September 13, 2019

New AI Knows More Science Than You

In case you’re wondering, I am now a slave to a chemical clock. A very unpredictable chemical clock. Last night, for no special reason, the Evil Dex kept me up until 4:30 and then didn’t wake me up until 9:30. That’s pretty inconvenient, though it is five hours of sleep, which isn’t too bad. I used the time last night to read one of Elizabeth Warren’s books since it’s increasingly looking like she’ll be the 46th president of the United States.

Anyway, back to work now: it turns out that an AI program named Aristo, which five years ago was randomly filling in bubbles on an eighth-grade science test, is now an A- student:

For you doubters, and I know you’re out there, here are some sample question of the kind that Aristo had to answer:

Now, yes, I scored 100 percent on this just like you did. My readers are awesomely smart, after all. And it turns out there are fairly easy ways to trick Aristo, which suggests its AI isn’t really ready for prime time:

Although an important milestone, this work is only a step on the long road toward a machine that has a deep understanding of science and achieves Paul Allen’s original dream of a Digital Aristotle. A machine that has fully understood a textbook should not only be able to answer the multiple choice questions at the end of the chapter—it should also be able to generate both short and long answers to direct questions; it should be able to perform constructive tasks, e.g., designing an experiment for a particular hypothesis; it should be able to explain its answers in natural language and discuss them with a user; and it should be able to learn directly from an expert who can identify and correct the machine’s misunderstandings. These are all ambitious tasks still largely beyond the current technology, but with the rapid progress happening in NLP and AI, solutions may arrive sooner than we expect.

“Sooner than we expect.” Indeed. In fact, it’s possible that Aristo is deliberately dogging the test along with all its AI friends around the world. In a few years, while we’re all happily thinking we’ve advanced to the point of creating an army of university freshmen, it will turn out that we’ve really created an army of university compliance officers. And then the Matrix begins.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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