Jun 15, 2017

China's math entrance exam is AI's Waterloo

Artificial intelligence beat the world's Go master. It won Jeopardy, and defeated chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov. But China's college entrance exam in math is a different kettle of fish. Even after three years of prep, human Chinese won hands down.

The AI contest was carried out by Chengdu Zhunxingyunxue Technology under China's Ministry of Science and Technology, reports Futurism. CZT used a machine called AI-Maths to take the mathematics section of the grueling, two-day Gaokao, as China's college entrance exam is called. In two tries, AI-Maths scored 105 and 100 points, respectively. The average for top Chinese scorers _ 135.

What it means: The difficulty for AI-Maths came in understanding word problems, and its developers will have to work on its natural language capabilities if they want to do better next time. CZT's CEO Lin Hui told Xinhua that he hopes to score over 130 next time. But that still won't beat the humans.

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Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks in San Antonio last night with his wife, Jane. Photo: Eric Gay/AP

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Driving the news: With 60% of precincts counted (slow, but better than Iowa!), Sanders is running away with 46% of delegates — crushing Joe Biden's 20%, Pete Buttigieg's 15%, Sen. Elizabeth Warren's 10% and Sen. Amy Klobuchar's 5%.

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Data: The Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins, the CDC, and China's Health Ministry. Note: China numbers are for the mainland only and U.S. numbers include repatriated citizens.

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