IBM's Watson AI trumps humans in "Jeopardy!"

Post by gjm11 » Thu, Jun 17, 2010, 12:24 PM UTC

CWuestefeld wrote: post #20

Andrew Hickl, the C.E.O. of Language Computer Corporation, which makes question-answering systems, among other things, for businesses, was recently asked by a client to make a "contradiction engine": if you tell it a statement, it tries to find evidence on the Web that contradicts it. "It’s like, ‘I believe that Dallas is the most beautiful city in the United States,’ and I want to find all the evidence on the Web th…

Post by CWuestefeld » Thu, Jun 17, 2010, 2:39 PM UTC

gjm11 wrote: post #51

CWuestefeld wrote: post #20

Andrew Hickl, the C.E.O. of Language Computer Corporation, which makes question-answering systems, among other things, for businesses, was recently asked by a client to make a "contradiction engine": if you tell it a statement, it tries to find evidence on the Web that contradicts it. "It’s like, ‘I believe that Dallas is the most beautiful city in the United States,’ and I want to find all the evidence on the Web th…

> I want to find all the evidence on the Web that contradicts that. "Gordon's great insight was to design a program which allowed you to specify in advance what decision you wished it to reach, and only then to give it all the facts. The program's task, which it was able to accomplish with consummate ease, was simply to construct a plausible series of logical-sounding steps to connect the premises with the conclusion…

Post by tocomment » Mon, Jun 21, 2010, 1:45 AM UTC

ahk wrote: post #45

grellas wrote: post #42

From reading this fascinating piece, I (as one who is not technically proficient in any of the relevant areas) would conclude that AI-based approaches to computing can work well in the following areas: (1) you can program something in accordance with a strict set of limited rules and achieve amazing results, such as in computer chess, where today the advanced machines can basically outdo humans in playing that partic…

I think at some point the AI goalpost will move beyond "capable of human judgement" as well :) (see Asimov's stories of R.Daneel & R.Giskard for example). I'm one of those who believes we'll crack AI (all aspects of it) at some point. I believe that the algorithm that our brains (and that of most animals) use is a very simple one that just needs tremendous parallel processing. I don't think anyone including IBM is ye…