Why are computers so stupid and what can be done about it?

1
Why are computers so stupidand what can be done
about it?

• Artificial intelligence
• and commonsense knowledge

2
Artificial Intelligence

• Then somehow they achieved consciousness, and in
  a few nano-seconds had enslaved the human race.
• Many tasks that are very easy for people are
  extremely difficult for computers
• Vision
• Natural Language
• Operating in a rich environment (kitchen).

3
Commonsense Knowledge

• The knowledge about the world that everyone has
  by age 7.
• Learned by living in the world, not book-learning
• Time, Space, Physical objects, People, Animals
  and Plants
• If an open bottle full of liquid is turned
  upside down, the contents will pour out.
• Hitting someone will not make them like you.
• An animal is the same species as its parents.
• So obvious that its not worth talking about.

4
Commonsense Knowledgeand Natural Language

• Lexical disambiguation
• This gift is for Stuart.
• This gift is for Christmas.
• This bowl is for soup.
• Anaphoric disambiguation (Winograd, 1972)
• The city council refused to give the
  demonstrators a permit because they
• feared violence.
• because they advocated violence.

5
Ambiguity is ubiquitous

• If you are a fan of the justices who fought
  through the Rehnquist years to pull the Supreme
  Court to the right, then Alito is a home run ---
  a strong and consistent conservative with the
  skill to craft opinions that make radical results
  appear inevitable and the ability to build
  trusting professional relationships across
  ideological lines.
• Andrew Siegel, The New Republic, 11/14/05

6
Ambiguity is ubiquitous

• If you are a fan of the justices who fought
  through the Rehnquist years to pull the Supreme
  Court to the right, then Alito is a home run ---
  a strong and consistent conservative with the
  skill to craft opinions that make radical results
  appear inevitable and the ability to build
  trusting professional relationships across
  ideological lines.

7

• Concert / party. Warmish spring afternoon.
  Street in suburban neighborhood. Wooded hill
  behind. Canvas awning above, mended with duct
  tape. Large mug front center. People in back.

8

• Messy kitchen
• Bottle is empty
• Fridge in corner
• Toaster oven, paper
• towel on counter.
• Plant is hung from curtain rod.
• Daytime

9
The research program

• Determine the knowledge needed for reasoning in a
  domain.
• Develop a notation that is clearly defined and
  that can express that knowledge.
• Encode all the domain knowledge.
• Find ways to automate reasoning with this
  knowledge.
• Integrate the knowledge with the task.

10
Example Time intervals

• Rule during(A,B) before(B,C) gt
• before(A,C)

11
Example Space

• in(X,Y) gt distance(X,Z) distance(Y,Z)

12
Example Knowledge and Communication

• trusting(X,Y)
• occurs(S1,S2,tells(X,Y,P)) gt
• holds(S2,knows(Y,P))

13
How far have we gotten?

• A lot is known about representing Ontology,
  general reasoning methods, time,
• A fair amount is known about Space, knowledge
  and belief, interactions between people, plans
  and goals.
• A little is known about physical reasoning.
• Not much is known about other categories.

14
The Sad Truth

• Virtually no successful AI programs use any
  commonsense knowledge.
• Examples
• Billing programs
• Speech understanding
• Autonomous vehicles

15
Why not?

• Commonsense reasoning is a small, complex part of
  any AI task.
• Little payoff until there is a lot of commonsense
  knowledge.
• Software development starts with simple useful
  systems, and adds features. It is unwelcoming to
  systems that need to be very complex from the
  start.
• Shortcuts lead to chaos.

16
Mismatch between AI and technology

• Technology develops to meet needs.
• Since AI deals with tasks that people do easily,
  its easier to hire people.
• Practical AI tends to focus on niche tasks or
  unusual settings machine translation, medical
  image processing, Mars rover

17
How to proceed

• Look in depth at a variety of different domains.
• Get good solutions to basic issues
• Do not rely on natural language text.
• Patience. This is a large, difficult project,
  which may take centuries.