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IBM's "Watson" finally ready for prime-time Jeopardy

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Re: IBM's "Watson" finally ready for prime-time Jeopardy

#51

Post by jerhinesmith »

hencq wrote: post #50
cryptoz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watson is not a simulation any more than your brain is a simulation. Your brain is ( likely ) mostly just algorithms and data structures, albeit on an enormous scale. This could be wrong, but I'm betting not. What else could the brain possibly be? It's not magic. > We will know when Watson is dangerous when it feels fear, angst, want. Not just an algorithm to sort facts and simulate speech. Nah. Look at good science…

Well HAL 9000, while cold and calculating seems to be scared when he's being turned off. So I'm not sure I agree there are no emotions. Who knows, maybe things like emotion just appear as side effects of the simulation once it becomes complex enough.

I'm not sure using a fictional computer is helping your argument.

Re: IBM's "Watson" finally ready for prime-time Jeopardy

#52

Post by hencq »

johnohara wrote: post #21

engadget reported that Watson "destroyed" its human competition while others reported that humans were "taken down." In reality, Ken Jennings was beaten on the final answer. I'm interested in seeing whether Watson has an "aggressiveness" algorithm that allows it to respond before the answer is fully spoken. Humans have an advantage in this regard because it goes right to the heart of intelligence. If the game boils d…

I remember reading somewhere earlier that it did have an "aggressiveness" algorithm in the sense that it would take more risks if it was behind, i.e. answer questions with a lower threshold of "sureness".

Re: IBM's "Watson" finally ready for prime-time Jeopardy

#53

Post by mattmanser »

demallien wrote: post #26
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watson is a simulation, a clever puppet designed to mimic human behavior. We have no more to fear from it, than from a punch and judy show. Cleverer and cleverer puppets will not become intelligent machines. A dedicated effort to build a massive neural cluster simulation might become intelligent, but it will think such incomprehensible thoughts as to be fairly useless to us (think intelligent rhododendon; what would…

And how will we know that Watson actually feels fear, or will we just get someone else saying "Watson is a simulation, a clever puppet designed to mimic human behavior" response? Anyway, the answer to this type of conundrum is simple and well-known: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test Of course it should be noted that we aren't there yet for Watson. Even in the restricted domain of a game show, when Watson fails…

Personally I don't think the answer is the turing test, it is a limited test of intelligence.

There's also no guarantee we wouldn't be able to brute force it in time, just as deep blue was mere brute forcing. Impressive technologically, disappointing intellectually.

When I think of intelligence I think of intuition, creativity, flexibility and the ability to learn. The turing test is a simple test along a long path.

I don't think the answer of your conundrum is simple and well known.

Re: IBM's "Watson" finally ready for prime-time Jeopardy

#54

Post by ugh »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #16
ugh wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A simulation of what? It can actually answer Jeopardy questions. As good or better than the best Jeopardy player on the planet. (We will see.) Another task, previously only conquered by evolution, now conquered by algorithms written by humans. Watson doesn’t pretend to be good at Jeopardy, it just is.

It can simulate an intelligence answering Jeopardy questions.

It actually answers questions, no trickery involved. It might not use the same algorithms humans use to answer those questions but that isn’t really that important, nobody ever claimed it does.

I don’t see the simulation. I see a machine that is genuinely good at playing Jeopardy.

Re: IBM's "Watson" finally ready for prime-time Jeopardy

#55

Post by krupan »

ajays wrote: post #11

A lot of geeks' girlfriends are going to be disappointed on 14th (aka Valentine's Day, in case you're wondering ;) ), as they huddle around a TV like schoolgirls watching a Bieber concert.

I'm still trying to figure out how to negotiate this with my wife. I mean, you could record it, but then you have to try and not find out the result until you get a chance to watch it. That's tough.

Re: IBM's "Watson" finally ready for prime-time Jeopardy

#56

Post by demallien »

mattmanser wrote: post #53
demallien wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how will we know that Watson actually feels fear, or will we just get someone else saying "Watson is a simulation, a clever puppet designed to mimic human behavior" response? Anyway, the answer to this type of conundrum is simple and well-known: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test Of course it should be noted that we aren't there yet for Watson. Even in the restricted domain of a game show, when Watson fails…

Personally I don't think the answer is the turing test, it is a limited test of intelligence. There's also no guarantee we wouldn't be able to brute force it in time, just as deep blue was mere brute forcing. Impressive technologically, disappointing intellectually. When I think of intelligence I think of intuition, creativity, flexibility and the ability to learn. The turing test is a simple test along a long path.…

You don't understand what the Turing Test is all about. It isn't testing intelligence, it is an attempt to answer the question "Can machines think?". It's all there in that Wikipedia link that I posted.

Also, what makes you think that what goes on in your own brain isn't just another form of "brute-forcing"? What makes one implementation of thinking "thinking" and another form just "brute-force"? And then, brute-forcing is the technique of trying every possible solution - a Turing Machine must be able to move in a near infinite solution space, so brute-forcing is not actually possible.

Re: IBM's "Watson" finally ready for prime-time Jeopardy

#57

Post by CWuestefeld »

senthil_rajasek wrote: post #29
johnohara wrote: post #21

engadget reported that Watson "destroyed" its human competition while others reported that humans were "taken down." In reality, Ken Jennings was beaten on the final answer. I'm interested in seeing whether Watson has an "aggressiveness" algorithm that allows it to respond before the answer is fully spoken. Humans have an advantage in this regard because it goes right to the heart of intelligence. If the game boils d…

"I'm interested in seeing whether Watson has an "aggressiveness" algorithm that allows it to respond before the answer is fully spoken. You cannot buzz in until the question is completely read out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeopardy!#cite_note-9

True. But along the same lines...

I wonder if it's able to say to itself "I think I'm in the right ballpark, so I'll buzz now" and then take the 3-4 seconds it takes the host to recognize the buzz and ask for an answer, to finish its processing to get to the answer it's most confident of.

In other words, it doesn't need to actually have the answer to buzz. It just needs some confidence that the answer is close at hand.

Re: IBM's "Watson" finally ready for prime-time Jeopardy

#58

Post by waxpraxis »

I've been working on the periphery of this project for about a year now (my company created the on screen "avatar" that's shown at Watson's podium on stage) and it's been amazing to watch as Watson has progressed.

Some of the early matches I got data from were downright funny. Lots of nonsense answers and weird correlations that kinda made sense but made it obvious Watson didn't really understand the problem space.

In case you're interested the avatar gets realtime data from Watson and visualizes both Watson's internal state and the game state. The core bit is a collection of "threads" that swarm around the surface of a sphere. The speed, variability, color, and length of the threads are all tied to the data we get from Watson. The colors roughly correspond to confidence, and when the threads bunch up it has to do with what Watson is "doing" (i.e. if he gets an answer wrong the threads will go slow and gather to the bottom of the sphere, if one of the other contestants is answering the threads will gather on that side of of the sphere, etc).

The designer and my team agreed early on that there would be exactly 42 threads. ;-)

Oh, and when Watson speaks the threads push off the surface of the sphere to the intensity of the audio. It also makes a subtle glow in the center of the sphere brighten in an homage to Hal.

Re: IBM's "Watson" finally ready for prime-time Jeopardy

#60

Post by johnohara »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #57
senthil_rajasek wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm interested in seeing whether Watson has an "aggressiveness" algorithm that allows it to respond before the answer is fully spoken. You cannot buzz in until the question is completely read out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeopardy!#cite_note-9

True. But along the same lines... I wonder if it's able to say to itself "I think I'm in the right ballpark, so I'll buzz now" and then take the 3-4 seconds it takes the host to recognize the buzz and ask for an answer, to finish its processing to get to the answer it's most confident of. In other words, it doesn't need to actually have the answer to buzz. It just needs some confidence that the answer is close at han…

Given the number of servers (and cores) plus 16TB of memory, 1ms is an enormous amount of time. 500ms is 1/2 a second.
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