IBM is not doing "cognitive computing" with Watson (2016) • Hacker News Board

Re: IBM is not doing "cognitive computing" with Watson (2016)

#81

Post by alxlaz » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:44 PM UTC

Rjevski wrote: post #52

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kinda how Tesla advertises autopilot as a self driving car that's safer than human drivers? > Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars > All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver. https://www.tesla.com/autopilot/

Hardware. That’s the keyword, and it might very well be true. Tesla doesn’t claim their software is capable of full self-driving yet and in fact the system will scream at you and stop the car if you take your hands off the steering wheel for too long.

That ad is just deliberately deceptive. Not dishonest, it's misleading, and quite some work has been put in the wording, because it's nothing that anyone would ever say in a serious manner. Hardware alone has nothing to do with it, and anyone who's ever done some relevant bit of engineering understands that. If I shove four DSP boards and a laptop in my trunk, then hook them to the CAN bus and to four LIDAR sensors, my car would also have hardware that's fully capable of safe self-driving.

That's one level past dishonest. Honest advertising would just be "none of our cars have full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver".

But this is on another level. Have they ever actually ran software that does, indeed, have this capability? Or do they have a detailed enough specification of that software, so that they can verify that it will, indeed, run on that hardware once it's written?

It's probably a safe bet that they haven't, and they don't, and in fact there is no way to verify that the hardware is in fact capable of running such software. This is likely a good engineering bet (i.e. the hardware is probably enough to support their current software approach, and they'll hit the software's limitations before they hit the hardware's), but advertising engineering bets as safety-related selling points is really irresponsible. Bet with your own money all you want, but not with people's lives.

Re: IBM is not doing "cognitive computing" with Watson (2016)

#82

Post by rland » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:45 PM UTC

goatlover wrote: post #28

ModernMech wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> since we humans have goals of things like the need to survive, etc. What makes you think AI wouldn't have similar ideas about wanting to continue its existence?

Current Ai doesn't have any ideas about existing. That's something we'd have to add in to future AI, which goes to the point of the article and over-exaggerated claims about current AI. Caring about one's existence (or even having the notion of a self) isn't something that comes about from crunching large data sets. ML isn't going to result in existential feelings or consciousness.

I think that consciousness is a collection of experiences and observations ('data'), nothing more. I am curious what lead you here:

> Caring about one's existence (or even having the notion of a self) isn't something that comes about from crunching large data sets. ML isn't going to result in existential feelings or consciousness.

My opinion is that 'consciousness' by the human definition will be a spontaneous and emergent property, when the computers become complex enough.

(and also: No, IBM is not there yet, lol!)

Re: IBM is not doing "cognitive computing" with Watson (2016)

#83

Post by damon_c » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:45 PM UTC

Rjevski wrote: post #52

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kinda how Tesla advertises autopilot as a self driving car that's safer than human drivers? > Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars > All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver. https://www.tesla.com/autopilot/

Hardware. That’s the keyword, and it might very well be true. Tesla doesn’t claim their software is capable of full self-driving yet and in fact the system will scream at you and stop the car if you take your hands off the steering wheel for too long.

What about "safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver" being the keyword?

Isn't Tesla's autopilot doing better than humans do in the same number of miles? We just all hear about it every time a Tesla is in a crash. If we heard about every human driver car accident, it would be overwhelming.

edit:

from this article: https://electrek.co/2018/03/30/tesla-autopilot-fatal-crash-d...

In the US, there is one automotive fatality every 86 million miles across all vehicles from all manufacturers. For Tesla, there is one fatality, including known pedestrian fatalities, every 320 million miles in vehicles equipped with Autopilot hardware. If you are driving a Tesla equipped with Autopilot hardware, you are 3.7 times less likely to be involved in a fatal accident.

Re: IBM is not doing "cognitive computing" with Watson (2016)

#84

Post by briffle » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:45 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #68

ChuckMcM wrote: post #15

The author's particular gripe is that the Watson advertisements showing someone sitting down and talking to "Watson." They bother me as well (and did so when I was working at IBM in the Watson group) because they portray a capability that nothing in IBM can provide. Nobody can provide it (again to the author's point) because dialog systems (those which interact with a user through conversational speech) don't exist o…

This is Marketing 101 though. It's easier to sell someone a dream or some emotional state than it is to sell an actual product/thing that you have. I'd give people a little more credit. Adults know what advertisements are and that they're all phony.

IE, unlimited data plans where unlimited is defined as de-prioritized after X GB per billing month.

Re: IBM is not doing "cognitive computing" with Watson (2016)

#85

Post by InTheArena » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:48 PM UTC

It's a pretty open secret in the community that what IBM pitches that Watson can do, versus what it (or any state of the art system) really does is pretty much bunk. This author calls it fraud, but a more charitable interpretation would be extreme marketing. We've seen a lot of failures with Watson, particularly in the medical space - MD Anderson's Cancer work for example (https://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2017/02/19/md-and...) where MD Anderson payed around $40 million (on a original contract deal somewhere near $4 million) and eventually abandoned it.

I do think Watson may be a fake it until you make it thing - in particular, they still have access to a incredible amount of data, and data determines destiny on a lot of AI.

Re: IBM is not doing "cognitive computing" with Watson (2016)

#86

Post by kevinSuttle » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:49 PM UTC

The problem is that even internally, there is this notion of "sprinkling a little Watson to do the hard jobs" and then 'poof': problem solved. Marketing reflects internally, too.

Re: IBM is not doing "cognitive computing" with Watson (2016)

#87

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:49 PM UTC

cryptoz wrote: post #43

xevb3k wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the big successes? Speech recognition? Which still seems rather bad to me. Language translation (which for the languages I’m interested in (Japanese) is still almost totally unusable? Self driving cars? Which are not yet in production (and where the social issues are probably far harder than the technical ones, and likely have been since the 90s). Is there some big application if ML that I’m missing that is…

> Self driving cars? Which are not yet in production Yes they are. What do you mean, not in production? Maybe there aren't millions of fully autonomous cars on the road today, but there will be soon. They sure are in production. Companies like Tesla are making production hardware self-driving cars right now - full autonomy coming soon, of course. > Speech recognition? Which still seems rather bad to me. Speech recogn…

Self driving cars that can dependably not run into things or people do not exist.

Re: IBM is not doing "cognitive computing" with Watson (2016)

#88

Post by hinkley » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:49 PM UTC

clavalle wrote: post #19

I briefly worked with a Watson team on a cool idea to map a person's 'knowledge space' (or probable knowledge space given their background) against Watson's knowledge space and guide them to relevant learning materials and journal articles and the like. The idea was to save people time so they aren't rehashing stuff they know down pat or jumping ahead into material they cannot understand but, instead, find that next…

In a similar vein, I find a machine beating a grand master fairly boring. Show me a machine that can teach someone to become a master (or even a very good amateur) and we can talk.

That is, don’t beat the game, beat the opponent, understand why, and then model an adaptation strategy for the opponent (teach).

Re: IBM is not doing "cognitive computing" with Watson (2016)

#89

Post by ChuckMcM » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:50 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #20

Watson is the IBM marketing department going mad about ways in which IBM can continue to remain relevant in a world that increasingly doesn't care about what hardware a particular computer program runs on. If there is going to be a 'second AI winter' I fully expect Watson and other such efforts to be the cause.

IBM hasn't been about the hardware for a long time, instead it has been about the consulting services contract. And when we, as a startup, first engaged with the Watson folks it was clearly a sales funnel for their consulting services.

That said, IBM has a tremendous amount of research they have done in AI over the years. It is not that they don't have a lot of interesting technology they can throw at different business problems, it seems like they are having a hard time getting invited to the party if they don't track the same hype buzz that the current ML/AI craze has embraced.

Re: IBM is not doing "cognitive computing" with Watson (2016)

#90

Post by jbob2000 » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:50 PM UTC

chisleu wrote: post #72

I worked on data systems that fed weather data into Watson. IBM's technology, and IBM's marketing are very different beasts. The marketing is somewhat trivial, but the reality of ML and the Watson data systems is incredible. They are pumping a huge amount of data into it and they have data scientists doing incredible things with the data already. It is the largest growing segment of the company (and maybe the only gr…

The problem is that all of this AI and ML is being used to target Ads better. You don't need AI and ML to do this, it is a solution looking for a problem.

Your example about routine elevator maintenance does't need AI at all. Whoever logs the elevator maintenance can just press a button to send a notification message. Hell, it can be wired up such that when you submit a notification notice, it automatically sends an email. They probably have condo management software that does this already.