On Sunday, 7 July 2013 at 20:38:31 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 7/7/2013 5:41 AM, John Colvin wrote:
>> On Sunday, 7 July 2013 at 10:07:51 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>>> Ask Watson what its favorite color is.
>>>
>>> Oh well.
>>
>> That's asking for an awful lot more than good natural language processing.
>
> Is it? Yes, that's a serious question. I don't presume that human language is something independent from our self-awareness.

Fair point.

There is, however, a reasonable subset of language (note: not subset of words, phrases or grammar explicitly) that can be interpreted without said self-awareness.

On Sunday, July 07, 2013 13:38:33 Walter Bright wrote:
> On 7/7/2013 5:41 AM, John Colvin wrote:
> > On Sunday, 7 July 2013 at 10:07:51 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> >> Ask Watson what its favorite color is.
> >> 
> >> Oh well.
> > 
> > That's asking for an awful lot more than good natural language processing.
> 
> Is it? Yes, that's a serious question. I don't presume that human language is something independent from our self-awareness.

Well, it _is_ considered to be an AI-complete problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI-complete

- Jonathan M Davis

On Sunday, 7 July 2013 at 10:07:51 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> Ask Watson what its favorite color is.

Ask /me/ what my favorite color is. I always hate questions like that because, and this might sound silly, but it bothers me because if I pick one, I think the others will feel left out, and I feel bad about that. Maybe this is an effect of me being picked last in gym for all those years in school. I'm not even that bad at sports!

Anyway, the worst was when a friend would take me with her to the mall to shop, something she did a lot. Which shoes do I like better? idk, I might find one style weird, but who am /I/ to judge something for being weird?


I don't think I'd want a computer that is too much like us!

On 7/7/13 1:35 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
> A mailman can (will) also do things like pretend to know, make up a
> plausible answer, ask clarifying questions, figure it out, etc.

Siri can also reply by doing a google search and reading the result.

> Computers don't, for example, figure it out. They do not reason. Regex
> is not a thought process.

This started with you claiming that Siri is just Eliza with more memory. That's inaccurate to say the least.


Andrei

On 7/7/2013 2:11 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 7/7/13 1:35 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
>> A mailman can (will) also do things like pretend to know, make up a
>> plausible answer, ask clarifying questions, figure it out, etc.
>
> Siri can also reply by doing a google search and reading the result.

Right, that's what it does when it doesn't match the pattern. There's no understanding at all.


>> Computers don't, for example, figure it out. They do not reason. Regex
>> is not a thought process.
>
> This started with you claiming that Siri is just Eliza with more memory. That's
> inaccurate to say the least.

I argue it is dead on. I don't see a fundamental difference. Siri matches your statement against a set of canned patterns (just like Eliza) and gives a canned answer. Failing that, it feeds it to a search engine (Eliza, of course, had no search engine, so it just gave a canned default response).

Back in college, I wrote a Zork-style game, and spent some time programming recognition of various patterns, enough to see what's happening behind the curtain with Siri. If you're not familiar with how these things work, it can superficially appear to be magical at "understanding" you, but nothing of the sort is happening.

I'm sure Apple collects statements sent to Siri, looks at them, and regularly adds more patterns. But it's just that - more patterns. (Ask Siri to open the pod bay doors, for example.)

I think Siri does a mahvelous job of voice recognition - but that's not what we're talking about.

On 7/7/2013 2:05 PM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
> On Sunday, 7 July 2013 at 10:07:51 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> Ask Watson what its favorite color is.
>
> Ask /me/ what my favorite color is. I always hate questions like that because,
> and this might sound silly, but it bothers me because if I pick one, I think the
> others will feel left out, and I feel bad about that. Maybe this is an effect of
> me being picked last in gym for all those years in school. I'm not even that bad
> at sports!
>
> Anyway, the worst was when a friend would take me with her to the mall to shop,
> something she did a lot. Which shoes do I like better? idk, I might find one
> style weird, but who am /I/ to judge something for being weird?
>
>
> I don't think I'd want a computer that is too much like us!

Exactly. Can you see Watson generating a response like yours? I don't, either.

The top hit on google for that question is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWS8Mg-JWSg

The people typing that into google are probably looking for that clip, they are not asking google what google's favorite color is. Google, of course, is programmed to be a search engine, not process natural language for anything other than search.

If I was asked that question, the context would matter. If it was at a barbeque with the beer flowing, I'd answer "blue, no ye- .. aaaaahhhhhhggggg!" If an architect working for me asked, I'd give a serious answer, and of course even that answer would depend on the context - I'd pick different colors for the kitchen walls than the bedroom floor.

Good luck with Watson or Siri on such.

On 7/7/13 2:44 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
>> This started with you claiming that Siri is just Eliza with more
>> memory. That's
>> inaccurate to say the least.
>
> I argue it is dead on. I don't see a fundamental difference.

Consider someone at a 1970s level of compiler technology coming to you and telling you in all seriousness: "Yeah, I tried your D language. A few more keywords and tricks. Compiler supports lines over 80 columns. Other than that, it has nothing over Fortran77." Knowing the wealth of research and development in programming languages since then, you'd know that that's just an ignorant statement and would not even take the time to get offended.

Similarly, it would be an ignorant thing to say that Siri is just a larger Eliza. There is a world of difference between Eliza's and Siri's approaches. In fact the difference is even larger than between 1970s compilers and today's ones. For a simple example, in the 1990s NLP has definitely departed from rule-based models to statistical models. I don't know of a similarly large change in programming language technology.


Andrei

On Sun, Jul 07, 2013 at 04:03:39PM -0700, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 7/7/13 2:44 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
> >>This started with you claiming that Siri is just Eliza with more
> >>memory. That's
> >>inaccurate to say the least.
> >
> >I argue it is dead on. I don't see a fundamental difference.
> 
> Consider someone at a 1970s level of compiler technology coming to you and telling you in all seriousness: "Yeah, I tried your D language. A few more keywords and tricks. Compiler supports lines over 80 columns. Other than that, it has nothing over Fortran77." Knowing the wealth of research and development in programming languages since then, you'd know that that's just an ignorant statement and would not even take the time to get offended.
> 
> Similarly, it would be an ignorant thing to say that Siri is just a larger Eliza. There is a world of difference between Eliza's and Siri's approaches. In fact the difference is even larger than between 1970s compilers and today's ones. For a simple example, in the 1990s NLP has definitely departed from rule-based models to statistical models. I don't know of a similarly large change in programming language technology.
[...]

I look forward to the day programs will be written by statistical models. Random failure FTW! :-P

Oh wait, it's already been done:

	http://p-nand-q.com/humor/programming_languages/java2k.html

:-P


T

-- 
Doubtless it is a good thing to have an open mind, but a truly open mind should be open at both ends, like the food-pipe, with the capacity for excretion as well as absorption. -- Northrop Frye

On 7/7/2013 4:03 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Similarly, it would be an ignorant thing to say that Siri is just a larger
> Eliza. There is a world of difference between Eliza's and Siri's approaches. In
> fact the difference is even larger than between 1970s compilers and today's
> ones.

I don't know how Siri is implemented. If it is using modern approaches, I'd love to sit down with you sometime and learn about it.

On Sun, Jul 7, 2013 at 6:11 PM, Walter Bright <newshound2@digitalmars.com>wrote:

> On 7/7/2013 4:03 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>
>> Similarly, it would be an ignorant thing to say that Siri is just a larger
>> Eliza. There is a world of difference between Eliza's and Siri's
>> approaches. In
>> fact the difference is even larger than between 1970s compilers and
>> today's
>> ones.
>>
>
> I don't know how Siri is implemented. If it is using modern approaches, I'd love to sit down with you sometime and learn about it.
>

Can't speak for Siri, but the deep learning architecture used in google now has little to do with Eliza. Nor is the recognition accuracy. Try it if you haven't!