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Today's artificial intelligence may not be
that clever, but it just got much quicker in understanding. A learning program
designed by three researchers can now recognize and draw handwritten characters
after seeing them only a few times, just as a human can. And the program can do
it so well that people can't tell the difference.
The findings, published in the journal
Science, represent a major step forward in developing more powerful computer
programs that learn in the ways that humans do.
Although computers are excellent at storing
and processing data, they're less-than-stellar students. Your average
3-year-olds could pick up basic concepts faster than the most advanced program.
In short, "You can generalize,"
said coauthor Joshua Tenenbaum. But there's something else humans can do with
just a little exposure—they can break an object down into its key parts and
dream up something new. "To scientists like me who study the mind, the gap
between machine-learning and human-learning capacities remains vast,"
Tenenbaum said. "We want to close that gap, and that's our long-term goal."
Now, Tenenbaum and his colleagues have managed
to build a different kind of machine learning algorithm (算法)—one that, like
humans, can learn a simple concept from very few examples and can even apply it
in new ways. The researchers tested the model on human handwriting, which can
vary sharply from person to person, even when each produces the exact same
character.
The scientists built an algorithm with an
approach called Bayesian program learning, or BPL, a probability-based program.
This algorithm is actually able to build concepts as it goes.
In a set of experiments, the scientists
tested the program using many examples of 1,623 handwritten characters from 50
different writing systems from around the world. In a one-shot classification
challenge, people were quite good at it, with an average error rate of 4.5
percent. But BPL, slightly edged them out, with a comparable error rate of 3.3
percent. The scientists also challenged the program and some human participants
to draw new versions of various characters they presented. They then had human
judges determine which ones were made by man and which were made by machine. As
it turned out, the humans were barely as good as chance at figuring out which
set of characters was machine-produced and which was created by humans.
The findings could be used to improve a
variety of technologies in the near term, including for other symbol-based
systems such as gestures, dance moves and spoken and signed language. But the
research could also shed fresh light on how learning happens in young humans, the
scientists pointed out.
(1)
What is the passage mainly about?
A . An advance in artificial intelligence.
B . A special learning program for students.
C . The application of artificial intelligence
D . A new approach of developing programs.
(2)
By "less-than-stellar students" in Paragraph 3, the author means ________.
A . students are better at processing data
B . computers are incomparable to students
C . students are less smart than computers
D . computers are less clever in some aspects
(3)
In the experiments testing BPL, what did the scientists find out?
A . Humans were slow at recognizing characters.
B . BPL wrote characters in a quite different manner.
C . BPL could identify and write characters as humans.
D . Humans could create more characters than computers.
(4)
What can be inferred from the passage?
A . Computers learn in the same way as humans.
B . The findings may help improve human-learning.
C . Machine-learning is superior to human-learning.
D . Young humans can understand algorithms quickly.
答案: A
D
C
B