IBM's "Watson" finally ready for prime-time Jeopardy • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by nradov » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 9:08 PM UTC

bgurupra wrote: post #35

bgurupra wrote: post #33

http://www-943.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/

A classic use of watson that IBM is saying is in the field of medical science - Imagine if we can feed the entire set of medical books into watson (somebody estimated that would just take about a week for watson to process and make the connections) and then you have the watson physician's assistant which can listen into the symptoms and spit out the first five most probably causes - that would be so damn amazing!

There are already experimental clinical decision support applications which, given a list of symptoms, can produce the differential diagnosis. But they generally aren't very useful since in most cases the physician can figure out the same diagnosis just as quickly. Real medicine isn't like House, MD.

IBM is more likely to apply Watson technology toward analytics and data mining. There are huge amounts of clinical data locked up in unstructured text reports. If they can analyze that data in a useful way to draw correlations between symptoms, patient demographics, medications, treatments, and outcomes then that could add a lot of value for medical researchers.

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

#92

Post by blinks » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 9:08 PM UTC

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.…

What is intuition? What is flexibility? How do you test these things in a lab? Turing's test is based on the most straightforward way of measuring intelligence (loaded word, but common; here I'm specifically talking about "intuition, creativity, flexibility and the ability to learn").

If you can have an interview with a computer, and an interview with a human, and be unable to determine which is which (accurately, over several trials), how can you argue that the computer isn't human-like? Most versions of the test have ways of eliminating everything but the straight communication of information (because whether you can build a convincing robot or amazing TTS software is a different problem).

How do you know that I'm not a computer?

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

#93

Post by goodgoblin » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 9:13 PM UTC

I wonder whether Watson 'reads' the question or if the questions are fed to it directly as parameters, or if it has to 'listen' to the spoken words and start thinking about its response after that.

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

#94

Post by leelin » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 9:22 PM UTC

Seems unfair for the humans.

Wouldn't a more fair match be a series of individual 1-on-1 matches with Watson and Jennings / Rutter?

The current configuration means the two humans will both share the questions that are naturally difficult for computers, but Watson will dominate all the questions naturally hard for humans.

Alternatively, to make it fair, we would need a 2nd copy of Watson competing, and if the two Watson's buzz at the same time, randomly pick one to answer.

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

#95

Post by hencq » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 9:22 PM UTC

jerhinesmith wrote: post #51

hencq wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My only argument is that I disagree that the fictional computers named showed no emotion.

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

#96

Post by kls » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 9:40 PM UTC

blauwbilgorgel wrote: post #82

kls wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No disrespect intended but, I think you are lacking a fundamental understanding of machine learning, genetic algorithms, neural networks and AI in general. I was introduced to Watson when I took a sub-project from IBM related to Watson, I had no idea what it was untill taking the contract, at which point I was introduced to Watson and it is an impressive feat, it is with out a doubt the state of the art in NLP AI. Su…

Arguing that consciousness and the brain is different from deterministic algorithms, or neural networks is perfectly valid. It doesn't show lack of understanding of AI. Just that the debater is not an adherer of strong AI functionalism. Using Gödel's incompleteness theorems one can argue that no set of algorithms is capable of perfectly modeling human consciousness. A logically correct algorithm can not give faulty o…

I was directly responding to this portion of the parents posts:

Small bits of it can be algorithmically simulated. Large processes can be algorithmically simulated. But to call the algorithm "intelligence" is sympathetic magic.

Algorithms work in a different way; they break in a different way; they are hard-coded so don't change. They are a simulation.

By the structuring of his description, it is apparent that he is reasoning from an application or "computer" if you will, developers perspective. My point was that it is flawed to look at AI software as rigid structures, applying traditional development patterns is flawed and does not reflect the realities of AI development. Put simply the description of AI as hard-coded paths and developer generated (implied) algorithms is in no way factual.

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

#97

Post by demallien » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 9:42 PM UTC

blauwbilgorgel wrote: post #90

demallien wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-forc…

He does understand. The Turing test is to answer if machines can feign human intelligence. To pass a Turing test, feigning (not necessarily possessing) intelligence is enough. The answer to insight into a system's qualia is not a Turing test: Watson, tell us, do you feel fear? Crunching through some look-up tables Yes! What did that prove about Watson feeling fear or not? We could have Alice talking with Watson for h…

Ugh. No, I repeat, the Turing Test is not about intelligence - it's about whether or not the entity in question can think. Please, read the link I posted, it's all in there.

Also, where on Earth do I equate feigning intelligence with possessing intelligence. You're just making that up.

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

#98

Post by ugh » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 10:00 PM UTC

dmd wrote: post #83

jonhohle wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just inspire, but push the envelope. The fallout of traveling to space not only unified the country but provided new technologies which simply had no need to be created until something as epic as landing on an orbiting satellite was attempted. These actions pay dividends unrelated to the mission at hand.

By 'orbiting satellite' I'm guessing you meant the Moon, but I've personally always been most amazed not by the moon landing per se, but the subsequent return from the surface to dock with the waiting CSM.

The Lunar Module is an amazing piece of engineering! It can land, be the base for excursions for more than three days, becomes and impromptu rocket launch pad and is eminently dockable. All that capability fits in a cube with a five meter edge and weighs less than 15 tons, it was developed and built in well less than ten years and it worked every single time.

Some like the raw power of the Saturn V, I think the multi-talented Lunar Module is much more amazing.

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

#99

Post by olalonde » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 10:18 PM UTC

Did they give him HAL 9000's voice or am I crazy?

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

#100

Post by blauwbilgorgel » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 10:29 PM UTC

kls wrote: post #96

blauwbilgorgel wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguing that consciousness and the brain is different from deterministic algorithms, or neural networks is perfectly valid. It doesn't show lack of understanding of AI. Just that the debater is not an adherer of strong AI functionalism. Using Gödel's incompleteness theorems one can argue that no set of algorithms is capable of perfectly modeling human consciousness. A logically correct algorithm can not give faulty o…

I was directly responding to this portion of the parents posts: Small bits of it can be algorithmically simulated. Large processes can be algorithmically simulated. But to call the algorithm "intelligence" is sympathetic magic. Algorithms work in a different way; they break in a different way; they are hard-coded so don't change. They are a simulation. By the structuring of his description, it is apparent that he is…

I agree with you on that. AI has advanced beyond rigid structures and scripts. Using a system that operates with fuzzy logic or building a neural network and teaching it, 'till you the programmer can't make heads or tails of its computations and derivations is a wonderful thing indeed.

As an aside: like Penrose chose quantum physics (a mysterious thing) to explain consciousness (another mysterious thing), and therefor didn't succeed to convince others, so we should guard against using a fuzzy, complex, black-box, dynamic system (a mysterious thing) to explain (or fully model) consciousness and human intelligence.

We just replaced the wonder with another wonder :)