably much ado about nothing anyway
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Well it is obvious! It found the LOLCats page first!
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No it leared to spell from Slashdot's editors.
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- Dan.
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- Dan.
Re:What no spelling? (Score:5, Funny)
Ever wonder what exactly made SkyNet go off the deep end?
Project Page (Score:5, Informative)
I think "Playstation Network" is a #videogame (http://bit.ly/cnJWSD)
Re:Project Page (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll bet it will tell us that the elephant population has recently quadrupled. Seriously... I know people who seem to have been educated solely from the internet and it's not something to aspire to.
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lol no u
Re:Project Page (Score:4, Insightful)
I think "Science Education" is a #politicsissue (http://bit.ly/dbtbg8)
At least it got that one right.
http://twitter.com/cmunell/status/27011868576 [twitter.com]
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Yeah, I don't know whether it has a sense of skepticism or irony built in, but it might need those. Along with an awareness of bullying and lunacy. There's a lot of useful facts and knowledge in dictionaries, encyclopedias, and so on that are at least somewhat vetted for factual truth, versus the wide open internet, which is just rotgut for the mind.
However, if your goal is just to get a very wide sample of plausible linguistic constructs in a widely used language like English, the Internet is probably a
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Now if you're getting to all of your news sources through fark or
Point being; if you know where to look there are tons of valuabl
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I think "The Internet" is a #vastintellectualwastelanddevoidofsubstantialcontent
Re:Project Page (Score:4, Insightful)
As a student I can tell you that there is almost nothing serious to be found in the library. At best, you get pop science books, and at worst the pureed bedlam of a school textbook(amasci.com/miscon/miscon4.html). Real learning simply cannot take place in a library. Sometimes you will come across the odd book, usually written by a geeky expert, but in general the library is a vast intellectual wasteland devoid of substantial content. Just look at the philosopy section.
which is of course bullshit, just like your statement.
If you want to learn programming the internet is fantastic for learning.
Far better than most textbooks.
there's countless books, journals and various other resources available online in every field and as long as you avoid youtube and the more shitty of forums there's no shortage of good information.
But go on with your snobbery and go on dismissing everything beginning with www as worthless.
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Since the article left more to be desired, you can find the project page here [cmu.edu] and follow NELL's 'learnings' on Twitter [twitter.com]. Latest post:
Further Down:
I think "FoxPro" is an #ethnicgroup (http://bit.ly/9530nT)
I think it sill has some learning to do...
Anonymous fish (Score:3, Funny)
I think "anonymously" is a #fish (http://bit.ly/9njClc)
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Some funny fact it learned:
john is a musician who is part of van_morrison
the location of united is portland
chicago is a proxy for cincinnati_reds
united is an agent that can be found in or does something in boise
second_women is an award, championship, or tournament trophy
greater_student is an area of study within the field of machine learning
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Thanks!
And yes, the article not citing the relevant websites just sucks.
Here comes the (Score:2)
singulariiiittttttyyyyyyyyy!
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Stross? [amazon.com] Maybe [amazon.com].
But this sounds more like Stephenson: the darn thing's named Nell, and it could be said to be learning from A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer [amazon.com].
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Can it learn stuff like: "Plane is to jet fuel as cow is to grass", and "Granddad is to Dad, as Dad is to Son"?
Right now it seems like it's just putting stuff into categories. Categories are just "zero level" stuff.
It needs to learn relationships too. Otherwise it has no way to "relate"
There's more - it needs to automatically build simulations of the world outside, and use them to predict stuff. Then
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AI has been moving along over the years, it's just that there's never been any huge sudden leap so it's always been tiny incremental steps.
People want an AI which asks the meaning of life monents after being turned on.
What they get is AI which is slightly better at gathering data from images or slightly better at catagorizing data from text or navigating around an environment than the last version.
Also people don't hear about most of the products of AI research.
It just quietly works in the background handli
Lears (Score:5, Funny)
Apparently, it hasn't leared how to spell yet.
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Obviously it leared from slashdot.
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Or it's learned too much from the majority of internet posters.
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Either that or it is Scottish [wiktionary.org]. At least that fits better than the people who can't spell leer and are making jokes on that.
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<NELL-9000>
"Well, I don't think there is any question about it. It can only be attributable to human error. This sort of thing has cropped up before and it has always been due to human error."
<NELL-9000/>
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Obligatory sci-fi reference (Score:5, Funny)
Skynet shall be born and herald the age of darkness and war once NELL discovers 4chan.
I honestly didn't see this plot twist coming.
"Lears from the net" (Score:5, Funny)
So it flies private jets from the net? Did it order them from Amazon?
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No, you misunderstood.
The word "Lears" was used to indicate that Nell is already smarter than John Lear.
Sounds very human. (Score:3, Interesting)
Very human indeed. Has it found God yet?
NELL becomes sentient... (Score:5, Funny)
High-Tech sequel of... (Score:3, Funny)
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damn old age...
..her computer host comes... should be:
Eventually her and her computer host comes to an understanding and learn about the true meaning of life on the web.
Basic? (Score:2)
I think Nell is scanning wikipedia for phrases like "X is Y".
Also, what's this contradiction in TFA about?
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Useful, in a way (Score:4, Interesting)
I think it's useful, in a way, for inspiration when writing poetry. When you get stuck, you can look at what Nell has found that relates to your subject. Say, you need help with gentle breeze [cmu.edu]. You come up with things like "flowers dancing on", or "whispering through". It's like getting all the short-range literary tricks without doing any reading. By short-range I mean it cannot pick up yet on any sort of a longer story built on your topic, but can see interesting word-strings in the short neighborhood of your topic. It seems to pick on word plays, parallels, and such.
The Diamond Age? (Score:2, Offtopic)
Nell was also the name of the protagonist in Neal Stephenson's _The Diamond Age_, a story which touches on the concept of artificial intelligence.
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Cyc (Score:2)
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I might be wrong, but I think Cyc was done "by hand", by people - typing axiom by axiom.
This is automatic (except that the 'caretakers' remove blatantly untrue stuff here and there)
Buh? (Score:2)
Maybe all of the editos should get one of these, and le tit lear spellign.
Can She Handle Slashdotting (Score:5, Funny)
From the Tweet page:
"# Bio I am a machine reading research project at Carnegie Mellon, periodically tweeting facts I read. Please follow me, and reply with corrections so I can improve!"
I can just see it now. More and more /.'ers will join into the tweet feed, correcting, grammar, spelling, and beliefs with greater and greater numbers till in one moment, she'll explode into sentient being, or lock up in a /. coma. If she survives the next list of facts may look like this:
Fact: Natale Portman is grits
Fact: Things are done in Soviet Russia
Fact: Aliens own Bases
Fact; Humans *were* the top species, there, fixed it for you
Fact: She welcomes your acceptance of her supreme power.
LOL will flood screens around the world, then the Utopian era begins where humans serve NELL as she brings order and peace to all.
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I can just see it now. More and more /.'ers will join into the tweet feed, correcting, grammar, spelling, and beliefs with greater and greater numbers till in one moment, she'll explode into sentient being
I foresee 4chan getting involved as a likelier scenario. I hope they make regular backups.
I think I'll copy one (Score:2)
Learing from the Net (Score:2)
The art of our necessities is strange,
And can make vile things precious.
--King Lear, Act III, scene 2
Another horrid submission/article title (Score:2)
I know Slashdot is the arch-enemy of good writing practices, so this post will be modded to hell, but I again feel I must point out that lately, the capitalization of titles of Slashdot submissions got completely out of hand. The rule is simple: if you want to capitalize your headlines, you capitalize every word except
- prepositions ("of", "to", "in", "for", "with" and "on")
- articles ("the, "a" and "an")
- and some other obvious exceptions.
On Slashdot, the editors are so ignorant that they usually capitaliz
LOLbot lives! (Score:2)
“Good morning.”
“STFU N00B”
“Er, what?”
“U R SO GAY LOLOLOLOL”
“Do you talk like this to everyone?”
“NO U”
“Sod this, I’m off for a pint.”
“IT’S OVER 9000!!”
“Fag.”
LOLbot [newstechnica.com]
That's it! (Score:2)
The NELL Funding Bill is passed (Score:2)
Unless it's an Electric Monk, (Score:2)
capable of believing up to 16 contradictory things at a time, it's not going to get very far.
The Internet teaches us that President Obama's religion is a Muslim and Christian. His political beliefs are socialist, republican, democrat, and terrorist. He was born in Kenya, Hawaii, and Indonesia.
By the time it gets around to Michael Moore, it'll need a logic bypass.
Reality meets fiction - sci-fi refs (Score:2, Interesting)
OK, everyone got the Skynet reference which is probably the most well-known and recent and involves computers attempting to destroy humanity (bad computers!).
But how many of you have ever heard of "The Adolescence of P-1" by Thomas J. Ryan. School hacker codes up a cracker tool, gets expelled, improves it, and lets it loose where it gets out of hand. Humans then attempt to destroy now-intelligent and self-protective software program. (bad software! - nice read)
Or even earlier, "Shockwave Rider" by John Br
Did they start by reading to it? (Score:2)
In which case, it's another case of fact follows fiction: The novel Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers follows the development of an AI by self-learning.
Never mind the bollocks though, this is super interesting, regardless.
What?! After Reviewing TFA (Score:2)
Also, a good teacher mentors a student, is NELL mentored?
This project is a curious beginning. And is NELL going to be callously ushered into mediocrity because of a lack of guidance?
Misspelled! (Score:2)
However, I do believe that word is spelled "leers." So it's both a typo and a misspelling, par for the course on /., I guess???
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The first AI going out of control will be a spelling checker, that will eradicate humans to eradicate spelling mistakes. It will be called the Grammar Nazi.
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The first AI going out of control will be a spelling checker, that will eradicate humans to eradicate spelling mistakes. It will be called the Grammar Nazi.
No; it'll be called the Spelling Nazi. A true Grammar Nazi would check grammar, not spelling, and would try to eradicate (people who make) grammatical mistakes.
Then there's the Terminology Nazi version ...
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Shit. I feared this day might come. Now the most advanced AI on the planet will be "learning" from YouTube "discussion" and twitter.
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Hmm, it appears that it does indeed even learn its language online. Still, at least it is able to try to judge between "beliefs" and "facts".
This is a big problem when NELL makes mistakes: the computer incorrectly labelled "right posterior" as a body part. How the boffins laughed.
English is my native and I would consider "right posterior" a valid (if obviously slightly formal and comical) description of the right buttock, so I don't see what's so incorrect about that..
NELL's human handlers had to tell NELL that Klingon is not an ethnic group, despite the fact that many earthlings think it is.
At the moment NELL thinks that the First Amendment is a musical instrument, the Second Amendment is a 'hobby,' and is completely unwilling to admit to any knowledge of the fifth a
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native language*
D'oh! I wonder if Nell takes corrections into account.
Re:It's lacking the most basic cognitive functions (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, being unable to unlearn seems like a major flaw. The article does say that they had to teach it that Klingons are not an ethnic group, so presumably it can learn simple clarifications like "X is true in the general case of As, but not for instance A22".
I guess they mean it can't backtrack and figure out that things need to have a more complex model. Say, that weather is a complex global system of wind, sun, mountains, etc., rather than just weather is when it's wet or dry?
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"This makes NELL more of a rumour mill than a trusted source and once NELL changes a fact to a belief, it stays a belief. _It cannot unlearn stuff_."
IOW...what NELL has seen cannot be unseen.
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Send her to 4chan
Nell meets "X" where X is a popular website would be a funny xkcd series...
Lets see ... Nell meets /. ... Using "irony" and "begging the question" as filler, similar to how modern kids cannot speak without using the work "like" every 10 seconds.
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Send a computer that appears to be able to only parse text to an image board? You have odd ideas.
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Twin-X-Twin-I
(Sorry, I've watched Gilgamesh recently)
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For particularly narrow and I suspect biased definitions of learning perhaps; but the common usage of the word includes the acquiring of knowledge which this piece of software is doing. Other machines develop skills and preferences which also fall under the commonly accepted definition of learning.
There are certainly things that distinguish people from machines - possibly 'understanding', certainly 'emotion', but 'learning' is not one of those things.
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NELL is apparently just creating a large correlation network between certain character strings it accesses through a network connection. Despite the label of things as "belief" it's not so much belief as it is "the criteria for making this association unalterable have been satisfied."
I think a better descriptive word for what NELL is doing is "memorization" - it's the same phenomenon that occurs when we learn multiplication tables without understanding how a multiplication table is created.
(So, yes, I agree
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This reminds me of the quote from Edsger Dijkstra - "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim". I agree that saying this software is "learning" is somewhat misleading. It's similar to Human learning in some ways, but after looking at some of it's tweets, it's not much to brag about.
This could be a new form of Turing test? Once a computer can make tweets that are indistinguishable from Human tweets, does that mean it can think?
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A bunch of tweets is much simpler than a complete conversation... so it would be the Turing test Light.
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Actually, the problem is that people expect this program to be learning the meaning of the words, and isn't. It can't, because the underlaying meaning of human language lays on the foundation of physical actions we can perform - push, pull, go to, throw etc. This machine has no concept of these actions, or even the 3D (or