Chengdu AI passed math portion of national college entrance exam (3)

The creators of the first AI to take on China's national college entrance examination, or gaokao, proudly boasted of the AI's eventual score: 100 out of 150, achieved in just 22 minutes on June 7.

AI-MATHS, the artificial intelligence program designed by Chengdu Zhunxing Yunxue Technology, utilizes big data and natal language recognition. After all the human examinees finished their Chinese and math exams yesterday evening, AI-MATHS attempted two different math papers from different regions. It scored 100 out of 150 on the national test paper in only 10 minutes, and earned 105 out of 150 for the Beijing exam, which took it another 22 minutes.

While the results would be far from satisfying for a real gaokao participant, the performance by AI-MATHS was widely lauded by netizens. In February, the AI scored 93 out of 150 on a different math exam, a mark only slightly above the minimum passing grade of 90.

The AI was concealed in a room, cut off from an internet connection while it took the exam. Its answers were recorded manually by human operators, but all the reading comprehension and calculations were managed by the AI alone.

Like most students, AI-MATHS prepared stringently for the gaokao. It completed 500 sets of practical exercises, including around 12,000 questions, according to Lin Hui, chief executive of the company that created the AI.