Microsoft & Alibaba's AI Outguns Humans in a Stanford University reading and comprehension test
Computers are getting better than humans at reading
Jack Ma: 'We shouldn't fear AI'
The robots are coming, and they can read.
by Sherisse Pham January 15, 2018: 5:07 AM ET
Artificial intelligence programs built by Alibaba and
Microsoft have beaten humans on a Stanford University reading comprehension
test.
"This is the first time that a machine has
outperformed humans on such a test," Alibaba said in a statement Monday.
The test was devised by artificial intelligence experts
at Stanford to measure computers' growing reading abilities. Alibaba's software
was the first to beat the human score.
Luo Si, the chief scientist of natural language
processing at the Chinese company's AI research group, called the milestone
"a great honor," but also acknowledged that it is likely lead to a
significant number of workers losing their jobs to machines.
The technology "can be gradually applied to numerous
applications such as customer service, museum tutorials and online responses to
medical inquiries from patients, decreasing the need for human input in an
unprecedented way," Si said in a statement.
Alibaba has already put the technology to work on Singles
Day, the world's biggest shopping bonanza, by using computers to answer a large
number of customer service questions.
In a tweet, Pranav Rajpurkar, one of the Stanford
researchers who developed the reading test, called Alibaba's feat "a great
start to 2018" for artificial intelligence.
The Stanford test generates questions about a set of
Wikipedia articles.
For example, a human or AI program reads a passage about
the history of British TV show Doctor Who and then answers questions like,
"What is Doctor Who's space ship called?" (Spoiler alert: It's the
TARDIS, for non-Doctor Who fans out there.)
Alibaba's deep neural network model scored 82.44 on the
test on January 11, narrowly beating the 82.304 scored by the human
participants. A day later, Microsoft's AI software also beat the human score,
with a result of 82.650.
"These kinds of tests are certainly useful
benchmarks for how far along the AI journey we may be," said Andrew
Pickup, a spokesman for Microsoft. "However, the real benefit of AI is
when it is used in harmony with humans," he added.
Facebook, Tencent and Samsung have also previously
submitted AI models to the Stanford project.
Artificial intelligence is already causing disruption in
industries around the world -- replacing warehouse workers with robots,
operating self-driving cars and even helping farmers grow better crops.
Russian President Vladimir Putin predicted in September
that whoever becomes the leader in artificial intelligence "will become
the ruler of the world."
China is making a big push to be a dominant force.
Beijing said it wants the country to be a leader in
artificial intelligence by 2020. In July, government officials set out goals to
build a domestic artificial intelligence industry worth nearly $150 billion in
the next couple years.
CNNMoney (Hong Kong) First published January 15, 2018:
4:56 AM ET
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