Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pt.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!jl3j+
From: jl3j+@andrew.cmu.edu (John Robert Leavitt)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Are neural nets stumped by change?
Message-ID: 
Date: 16 Aug 89 15:10:32 GMT
Organization: English, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Lines: 43

Clifford Johnson writes:

[stuff about chinese characters in an arabic NN]


I see a problem here (I may be wrong, but it feels right).

Clifford:  If I asked you to figured something out for me and gave you a bunch
           of data and you figured it out... and then I asked you to figure it
           again for a little more data (and you agreed)... and then I handed
           you a few sheets of Chinese characters and told you it was the
           data set...

I'll bet you COULD classify the characters...There's be the squiggly looking
ones... the ones with the three crossbars, the ones that look like tress, etc.
You could even (given time) come up with a separate little niche in your mind
for each and every character (ah, yes, the squiggly tree shaped one with the
puddle shape at the left...).  But, you probably would not be able to infer
their meaning simply by being shown them...  Does this mean you are limited by
the type of data you can receive?

How about an NN which decides which part of the spectrum a signal belongs to...
Then you give it all sorts of colors... and it learns the stuff and all is
fine and dandy... and then you shine white light at it... I'll bet it gets
confused...  Now, suppose I teach you as a child to know the colors and black
and white and all that... then I shine some radio waves at you... I'll be you
don't even notice the signal...

See the problem... Neural nets can be limited, but they don't have to be...

                              -John.

PS: Those of you who know what you are talking about, back me up if I'm right..
    Be merciful if I blew it...
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