EFTA Document EFTA01744829

From: Bob Berwick Subject: Re: Sent Saturday, September 5, 2015 2:03:29 PM To: "Jeffrey E." <[email protected]> smime.p7s Hi Jeffrey, Ah very cool. So let me try a few out. I guess it partly (! of course!) depends on how much we get to stick into the box. I'm fine with prize money, mostly because as you know from Marvin, there's no way to get funding for "real" problems like these or those that Marvin studies, nsf & darpa and toyota (as you just saw) only care about self-driving cars. So I'd be overjoyed to get some way to fund new students.... Challenge I. Discriminating language from noise. This is doable. Partha Niyogi nearly did it. A six-month effort. Challenge 2. Ah, depends on the sentences and what `coherent' means. Does Noam mean `screwed up in some way'? We're not so far from that. Further than 1. That system I showed you that can isolate difft factors in *syntax* as a small set of constraints can do some of that. Recall Shimon Ullman's `rigidity principle' about the interpretation of points moving in the visual field - same coherence idea. Challenges 3 and 4 are much harder, we'd have to know more about `meaning' and `inference'. I wouldn't be happy with statistical curve fitting here. Finally - though I will drop this, because your time is too valuable and the problems you and Noam pose are the important ones, to me — what was your estimate of how much that twitter-in-love entrepeneur would have lost if he did honestly follow his twitter-predictor during the first week of this month? I guess I am still baffled about the "market" for their product unless it's as you say, the market for the new, shiny toys - which is just about salesmanship, not science. Anyway, I'll drop it - I was just curious as why/how *any* of that social media stuff would work. I suppose they will say that they have 300 M users, not *all* of them will be lying... and one can sort the liars from the non-liars....but so what? best wishes bob On Sep 5, 2015, at 8:20 AM, jeffrey E. <[email protected]> wrote: noam, as always , spending time . was great/ first draft. of the Chomsky Challenge. . Produce a non- living system that can be put into an environment for a while and — 1 . be able to discriminate language from noise. . prize . a 1 dollar bill signed by Noam and 100k. . 2. be able to discriminate coherent sentences from non ( we provide 10 test sentences ). prize a 10 dollar signed Chomsky bill , and 500k. 3. a language learning module. 20 dollar bill EFTA_R1_00037270 EFTA01744829 signed and 1 million, 4. a sense making module that can understand meaning inference. . etc. the non recommendation recommendation. . ie the student has a nice family. etc. a 100 dollar signed bill and 10 million dollars. ? If your left leaning , is in conflict with a money prize we could substitute —your prize money goes to charity,- airline tickets to the Gaza strip. - Nicaragua. North Korea, . and 1000 blank ,protest placards ? or top prize includes 1000 protesters of your choice for three demonstrations :) EFTA_R1_00037271 EFTA01744830