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

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

#141

Post by Spooky23 » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 5:31 PM UTC

xevb3k wrote: post #16

EastLondonCoder wrote: post #8

It’s an unusually beautiful written article, well worth the read just for the prose. As for the main sentiment that we have a new AI winter, I’m not so sure. My lay person view is that we see quite a lot of commercial success with these systems so the current wave will be well funded for at least a decade.

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…

ML is a "big" application at the tools level. Categorization in particular.

You're already seeing it in product. Consumer level security video equipment with human detection is pretty accessible now. I can ask my iPhone for pictures of my kids in snow in 2014 and get a pretty good output. Enterprise level categorization of photo and video is a thing.

"Smarter" machines are just like smart people, by themselves not very exciting. But give them a purpose or application, and things get exciting.

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

#142

Post by fnord77 » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 5:32 PM UTC

ballenf wrote: post #64

fixermark wrote: post #27

"This was about promoting expert systems. Where are they now?" In 2017, Intuit, Inc., owners of Quicken, posted revenue of about $5 billion. Not too shabby.

As someone who is currently working on successful commercial product with a strong a expert system component, I agree with the sentiment. The funny thing about this project is that the product owners nor marketers and not even the coders ever use the term "expert system". It just doesn't sell any licenses nor garner any attention. My view is that expert systems are a ubiquitous part of many products to the degree it'…

the term 'expert system' was tainted by AI Winter I.

I suspect the term 'Machine Learning' will become a dirty word after AI Winter II.

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

#143

Post by c22 » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 5:33 PM UTC

delinka wrote: post #106

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/

But it’s technically correct: the hardware is present. The software isn’t there yet, that’s true. So is this a “lie by omission”? Reading the whole page, there’s this quote: “It is not possible to know exactly when each element of the functionality described above will be available.” What else needs to be said? At some point, critical thinking is required to navigate the world. The customer should ask “and when will…

Since we have yet to build a system that is capable of "full self-driving ... at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver" I'm not even sure they can make the claim that their existing hardware supports this. They might have high hopes, but there's no way to know what combination of hardware and software will be necessary until the problem is actually solved.

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

#144

Post by jbob2000 » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 5:35 PM UTC

kthejoker2 wrote: post #129

jbob2000 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Speaking for OP - I think the idea was that ML would determine that your elevator was in need of maintenance and place the order without human intervention. Although the word "routine" belies that, but so.

Exactly. We already know when the elevator needs to be maintained. If it isn't being maintained, it's not because people don't know, it's because they are intentionally NOT doing the maintenance, maybe because it costs $120/hr minimum 6 hours.

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

#145

Post by lordnacho » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 5:36 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.

And when the software is self-driving, it's safe to use the car in the way we all want?

Who's to know if there isn't a third key component necessary for that, behind yet another technical term?

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

#146

Post by mrj » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 5:36 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #123

Judgmentality wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I extreme in feeling someone should go to jail for that? It was bad enough when they were originally advertising it, but now that they're defending it even after people died...ugh. https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/28/17172178/tesla-model-x-cr...

Jail, no? Financial ruin for the company that was willing to put that BS below it's letterhead? Yeah, sure, in proportion with the harm caused. That said, human life isn't sacred. It and everything else gets trades for dollars all the time. A death or three shouldn't cripple a big company like Tesla unless they were playing so fast and loose that there's significant punitive damages. In a large company like Tesla it…

"That said, human life isn't sacred. It and everything else gets trades for dollars all the time."

Wow. Uhm, slavery is illegal if you haven't heard. We made it illegal because life is sacred.

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

#147

Post by wodenokoto » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 5:37 PM UTC

theschreon wrote: post #133

"Search is all well and good when we are counting words, which is what data analytics and machine learning are really all about." There are machine learning models which go far beyond counting words, for example see https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.01710

Parent links to Yann LeCunns's "Text understanding from Scratch" paper, from 2015, where the authors uses a conv-net, originally build for image recognition to do text categorisation.

The NN techniques falls squarely in the "counting words"-bracket, although this one is actually counting characters.

It is a great paper, with great results, but none of those models therein have an opinion on ISIS, an ability to converse or anything the author of TFA calls cognition.

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

#148

Post by AndyNemmity » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 5:37 PM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #4

"Machine learning" was a pretty good buzz word, but "Artificial Intelligence" is even better. And in a way, ML is part of AI so it isn't really lying. IBM tries to sell into c-suites of companies that are less technically-adept than the average HN reader. Their marketing seems to be pretty effective, at least in getting proof of concept projects signed with big names. Watson is simply IBM's ML product, but they call…

I disagree that companies implementing "AI" are less technically-adept than the average HN reader. This sort of comment has happened on other similar discussions.

It is untrue. They are very technically adept, with teams of people who are also aware of their problem spaces, and technology.

I understand there are some cases of lack of technical teams making these sort of decisions, but it isn't the norm, and even smaller companies often have incredibly technical teams.

I don't understand where this idea comes from. I've done consulting, and implementation of these type of projects for most of my life. My experience says it's false. What is the feeling that this is true?

Is it from people who aren't a part of the process theorizing that some unknown force must not be as intelligent as they are? Is it from looking at the decision making in general (why did they buy an ERP?), and making correlations?

I'm honestly unsure how there's this widespread idea that there aren't brilliant people everywhere doing the same work they are. Yes there are problems, and challenges all over the place, but I find I am amazed all across the country, and world at the level of expertise in companies.

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

#149

Post by wang_li » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 5:37 PM UTC

delinka wrote: post #106

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/

But it’s technically correct: the hardware is present. The software isn’t there yet, that’s true. So is this a “lie by omission”? Reading the whole page, there’s this quote: “It is not possible to know exactly when each element of the functionality described above will be available.” What else needs to be said? At some point, critical thinking is required to navigate the world. The customer should ask “and when will…

Until tesla can provide a real world demonstration of an existing vehicle running at L5 automation after only a software upgrade, it's unproven whether the hardware required is present or not.

At some point, they will have to provide said demo or they will be facing a class action lawsuit that will bankrupt the company.

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

#150

Post by LoSboccacc » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 5:39 PM UTC

earenndil wrote: post #73

Judgmentality wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I extreme in feeling someone should go to jail for that? It was bad enough when they were originally advertising it, but now that they're defending it even after people died...ugh. https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/28/17172178/tesla-model-x-cr...

So...one person died? Do you know how many people die in normal, non-self-driving cars? It's never possible to get 100% accuracy.

> Do you know how many people die in normal, non-self-driving cars

false equivalency. you need at least compare per mile, at best by driver demographic since most tesla drivers are in the high income and maybe in the safety conscious bracket