
Teaching machines to anticipate human interactions using videos of TV shows - lettergram
https://news.mit.edu/2016/teaching-machines-to-predict-the-future-0621
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CM30
Hmm, not sure this is a good idea. Most TV characters act so little like
normal people that any AI trying to learn anything from them would be getting
a really distorted picture.

I mean, one of the very examples they give in the article is The Office. Yeah,
I see that going quite poorly as a learning tool.

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choosername
The communication is on a higher level, not in the first order sense of the
words. Looks perfect for differential analysis and stochastic gradient
descent, from what was said to what was ment. To have taught a bot some humor
would be quiet the relieve for all the worried prophets of the AIpocolypse.
The show scripts are planned for a high quality of the language, too.

Edit: my first expectation of the results was rather amusingly like yours

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fapjacks
I don't know if this idea is stupid, but in an area like politics, I wonder if
something like this could be useful for detecting subtext. Politics and
diplomacy in particular have a sort of universal protocol for interaction that
I wonder if it would be easier to read the subtext of human interaction to get
some clues about the overall relationship, just through studying how the
interaction deviates from the universal protocol. For example I wonder if you
could build a map of hot-cold relationships between countries just by watching
how their diplomats interact and using methods like this to try and read the
subtextual communication happening.

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lettergram
It may be possible, but it would be very hard. Every culture has its own way
of interacting and some cultures can have one action that's polite - but in
another culture that's completely offensive.

My guess is it wouldn't work for diplomats, but potentially in a large country
like the U.S., India, China, it may work for the standard individual or
politician.

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fapjacks
But it's because of those cultural differences (and the fear of breaking a
taboo) that diplomats learn that sort of suit-and-tie-or-thobe, shaking-hands-
and-smiling, business-like-but-not-really thing that we are all used to seeing
on television. That's what I mean when I say "universal protocol of
interaction". Because it is a template with fairly standard rules, I imagine
it would be easier to "predict" how two humans will interact like the
technique demonstrated in this post. But then beyond that, I figured the
interaction of diplomats might be so easy to predict ("smile, shake hands or
bow, speak greeting"), that deviation would be more pronounced than for
example the scene from The Office. Enough that some useful information might
be conveyed in the deviation.

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KON_Air
So that's how we are making Skynet hate humanity.

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reitanqild
I guess I see a bit more depth in this comment than those who downvoted it.
(Yes, it was funny but it made me think.)

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theoh
Here's a theory: some people think that syrupy positivity is so important in
the startup mentality that dissenting voices are tantamount to "griefers" who
should be ignored or, if possible, silenced. It's an easy call to make and it
only takes one or two votes from those quick on the draw with the downvote
button.

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Artlav
Considering what goes for tv shows these days, i can anticipate problems.

However, for a "common sense" grade library that might be adequate with some
careful picking.

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ssebastianj
Looks like a "cliche detector" to me.

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Pica_soO
No line so unfunny, that future AI generations will not drown it in a
thundering applause. <audience dying of laughter>

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lunchTime42
Neural Network seem to go where the data is. The data (scripts) to TV-Shows
are ready available. Real conversations are not (Youtube-Subtitle, anyone?).
Shirking hard problems today might help , to train a generation that can
understand dialects and muffled voices from context tomorrow.

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mountaineer22
That is the premise of "Explorers", albeit aliens, not AI.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089114/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089114/)

