AI with AI

This week, Microsoft Research and the University of Montreal show that machines can learn through interactive language by answering questions (question answering with interactive text, or QAit). The Allen Institute for AI’s Aristo system, a suite of eight solves, can pass (90%+) the New York 8th Grade regents science exams (for non-diagram, multiple-choice questions), and can exceed 83% on the 12th-grade exam, though Melanie Mitchell suggests the achievement may not be as profound as it seems. A “meta-research” paper from Milan and Klagenfurt takes a broader look at neural network research and highlights concerns of reproducibility (or lack thereof) as well as utility (or lack thereof, where simple heuristic methods can outperform the neural networks). From a workshop organized by Max Tegmark and Emilia Javorsky, a group of diverse authors produced a “possibility of a middle road” look at roadmapping a way ahead for Autonomous Weapons Systems. An opinion piece from Zachary Kallenborn on War on the Rocks looks at What If the US Military Neglects AI? A paper in Nature provides an overview of open-ended evolution, as a part of artificial life. Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis publish a book on Rebooting AI: Building AI We Can Trust. The 57th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics occurred at the end of July, and Kate Koidan provides a summary of the top trends. The IEEE ranks robot creepiness with the top 100 creepy robots. Booz Allen releases a documentary on the Dawn of Generation AI. And the Naval Facilities Engineering and Expeditionary Warfare Center (NAVFAC EXWC) will host an industry day conference on cyber, control systems, and machine learning in December.