IT IS GETTING SMARTER AI system Aristo gives glimpse of the future LOUIS FOURIE ARTIFICIAL intelligence (AI) plays a major role in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and will increasingly change our future in the years to come. A mere four years ago AI was not even able to pass a Grade 8 science test. Some 700 computer scientists competed in a contest with a significant amount of money as a prize. They had to build an AI system that could pass a Grade 8 science test. The computer scientists did their best, but not even the most advanced AI system could score
better than 60% in the test. But this changed last month when a renowned laboratory in Seattle, US, the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, demonstrated a new AI system that has been able to pass the Grade 8 exam with great ease. It was able to answer more than 90% of the questions correctly. And if this was not enough, it also passed the Grade 12 science exam with 83%. The AI system, named Aristo by researchers, is a dedicated system specifically built for multiple-choice type questions. The Allen Institute, founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, started with their AI research already in 2013. Instead of the typical AI benchmark tests like chess or other games, researchers
decided to rather test the AI on standardised science tests, because a science test cannot be mastered merely by learning a set of fixed rules. The AI must also be able to do logical reasoning to make certain connections and the right choice. The original work was done at Google, where researchers built a system called Bert, that analysed thousands of Wikipedia articles and a large library of romance novels, science fiction and other books. The Aristo system was built on top of the Bert technology. The AI research on natural language processing could lead to systems that can manage a full conversation so that in the future we could have a proper conversation with our AI machine or robot if we are alone!
