IBM's Watson Memorized 'Urban Dictionary,' Then His Overlords Had to Delete It

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 11, 2013, 1:28 AM UTC

ComputerGuru wrote: post #79

ljd wrote: post #59

What an interesting reflection on who we are as a species. We build systems to organize who we are (urbandictionary) but hate it when the systems use that information tell us who we are (watson). It feels so much like the emperor isn't wearing any clothes. Perhaps an appropriate response would be for the computer to measure the tension in the human voice response to it's queries and optimize for lower tension. So it…

I have to disagree. I'm not an "angel" by any means, but any time I visit Urban Dictionary, I come away feeling filthy. I typically go there to look up some abbreviation I heard on reddit or IRC or a blog post somewhere and what I look up usually ends up being middling-dirty, but the stuff that I see there "on my way" to the word I'm looking for makes me cringe and gives me a bleak vision of what the next generation…

Post by cglace » Fri, Jan 11, 2013, 1:46 AM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #118

rtkwe wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more like they couldn't have Watson using them on national television. Many a company, even if it weren't showcasing a machine like Watson, would want to avoid that language on a huge television event like the Jeopardy challenge. I think you might be looking a little too deeply at this.

Every decision made by a company can be evaluated in the context of the culture that influenced that decision. The fact that Watson's babysitters got embarrassed when it learned a new word from the Internet says something about society, IBM, and the Internet. Why couldn't they have Watson curse on national television? Cultural expectations. Why avoid any words at all? They're all just phonemes strung together with no…

Post by WalterGR » Fri, Jan 11, 2013, 2:43 AM UTC

plg wrote: post #40

"Watson couldn't distinguish between polite language and profanity ... Ultimately, Brown's 35-person team developed a filter to keep Watson from swearing ..." Sounds just like what happens when you raise kids. "Daddy why is XXX a good word but YYY a bad word?" "It just IS. Don't say that word again." "Ok Daddy" (kid adds word to internal blacklist)

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 11, 2013, 2:54 AM UTC

cmelbye wrote: post #107

unimpressive wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Want to come build a distributed social cloud web app with me using node? The real problem is when the meaning of a word or phrase becomes so broad that it conveys no information, or gets swamped by overuse and becomes a buzzword.

I personally think that sentence is just as bad as the business jargon sentence.

Post by unimpressive » Fri, Jan 11, 2013, 3:27 AM UTC

catshirt wrote: post #112

cmelbye wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally think that sentence is just as bad as the business jargon sentence.

i realize it wasn't their intention, but that's because it is business jargon.