Thu 10 Feb 2005 @22:10
I’ve been reading about reading today. An article about the difficulty in teaching machines to read and comprehend lead me to the START Natural Language Question Answering System. (Apparently, an engineer’s idea of scientific common naming convention.)
From that site:
START, the world’s first Web-based question answering system, has been on-line and continuously operating since December, 1993. It has been developed by Boris Katz and his associates of the InfoLab Group at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Unlike information retrieval systems (e.g., search engines), START aims to supply users with “just the right information,” instead of merely providing a list of hits. Currently, the system can answer millions of English questions about places (e.g., cities, countries, lakes, coordinates, weather, maps, demographics, political and economic systems), movies (e.g., titles, actors, directors), people (e.g., birth dates, biographies), dictionary definitions, and much, much more. Below is a list of some of the things START knows about, with example questions. You can type your question above or select from the following examples.
So for grins I asked some questions — including a couple very specific questions that I was pretty sure would not be in the database. No big surprise on the answers as you can see below.
Who moved my cheese?
Sorry, no one has told me who moved your cheese.
What is the population of Florida?
Florida
Population: 13,003,362 (1990 census).
Source: WorldBook
12,937,926 people live in Florida.
Source: START KB
Who wrote blue suede shoes?
I think you can find the relevant information here:
* Blue Suede Shoes (1980) (movie in The Internet Movie Database)
Who wrote the song blue suede shoes?
Sorry, I don’t have this information.
Who is Carl Perkins?
Perkins, Carl
Perkins, Carl (1932-1998), was one of the first and most influential stars of rock music.
Source: WorldBook
rock ‘n’ roll singer, songwriter, guitarist; born in Lake City, Tenn. He performed with his brothers Jay Perkins and Clayton Perkins at country dances and in 1955 began recording for Sun Records.
Source: Biography.com
Now, this is a little freaky. I also asked, “Who is in Herman’s head?” And I swear I got an answer like “Sorry, I don’t know who is in Herman’s head.” But while I was writing this blog entry I went back to copy and paste the answers. There’s a very different answer there now. Go take a look….
Oh, and on a tangential note, The Art of Getting By notes today, “Sure, it might take a lifetime to love reading, but it takes no time at all to read between the lines.”
Thanks for reading!