Why are computers so stupid
and what can be done about it?
Artificial intelligence
and commonsense knowledge
Artificial Intelligence
“Then somehow they achieved
consciousness, and in a few nanoseconds 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).
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 it’s not worth talking about.
Commonsense Knowledge
and 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.”
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
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.”
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.
Messy kitchen
Bottle is empty
Fridge in corner
Toaster oven, paper
towel on counter.
Plant is hung from
curtain rod.
Daytime
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.
Example: Time intervals
Rule: [during(A,B) & before(B,C)] =>
before(A,C)
Example: Space
• in(X,Y) => distance(X,Z) ≥ distance(Y,Z)
Example:
Knowledge and Communication
• [trusting({X,Y}) &
occurs(S1,S2,tells(X,Y,P))] =>
holds(S2,knows(Y,P))
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.
The Sad Truth
Virtually no successful AI programs use any
commonsense knowledge.
Examples:
• Billing programs
• Speech understanding
• Autonomous vehicles
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.
Mismatch between AI and
technology
Technology develops to meet needs.
Since AI deals with tasks that people do
easily, it’s easier to hire people.
Practical AI tends to focus on niche tasks or
unusual settings: machine translation,
medical image processing, Mars rover
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.