Artificial Intelligence

[Adrian Otto]

Jonathan,

I agree with your opinion 100%. It's probably still wise to temper our
actions with awareness. Thanks so much for your detailed feedback. I really
enjoyed reading it!

Thanks,

Adrian

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jonathan Buzzard [mailto:jonathan at buzzard.org.uk]
> Sent: Thursday, September 19, 2002 2:33 PM
> To: bogofilter at aotto.com
> Subject: Re: Artificial Intelligence
>
>
>
> aotto at aotto.com said:
> > 3) Microsoft holds a patent for a Bayesian spam filtering system.
> > Although bogofilter does not fall under the terms of this patent, the
> > argument would be much more simple if we simply did not use the word
> > "Bayesian" to describe the system.
>
> I am no fan of software patents, but this is the absolute worst kind of
> patent that exists. There is no inventive step whatsoever in this patent.
> Firstly they acknowledge in the patent that spam is a textual
> classification
> problem and they note at least one existing paper that says so.
>
> They then go onto to list the range of features that might be extracted
> from the email for classification purposes. Nothing new here either,
> rule based classifiers do that. They describe how the classifier can
> be trained on training set and this can be updated on the basis of new
> material. Well blow me down if those working with machine learning
> classifiers have not been doing that from day one.
>
> Finally they go on to list a list a range of pre-existing Bayesian
> classifiers and other classifiers including neural networks,
> decision trees, basically just about every known sort of classifier
> in existance (well all the ones I know about anyway). They even
> mention using multiple classifiers and combining their outputs.
> Heavens above I was doing that back in 1993 and it was not new then
> by any stretch of the imagination.
>
> However the patent then goes on to describes a Support Vector Machine
> classifier. I am not a Bayesian expert, but I believe that the
> classifier described is not a Bayesian one.
>
> In a last gasp the patent goes no to say that their supposed inventive
> classifier can be used to classify any electronic message.
>
> This patent really is a perfect example of all that is wrong with the
> patent system in the U.S.A. All that has been done is a set of standard
> tools that those in field of machine classification have been using
> for years, including textual classification, as well as machine vision,
> and other areas and, said it will be good for classifying spam and been
> granted a patent.
>
> I cannot believe that even trivial searches of the appropriate journals
> will not turn up sufficient prior art of textual classification to make
> this patent null and void. In fact just reading the paper titles in
> the "Other references" section one is astounded that these don't
> show sufficient prior art, in particular
>
>    M. Iwayama et al, "Hierarchical Bayesian Clustering for Automatic Text
>    Classification", Natural Language, 1995.
>    Thorsten Joachims, "Text Categorization with Support Vector Machines:
>    Learning with Many Relevant Features", LS-8
>
> Would appear on the fact of it to blow the patent out of the water. I
> have not read them but the titles suggest these are amount the first
> places to go.
>
> In fact in a 1998 paper they acknowledge that they are not the first
> to apply automatic machine learning classifiers to classifying email,
> and cite a 1996 paper that concentrated on classifying email into
> flame/none flame. As you could use bogofilter for exactly this purpose
> we are home and dry if you ask me.
>
> I suspect that Microsoft know they are on shaky ground, and provided you
> don't implement the specific SVM that they mention in the patent they
> will not do anything. Far to much bad press and they are likely to loose.
>
> JAB.
>
> --
> Jonathan A. Buzzard                 Email: jonathan at buzzard.org.uk
> Northumberland, United Kingdom.       Tel: +44(0)1661-832195
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> FAQ: http://bogofilter.sourceforge.net/bogofilter-faq.html
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: bogofilter-unsubscribe at aotto.com
> For summay digest subscription: bogofilter-digest-subscribe at aotto.com
> For more commands, e-mail: bogofilter-help at aotto.com
>
>


For summay digest subscription: bogofilter-digest-subscribe at aotto.com