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Limits to  Artificial Intel Robot flunks University entry exam

Tokyo: The dream of a Japanese robot with artificial intelligence to secure a place at the prestigious University of Tokyo is over after the robot failed miserably in a standard entrance exam. The robot called Torobo-kun has now failed in the entry exam for four years in a row and will have to work in a “real job” in industry, according to PTI.

“As the robot scored about the same as last year, we were able to gauge the possibilities and limits of artificial intelligence,” said Noriko Arai, a professor at the National Institute of Informatics. “From now on, we will grow its abilities in the fields it’s doing well in and aim to improve them to levels that can be applied in industry,” said Arai, who heads the team behind Torobo-kun.

Torobo-kun has made several attempts to pass the National Centre Test, a standardised exam adopted by Japanese universities, since 2013, ‘The Asahi Shimbun’ reported. The robot tackled a mock exam designed by education-publishing company Benesse Corp, just like it had in 2015.

The exam consisted of eight tests in five subjects and the robot scored 525 out of 950. The score was 14 points higher than last year, but the robot received an overall standard deviation score of 57.1. Since a score of at least 80 per cent is said to be required to be accepted by the University of Tokyo’s liberal arts courses, the robot was far from the required level. However, Torobo-kun’s score meant that it would have had a chance of 80 per cent or higher to get into 1,373 departments in 535 universities throughout Japan.

Executed 21 years ago, found innocent

Beijing: China’s Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a man for rape and murder, 21 years after he was executed despite insufficient evidence, reports PTI. Nie Shubin, who was 20 years old when he faced a firing squad in 1995 after being convicted of rape and murder, had his conviction overturned by second circuit court under the Supreme People’s Court, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

The court re-heard the two-decades-old rape and murder case, in which Nie was found guilty and executed, over concerns that the evidence presented was insufficient.

Nie, from Hebei Province, was convicted of raping and murdering a woman whose body was discovered by her father in a corn field on the outskirts of Shijiazhuang city, in the northern province of Hebei. In 2005, another man confessed to the crime.

In December 2014, the SPC, following an application from Hebei Higher People’s Court, assigned the higher court of Shandong Province to review the case. A five-member panel at the Shandong court carried out the review and found that the evidence presented in the original trial did not identify Nie as the perpetrator beyond all doubt, and the trial and investigation were both peppered with major inconsistencies.

Thus, the panel concluded that the evidence was questionable and suggested the case be reheard.

The SPC statement said the panel, during its review, had examined the case files, listened to the defendant’s lawyer and consulted forensic scientists over the autopsy report. Nie’s case has been compared to a 1996 case in Inner Mongolia, where a teenager named Huugjilt was executed for the rape and murder of a woman the same year.

A self-confessed serial rapist and killer later admitted to the crime while in police custody in 2005. In December 2014, Huugjilt’s conviction was officially quashed by Inner Mongolia Autonomous Regional Higher People’s Court.