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Topic: RE: virus: Computer learns grammar by crunching sentences (Read 1176 times) |
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Blunderov
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RE: virus: Computer learns grammar by crunching sentences
« on: 2005-10-02 02:59:51 » |
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[Blunderov] The algorithm may be able to generate meaningful sentences, but
obviously it cannot itself understand the meaning of those sentences. Even
so, this achievement is not to be underestimated; apparently it is already a
competent theologian.
Best Regards.
http://education.guardian.co.uk/tefl/teaching/story/0,15085,1576100,00.html
Computer learns grammar by crunching sentences
Max de Lotbinière
Friday September 23, 2005
Guardian Weekly
The humbling power of computers - when correctly programmed - to surpass, in
speed at least, human skills, has been demonstrated by a computer program
that can learn language rules and compose sentences, without outside help.
Researchers from Cornell University, in the US, and Tel Aviv University have
developed a computer program that can scan text in any of a number of
languages, including English and Chinese, and without any previous knowledge
infer the underlying rules of grammar. The rules can be used to generate new
and meaningful sentences.
According to the researchers, the method also works for such data as sheet
music or protein sequences.
The development has implication for speech recognition and for other
applications in natural language engineering, as well as for genomics. It
also offers insights into language acquisition and psycho-linguistics.
"The algorithm - the computational method - for language learning and
processing that we have developed can take a body of text, abstract from it
a collection of recurring patterns or rules and then generate new
materials," explained Shimon Edelman a professor of psychology at Cornell
who helped to develop the program.
"This is the first time an unsupervised algorithm is shown capable of
learning complex syntax and generating grammatical new sentences."
Unlike previous attempts at developing computer algorithms for language
learning, the method, called Automatic Distillation of Structure (Adios),
discovers complex patterns in raw text by repeatedly aligning sentences and
looking for overlapping parts.
"Adios relies on a statistical method for pattern extraction and on
structured generalisations - the two processes that have been implicated in
language acquisition," said Edelman. "Our experiments show that Adios can
acquire intricate structures from raw data including transcripts of parents'
speech directed at two- or three-year-olds.
"This may eventually help researchers understand how children, who learn
language in a similar item-by-item fashion, and with little supervision,
eventually master the full complexity of their native tongue."
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Matt Arnold
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RE: virus: Computer learns grammar by crunching sentences
« Reply #1 on: 2005-10-02 16:24:51 » |
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Quote from: Blunderov on 2005-10-02 02:59:51
[Blunderov] The algorithm may be able to generate meaningful sentences, but obviously it cannot itself understand the meaning of those sentences. |
No, it generates grammatically correct gibberish which may or may not happen to mean anything. Perhaps that is the reason that you said the following?
Quote:| apparently it is already a competent theologian. |
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He believed in a door. The door was the way to... to... The Door was The Way. Good. Capital letters were always the best way of dealing with things you didn't have a good answer to.
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Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
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RE: virus: Computer learns grammar by crunching sentences
« Reply #2 on: 2005-10-02 18:00:56 » |
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[Blunderov] 'pon reflection it was not one of my more successful jests. I vaguely had in mind Chomsky's 'colorless green ideas sleep furiously' idea. You're not supposed to be able to make sense of it even though it's syntactically perfectly correct. The trouble is that I (and I'm sure you all) can make perfect sense of it really. It is as if the brain insists that it mean something. (FWIW it means to me : "so-far unrevealed and dimly transparent, fresh ideas of dramatic potential lurk beneath the surface." A fun party game.)
Is it possible that all those inscrutable biblical texts invoke this phenomenon in their hapless hosts? That they mistake the minds insistence on meaning-at-any-price for a special sort of mystical understanding?
But I am very susceptible I confess. Once I read a forensics book in which there was a transcript of the ramblings of a psychotic and it was some of the most moving poetry that I have ever read. The only bit that I can remember now was the beginning: " I have a giant lover and her sides are made of glass...".
Anyway, I suspect that I'm beginning to ramble a bit.
Best Regards.
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