Wikipedia Used for Artificial Intelligence

eldavojohn writes "It may be no surprise but Wikipedia is now being used in the field of artificial intelligence. The applications for this may be endless. For instance, the front of spam fighting is a tough one and it looks as though researchers are now turning towards an ontology or taxonomy based solution to fight spammers. The concept is also on the forefront of artificial intelligence and progress towards an application passing the Turing Test and creating semantically aware applications. The article comments on uses of Wikipedia in this manner: '"... spam filters block all messages containing the word 'vitamin,' but fail to block messages containing the word B12. If the program never saw B12 before, it's just a word without any meaning. But you would know it's a vitamin," Markovitch said. "With our methodology, however, the computer will use its Wikipedia-based knowledge base to infer that 'B12' is strongly associated with the concept of vitamins, and will correctly identify the message as spam," he added.'"

Nothing new here...

[Bodrius]

This isn't new to Slashdotters...

For years, Slashdot posts have used wikipedia as a form of artificial intelligence.

The B12 example is horrible

[Anonymous Coward]

Suppose somebody was trying to sell me a B12 bomber.

That wouldn't be spam to me, but an exclusive offer that would cause me to act now.

i prefer

[macadamia_harold]

For instance, the front of spam fighting is a tough one and it looks as though researchers are now turning towards an ontology or taxonomy based solution to fight spammers.

I think it would be much more effective if we used a taxidermy-based solution to fight spammers.

Re:WikiTuring Test

[Halo1]

I recently got quite funny attempt like that, pumping some stock in the image attachment (which moreover looked like a captcha in order to avoid ocr). The title of the spam was however "cocaine inexcusable", and the body, well (just two sample quotes -- and yes, the two first sentences appeared together like that):

We are working with Internet Content Rating Association to make the internet safer for children. Powered by a super strong Japanese motor and gears this incredibly powerful anal probe will hit the spot every time.
The Blue Rocket is a handy little clit massager that packs a mighty punch.

Needless to say, it triggered the bayasian filter pretty heavily in spite of all the obfuscation attempts :)