Scientific American 60 Second Science听抄（有音频文件）

wlxzmUID: 2292462

Thank you! I will give it a try.

wlxzmUID: 2292462

Hi, did you hear the one about two researchers try to figure out how to get robots to understand joks. Say it's funny, becouse it's ture. Two Universities of Cincinnati computer scientists showed off their new software programe, that  is designed to recognize joks at the meeting of the American Asociation for Artificial Intellegence, which took plays in Canada, which is kind funny. The work is related to the field of sociable computing which trys to make communication between people and computers more natural. The researchers admit that their humor program still need lots of work. They only joks it currently can get depend on simple wordplay. For example, here is a jok that really got rise out of their test computer. A mother says to her son that Jony you've been working in the garden a lot in the summer. TO which the boy replies" I know, my teacher told me to weed a lot" Weed a lot. Clearly, like the garden the program still has a lot of bugs, but someday you might have helper robot taht say" boy am I hungary?" I have had a gigabyte all day. Gigabyte all day! Is this thing on? Hello?

什么笑话啊?听不懂,看不懂!

tjlstlove26UID: 2319674

University of Cincinnati researchers design humorous 'bot'
UC engineering researchers reach new heights in robot sophistication -- or sink to new depths in bad jokes
University of Cincinnati researchers Julia Taylor and Larry Mazlack recently unveiled a "bot” — more accurately a software program — that recognizes jokes. They reported the development at the American Association for Artificial Intelligence conference in Vancouver, Canada. All bad jokes aside, their research represents a step forward in computers reaching the capability of a human mind.

Taylor, a doctoral student under UC Professor Mazlack, is studying data mining — the science of deriving meaning from large amounts of data. Mazlack is the coordinator of the Applied Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and coordinator of the Data and Knowledge Management research group. Taylor specifically researches humor in robots.

"This work has a relationship to 'Sociable Computing,'" says Mazlack. "Currently, computers are often difficult to communicate with, to use and to apply to solving problems that are informally stated."

This area has been researched for decades and has also been the subject of many Star Trek episodes. Developments such as these offer sophisticated improvements in robots that are used as companions or to otherwise interact directly with humans.

“The ‘robot’ is just a software program that still needs a lot of work,” says researcher Taylor. “The idea is to be able to recognize jokes that are based on phonological similarity of words.”

The program can in fact recognize jokes, but ONLY when the necessary background and world knowledge are provided, she says. “The ontology that provides this knowledge is a work-in-progress at this stage. So, the software is far from being finished, but does produce some results.”

Taylor had the distinct task of “training” the computer by providing it with information relative to American English at a child’s level. They developed an extensive list of knock-knock jokes that turn on people’s names, particularly.

Then they gave the “bot” several examples of words that can have different meanings and homonyms, as in puns. The program then checks to see if the message is consistent with what would make sense. If it doesn’t, the bot searches to see if the word sounds similar to a word that would fit. If this is the case, the bot flags it as humor.

Knock, Knock
Who is there?
Dismay
Dismay who?
Dismay not be a funny joke

“Even leaden puns are very difficult to understand as well,” says Taylor. “With the knowledge that is in the ontology right now, there are very, very few jokes (or puns) that the program can understand.”

"The ability to appreciate humor is an enormous increment in subtlety,” says a fellow researcher in UC’s College of Engineering. “You need to know a lot to ‘get’ humor — a computer does not find it easy.”

"Part of the difficulty lies with the formality that computers and people need to use to interact with each other," says Mazlack. "A critical aspect in achieving sociable computing is being able to informally communicate in a human language with computers. Computationally handling humor is critical to being able to conduct an informal dialogue with a computer; Julia Taylor is making good progress in advancing knowledge in this area — other people in my lab are working on different aspects of less formal ways of using computers."

Knock, Knock
Who is there?
Police
Police who?
Police tell me some Knock Knock jokes

Here’s an example of one of the robot’s favorite jokes:

Mother to boy: “Johnny, you’ve been working in the garden a lot this summer.
Boy: “I know. My teacher told me to weed a lot.”

“Notice that the boy says the teacher told him to WEED. Since ‘weed’ sounds similar to 'read,' the program can find this wordplay,” Taylor says.

If not "where no one has gone before," this research does represent a tremendous step toward approaching the capability of the human mind.

Knock, Knock
Who is there?
Noah
Noah who?
Noah good place to find more jokes?

liucirongUID: 2215759

原帖由 zhenzhen_163 于 2007-8-16 23:14 发表
Another perfect (or almost) script from you.  :handshake

Not feeling a nip? or not feeling the nip? What do you think it means?

"Canary in a coal mine" seems to be more idiomatic ...

canary in the coal mine
该短语用了比喻的手法。很久以前，在煤矿和金属矿井中，矿工们用笼子养金丝雀并把它们一起带到矿井里。并不是作为宠物，而是作为一种对于威胁的警告。因为金丝雀拥有非常高的新陈代谢率，它们对于有毒气体比人类要敏感的多。当有毒气体泄漏时，金丝雀马上会死去，于是就可以起到危险警报的作用。由上可知“矿井中的金丝雀”可比喻为“先兆，预警”(---quoted from Hj 60-Second Science Podcast dictation group.)

liucirongUID: 2215759

Property broker: "I tell you this new house has no flaws at all."
Buyer: "Then what do you walk on?"

i cannot understand it.
flaws n. 缺点, 裂纹, 瑕疵, 一阵狂风
【化】 划痕; 裂缝; 裂纹
【医】 裂隙; 缺点
has nothing to do with it.

[ 本帖最后由 liucirong 于 2007-8-18 13:36 编辑 ]

liucirongUID: 2215759

jokes of puns are alwaying being hard to understand...

zhenzhen_163UID: 196150

:handshake

Thank you very much for your explanation. We know that already.   :)

What we were talking about was which one is more idiomatic in this context: “canary in a coal mine” or “canary in the coal mine”? I thought “canary in a coal mine” was better.

This is part of my effort to tell people to be careful with those little words like a, the, its, etc. In many cases, you cannot tell by listening. You have to rely on your knowledge of English and your understanding to get it right. Top-down!

zhenzhen_163UID: 196150

I tell you this new house has no floors at all.   :)

zhenzhen_163UID: 196150

When people say they are hungry, they often add “I haven’t had a bite all day.” The joke is that the robot uses its parlance “gigabyte” (and maybe its favorite thing, what computer doesn’t like lots of memory?) to sound funny.  bite > byte.

I know, my teacher told me to read a lot.  read > weed

:)

liucirongUID: 2215759

August 17, 2007: 60-Second Science Software For Understanding Jokes

Computer scientists have developed a program that gets jokes, part of the effort to improve communications between people and computers. Steve Mirsky reports.

Did you hear one about thetwo researchers who tried to figure out how to get robots to understand jokes? See it’s fun because it is ture. Two university of Cincinnati computer scientists showed off their new software program that was designed to recognize jokes at the meeting of the American Association for Artifical Intelligence, which took place in Canada, which was a kind of funny. The work is related to the fair(field) of sociable computing which tries to make communications between people and computers more natural. The researchers admitted that there are(their humor) program still needs a lot of work. The only jokes it currently can get depend on simple wordplay. For example, here is a joke that really get a rise out of their test computer. A mother says to her son: “Johnny, you’ve been working in the garden a lot this summer.” To which the boy replys: “ I know. My teacher told me to weed a lot.” “weed a lot”. Er, clearly like the garden, the program still has a lot of bugs. But some day(someday) you maight have a helper robot that says: “ Boy, am I hungry? I haven’t had a gigabyte all day.” “Gigabyte all day”, Is this thing on? Hello?
NEW Words:
Wordplay文字争论
gigabyte十亿字节(giga-为字首,意为“十亿”)
sociable好交际的, 友善的, 增进友谊的, 喜欢群居的
someday有一天   some day来日
Spell:
natural
没听出:
Did you hear
the fair(field) of
there are(their humor)
haven’t had
小词与弱读与语法:
it’s fun
The only jokes it currently can get depend on simple wordplay
Is this thing on?

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some differ from kelediguo's:
"thetwo researchers who tried to figure out how" ----- maybe it is  "tried to" not "try to" here.
"that was designed to " and "which was a kind of funny" ---- it should be in the past tense.

[ 本帖最后由 liucirong 于 2007-8-18 14:42 编辑 ]

zhenzhen_163UID: 196150

This is a very interesting article. Basically, what Taylor (the researcher) was doing was to teach a computer to top-down. (Thanks, tjlstlove26 Daisy, for supplying the background article.)

In the article, a fellow researcher in UC’s College of Engineering was quoted as saying "The ability to appreciate humor is an enormous increment in subtlety. You need to know a lot to ‘get’ humor — a computer does not find it easy.”

We are like a robot when we first begin to learn English, we learn the basic rules, the building blocks which are necessary in bottom-up understanding. But as we continue to learn, our knowledge accumulates and we start to know a lot. This is when we have to train ourselves on more advanced cognition techniques such as quick guessing, which is central to top-down. The purpose of top-down is to train ourselves to mobilize the great body of knowledge (schemata) we already possess and use it to guess what the speaker means.

I guess we all have to learn to do a little “sociable computing” in our head in order to understand other people.  :)


[ 本帖最后由 zhenzhen_163 于 2007-8-19 23:02 编辑 ]

zhenzhen_163UID: 196150

Thank you very much for pointing out the tense issue.  :handshake

Did you hear the one about two researchers who 1) tried to figure out how to get robots to understand jokes? See it’s funny because it’s true. Two University of Cincinnati computer scientists showed off their new software program 2) that’s designed to recognize jokes at the meeting of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence which took place in Canada, which 3) is kind of funny.

1)     Should be past tense. (One point for Liucirong!  :) )
2)     Should be past tense.  “That’s” here is short for “that was”.  (Half a point for Liucirong!  :)  ) Note: some people might argue that the present tense is also gramatically correct. I agree but the past tense is more idiomatic here. (Idiomatic means common usage.)
3)     Should be present tense.

[ 本帖最后由 zhenzhen_163 于 2007-8-18 15:15 编辑 ]

wx_chineseUID: 2210860

where can I find those background material? In which part of the webstation itself?

rubyruby12qianUID: 2336072

加油加油!!!

wensonfuUID: 2318700

Could anybody tell me how to find background material ? Please! thanks!