Researchers are trying to create a computer that can think. In the artificiality experiment intelligences they're doing, they've let a computer sift through millions of photos to learn, trying to explain for itself what each one means.
The system exists in Carnegie Mellon University and is called NEIL, from its initials Never Ending Image Learning. In mid-July the computer began searching the Internet 24/7 for photos and slowly began to decide how these images related to each other. The goal of the Project is to create a machine with what we call common sense, or the ability to learn new things without being taught.
The project is funded by Google and the Ministry Defenseς (Γραφείο Ναυτικών Ερευνών).
"Every intelligent person has the common sense to make decisions," said Abhinav Gupta, a professor at the Carnegie Mellon Institute of Robotics.
The NEIL system uses computational vision to analyze and detect the shapes and colors of the photographs, as well as to discover the links between the objects on their own without anyone planning it. For example, he has calculated that zebras tend to be in savannas and that the tigers look somewhat like zebras.
In about four months, the 200 processor network detected 1.500 objects and 1.200 scenes and linked the dots to make 2.500 joints.
Some of the compounds that NEIL created are wrong, such as "the rhino may be a species of antelope," or something more bizarre, "the actor can be found in a prison cell".
But as Gupta pointed out, a computer that makes its own connections is a totally different kind of challenge from a planned supercomputer that can do something specific very well, or quickly. For example, 1985, researchers from Carnegie Mellon programmed a computer to play chess. 12 years later, a computer defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov.
Catherine Havasi, an Artificial Intelligence expert from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said people are constantly making decisions using silent assumptions, while computers do not do that.
But Gupta seems quite satisfied with the initial progress. In the future, the NEIL system will analyze huge numbers video of YouTube looking for connections between objects.
"When we started the project, I wasn't sure it would work," he said. "That's just the beginning."
The worrying thing about this story is its website Naval Research stating that "the combat environment today is much more complex than it was in the past" and that "the rate at which data reaches the decision-making system is increasing, while the number of people available to conversion of data in decisions is reduced.”
In other words, computers will be able to make some decisions in the wars of the future. The Navy website notes: "In many business scenarios, the human presence is not an option."
