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NEURAL NETWORKS SOUND like science fiction at first.
They allow machines to ‘think’ like a human by using a pattern of inputs similar the synapses of a biological brain.
It can ‘learn’ by trying different methods to find the best way to achieve a desired result.
It cropped up in several projects at this year’s BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition. One by a student from St Mary’s College in Dublin used it as a method for correcting CSPE tests – and the marks were just a couple of percentage points off what the teacher gave.
This would be an easy task with multiple choice questions, but the code used had to decipher written sentences, such as the answer to ‘What is a coalition government?’, or tackle the students’ various attempts at spelling Leo Varadkar.
Aidan Dowling set up a mock exam in school with ten questions. The computer was fed a collection of potential answers, such as key phrases, correct and variations on the spelling, and it was then provided with the students answers. It compared these to the information it had and awarded a mark accordingly.
Compared to what the human marker was able to achieve, it was 97.5% accurate.
Aidan’s system still has a few stumbling blocks – Irish isn’t supported, and numbers and long answers still pose problems – but the current setup is designed for a quick, simple test, providing teachers with an instant result.
Neural networks are a hot topic right now as they prove their ability more and more. -Some even call them “unreasonably effective”.
Several projects featured the technology at the competition, including one by Sarah Sweeney, a student from Scoil Mhuire gan Smál in Cork with a passion for neural networks and AI.
Her project was The Imitation Game, based on exploring how to build a chatbot that could pass the Turing test.
This was devised by computer scientist Alan Turing in the 1950s to test how well a computer can mimic human langauge. Passing the test means a human is unable to tell they are conversing with a machine.
“No one has actually managed to do it yet, but some has come very close,” Sarah explained enthusiastically, “and I just want to see how close I can get.”
How the computer learns language is described by Sarah as a similar to a newborn baby.
“When its born, it doesn’t know anything about language. As it listens to people around it talking, it starts to utter meaningless syllables, and eventually it learns its first word, and another, and another. At first, its rubbish, but eventually it starts to make sense.”
Two examples of how the machine’s language improved over time.
A neural network is similar, but requires a huge amount of training data. Sarah’s code, which is aimed at imitating Alan Turning himself, has 1,000 questions loaded into it. However, six million is normally what’s needed to made a decent stab at it.
“Despite this, I was amazed by how good it is,” Sarah said, “Some of the answers it gave were actually correct.”
“I plan to take it further, and see if I can think of any better ways of training, and I’d love to get into other areas of AI, such as natural language processing.”
Wooohooooo. I’m trying to get the cash together to service my 03 car so it can pass the NCT.
Put it in without going to a mechanic, it could pass. Even if it fails, you’ll have a sheet of issues to resolve. Much more cost effective this way.
Thanks for the tip :-)
I never understand why you would buy a new car
Luxury? Knowing you’re the only person who has ever owned it and that nothing will be wrong?
So buy it once and then you’ll understand.
Thanks for clearing that up
I wonder how many people drove to anti water charges demos in a new car, with 95,000 being sold it must be a few hundred, or even a few thousand. A mid sized family car starts at €30,000, and a lot more if you go for a decent specification, that would buy a lifetime of water for a family.
Can we have a free cars demo next?
Donaill, “……and that nothing will be wrong…….”. What a lovely idea. That and the Tooth Fairy. Presumably you are a car dealer. Better wait a year and have the initial warranty stuff sorted, as well as benefitting from the depreciation.
However, someone had better keep on buying new or the nearly-new market will dry up.
Go to England and get a higher spec for cheaper.
Great news. I’ll be looking to buy one of these cars for a fraction of the current price in about three years time!
More proof for the naysayers that FG are turning this country around. What will the shinnerbots say now?
Sure It’s all the Fg cronies packed on the boards of quangos that’s buying them
Surely Ed, you can come up with a better one than that.
Well said James. Its easy to be against everything. Its a typical SF/IRA response to jump on the populist bandwagon. People like ed have no concept of the real world. Next they will be blaming FG for the bad weather.
In fairness things are improving around the country.
If they were bad we would blame the government.
So in turn if it gets better they should get some credit.
And NO I’m not a FG or FF voter!
Nope fraid not. no joking on this site yesterday then
cant understand why everybody doesnt buy a new car sure you could get a car worth 10,000 for only 20,000 when you add on the vat, excise duty and vrt.
This sounds like a feel good loaded article! Maybe there isn’t enough €500 cars to go around now!
Commercial vehicles sales, up good to hear.
Irish water fleet
Recession my arse…
We should Put up road tax instead of water charges
Yea cause it worked really well the last time…..not!
people can afford 30-40K new audi… they can afford to pay bit more road tax
Tax goes on engine size and emissions.
So your argument is a little on the stupid side
Thomas, are you taking the piss? 5% of your already overpriced motor tax currently goes to cover water charges.
There really is no point working in this country anymore.
bring in the luxury car tax instead of water charges
Modern expensive cars so technically advanced and have such low emissions now that the emissions based tax system doesn’t work not fair. So it should be based more on co2 emission based on manufacture. Larger more elaborate car’s are more polluting to manufacture so luxury car tax system is only fair
There’s already very heavy taxes on new cars Thomas.
The most polluting car to manufacture is a Nissan Leaf electric car because mining the hundreds of tons of material from which the hundreds of kilos of toxic heavy metals contained in the batteries is a very dirty polluting process. And then the poisonous batteries have to be disposed of when the electric car is scrapped.
in fairness motor tax is just another unfair tax on the poor. if you cant afford a new car then you have to pay exorbitant tax based on the size of your engine
Give the poor free cars I say Gerry! Anything else?
no f.g reg just have the same emmissions based tax on all cars regardless of age. its just about fairness, wouldn’t expect a f.g apologist to understand that though.
will never buy a new car, hope all those idiots enjoyed paying VRT on their new motors
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