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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

#131

Post by nl »

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…

The biggest problem I have with the Turing test is that many humans can fail it.

The best bots can already carry on conversations better than a low-intelligence human who isn't concentrating on the task.

It's generally possible to distinguish bots by asking more probing questions. The problem with that is as the Watson project shows it is quite possible to build a computer system that can do well on hard questions too.

That leaves emotional-response type questions, but many of those a culturally specific, and so can really only identify something as being either a bot OR a person from a different culture.

My view is that the Turing test is much closer to being passed than people think, if you specify a Turing test that all humans can pass.

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

#132

Post by ZoFreX »

mcrittenden wrote: post #125
ZoFreX wrote: post #116

> When the software was run on a lone 2.6 GHz CPU, it took around 2 hours to process a typical Jeopardy clue -- not a very practical implementation. But when they parallelized the algorithms across the 2,880-core Watson, they were able to cut the processing time from a couple of hours to between 2 and 6 seconds. That is an impressive amount of parallelism! This is very back of the napkin (and I realise I'm comparing…

What's 3.55?

Oops! The cores in Watson are 3.55 Ghz, sorry. I realise that ghz is not necessarily a measure of speed, this estimate could easily be out by a factor of 2 or 3.

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

#134

Post by mkramlich »

nl wrote: post #130
jhpriestley wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying that Watson's advantage in trivia-answering comes mainly from aptitudes which are already well-known to favor the computer. Watson's human-level performance at Jeopardy comes from the combination of highly superhuman data retrieval with highly subhuman language processing. Watson is more a spectacle than an innovation.

And here we see the AI paradox.. As soon as AI succeeds at something, it is simple.

"Reverse primary thrust, Marvin." That's what they say to me. "Open airlock number 3, Marvin." "Marvin, can you pick up that piece of paper?" Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they ask me to pick up a piece of paper.

Marvin the Paranoid Android, in HHGG

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

#135

Post by mkramlich »

andrewce wrote: post #80
mechanical_fish wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watson is amazing, but I've known for years that it was coming. You just have to look at Google and Wikipedia to know that it was coming. Because answering trivia questions is just not the equivalent of passing the Turing test. Trivia questions are quite guessable. I played a lot of College Bowl (and its local high-school equivalent) back in my younger days. And there were many running gags about the strategy. For ex…

My college didn't have a college bowl team, but competing on high school teams and being responsible for more than a few correct two or three word answers, I can vouch for this. It's all about having enough breadth that the other bits of information presented can help whittle down answers by way of association and relationships. Good trivia players rely quite a bit on intuition. Ken Jennings mentioned (in his book) h…

> It seems like Watson is mostly a really sophisticated algorithm on top of lots of brute force (2880 processors?!). Though I guess it could also be said that humans are just ugly bags of mostly water.

Arguably Ken Jennings is mostly a really sophisticated algorithm on top of lots of brute force (billions of neurons?). And computers are just pretty blocks of mostly silicon. :)

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

#136

Post by mkramlich »

nl wrote: post #131
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…

The biggest problem I have with the Turing test is that many humans can fail it. The best bots can already carry on conversations better than a low-intelligence human who isn't concentrating on the task. It's generally possible to distinguish bots by asking more probing questions. The problem with that is as the Watson project shows it is quite possible to build a computer system that can do well on hard questions to…

> The biggest problem I have with the Turing test is that many humans can fail it.

This is precisely the reason why I think AI has so much potential.

It doesn't have to be smarter than the smartest human to be of any use. If it's at least as smart and knowledgeable as a fairly dumb or ignorant person, then it could be incredibly useful. What's the use of building a fleet of robot servants if we can't load them with an AI which is at least smart enough to carry out chores, follow orders and communicate about everyday objects. We don't have to load them each with Einstein AI, just Bubba AI would be a big win.

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

#137

Post by mkramlich »

defen wrote: post #124
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…

> Anyway, the answer to this type of conundrum is simple and well-known: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test I prefer the Voight-Kampff test: 1. It’s your birthday. Someone gives you a calfskin wallet. How do you react? 2. You’ve got a little boy. He shows you his butterfly collection plus the killing jar. What do you do? 3. You’re watching television. Suddenly you realize there’s a wasp crawling on your arm. et…

"Decker, will I die?"

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

#138

Post by mkramlich »

bioh42_2 wrote: post #77
cryptoz wrote: post #2

Humanity is closing in on building machines to pass the Turing Test. Watson beat both champs in the demo round a few weeks ago and I fully expect him - yes, him - to beat them in the match coming up. I can't wait to watch this live. What an epic moment in the process of moving slowly from weak AI -> strong AI. Watson can do amazing NLP (and presumably Machine Learning), which is something that the general public perc…

This sends chills down my spine. Allow me to rephrase that: Eventually the machine will better diagnose your symptoms. More accurately then a human doctor could.

Let's see... Start with UMV technology. Add human image recognition systems, natural language processing and speech synthesis, expert system-based medical diagnosis, and, say, a built-in weapons system.

I'll be in my bunker.

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

#140

Post by nl »

mkramlich wrote: post #136
nl wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem I have with the Turing test is that many humans can fail it. The best bots can already carry on conversations better than a low-intelligence human who isn't concentrating on the task. It's generally possible to distinguish bots by asking more probing questions. The problem with that is as the Watson project shows it is quite possible to build a computer system that can do well on hard questions to…

> The biggest problem I have with the Turing test is that many humans can fail it. This is precisely the reason why I think AI has so much potential. It doesn't have to be smarter than the smartest human to be of any use. If it's at least as smart and knowledgeable as a fairly dumb or ignorant person, then it could be incredibly useful. What's the use of building a fleet of robot servants if we can't load them with a…

Yes, I agree.

Too often researchers think that AI must be perfect under all conditions. The truth is that we adapt our usage of tools to their limitations all the time, which makes me think that AI-powered vision systems that work well in some limited circumstances would still be very useful.

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