Artificial intelligence (AI) software developed by Alibaba Group has performed better than humans in a global reading comprehension test, the first time that machines have outperformed people. The AI research arm of China's biggest online commerce company developed a machine-learning model that scored higher on the Stanford Question Answering Dataset, a large-scale reading comprehension test with more than 100,000 questions, according to a release by the company. On January 11, Alibaba's machine-learning models scored 82.44 on the test, compared with 82.304 by humans. While computers have beaten humans at complex games like chess, where raw computing power and an infallible memory have given bots an advantage, languages are generally seen as harder for machines to master. AlphaGo's China showdown: why it's time to embrace artificial intelligence The win has broader implications for how companies deploy machine learning to replace customer service jobs that have so far relied on armies of call-centre employees to handle inquiries.

A Mission teacher wants to create a series of tutorial videos to teach people about machine learning, that is, if he can get his idea off the ground and running. Jeremy Ellis is a teacher at Mission Secondary School and he thinks machine learning is a valuable tool for almost everyone. But what is machine learning? Some websites define it as "a field of computer science that gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed," but Ellis has a simpler example. "Machine learning is what Google uses to figure out what ads to give you when your Google searching. So, it kind of knows a little bit of your history and extrapolates to something you might be interested in ."

The course is broad and pretty decent introductory course, but there is a number of presentation and course design flaws. First, while I'm not sure whether it is solely a Coursera's typical marketing approach to prevent users from refusing the course just because of the minimum amount of time required, or authors' unintended misestimations, but the actual time needed to complete the course is a way more than listed at the course home page, especially assignments. Often the time needed only to run an assignment training with no coding exceeds the given estimate. To get the value from the course one should be prepared to allocate much more time (2x-3x in total). Second, the course is too broad to be called an introductory one but too shallow in terms of math/practical/reasoning details to be named a deep one.

Think back to those pesky reading comprehension tests you used to take in school. Trust me, they are still on the SAT and still challenging. From the rapidly developing artificial intelligence perspective, we just got poned. Not one, but already two, artificial intelligence natural language processing algorithms outscored the average person's score on a rigorous reading comprehension test designed by Stanford researchers. The first to claim the honor of "better than people" was Alibaba's artificial intelligence.

Zhang Yong, head of Chinese tech giant Alibaba, introduces the company's artificial intelligence ET Brain at a conference in December 2017.Credit: Li Xin/Xinhua via ZUMA A mountainous district in western Beijing known for its temples and mushroom production is tipped to become China's hub for industries based on artificial intelligence (AI). Last week, the Chinese government announced that it will spend 13.8 billion yuan (US$2.1 billion) on an AI industrial park -- the first major investment in its plan to become a world leader in the field by 2030. But scientists there wonder whether the proposed 55-hectare AI park, in the Mentougou district 30 kilometres away from the city centre, will be able to attract enough researchers. The government wants it to house 400 companies that will make an estimated 50 billion yuan a year developing products and services in cloud computing, big data, biorecognition and deep learning. "I don't see any top talent willing to go to work and live there," says a scientist working at an AI start-up in Beijing, who asked to remain anonymous because the government is sensitive to criticism.

Alibaba has developed an artificial intelligence model that scored better than humans in a Stanford University reading and comprehension test. Alibaba Group Holding (baba) put its deep neural network model through its paces last week, asking the AI to provide exact answers to more than 100,000 questions comprising a quiz that's considered one of the world's most authoritative machine-reading gauges. The model developed by Alibaba's Institute of Data Science of Technologies scored 82.44, edging past the 82.304 that rival humans achieved. Alibaba said it's the first time a machine has out-done a real person in such a contest. Microsoft achieved a similar feat, scoring 82.650 on the same test, but those results were finalized a day after Alibaba's, the company said.

Chinese retail giant Alibaba has developed an artificial intelligence model that's managed to outdo human participants in a reading and comprehension test designed by Stanford University. The model scored 82.44, whereas humans recorded a score of 82.304. The Stanford Question Answering Dataset is a set of 10,000 questions pertaining to some 500 Wikipedia articles. The answer to each question is a particular span of text from the corresponding piece of writing. Alibaba claims that its accomplishment is the first time that humans have been outmatched on this particular test, according to a report from Bloomberg.

Oftentimes when people think of artificial intelligence, images of robots, Skynet and a central command center immediately come to my mind. I think of that scene from Terminator 2, when a heavily armed robot crushes a human skull beneath his feet. He's controlled by another robot, who calculates every human move with efficiency and precision. But that's not really what AI is. AI is more complex than that.

Chinese artificial intelligence is now capable of outperforming humans in reading comprehension. A neural network model created by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba beat its flesh-and-blood competition on a 100,000-question Stanford University test that's considered the world's top measure of machine reading. The model, developed by Alibaba's Institute of Data Science of Technologies, scored 82.44, while humans scored a 82.304. Microsoft's artificial intelligence also beat humans, scoring 82.65 on the exam. But its results came in a day after Alibaba's, meaning China holds the title as first country to create automation that outranks humans in written language comprehension.