I always feel that this is one step away from that famous quote, "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist," attributed to various (https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/03/20/devil/). In this case, the greatest trick is convincing that it does exist... and maybe is the harder one.
IBM is not doing "cognitive computing" with Watson (2016)
191–200 of 452 posts
Re: IBM is not doing "cognitive computing" with Watson (2016)
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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.
It's not that cut and clear. Yeah killing and maiming is bad but those things always (and will for the foreseeable future) happen at large scale and you have to be able to have a reasonable discussion about the trade-offs. "Well we can't guarantee we won't kill anyone in an edge case so let's all just go home" isn't an option. You can build a highway overpass with a center support on the median for X and there will b…
Agreed that their are trade-offs made, of course. But this society spends a ton of time trying to prevent all kinds of death. That's because life is sacred.
It seems odd to argue that. Yeah of course we can't stop doing things, but it doesn't mean we don't try really hard to avoid killing people.
Re: IBM is not doing "cognitive computing" with Watson (2016)
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is Marketing 101 though. It's easier to sell someone a dream or some emotional state than it is to sell an actual product/thing that you have. I'd give people a little more credit. Adults know what advertisements are and that they're all phony.
I don't disagree, although I'd be a bit more nuanced than that. It is like herbal supplements, you can say how great they make you feel but you have to avoid making medical claims that you can't back up. I don't think anyone would have flinched at setting the stage like "At IBM we're working on technology so that some day your interaction with a computer can be as simple as sitting down and having a conversation." Se…
>I don't think anyone would have flinched at setting the stage like "At IBM we're working on technology so that some day your interaction with a computer can be as simple as sitting down and having a conversation."
Like those old AT&T commercials (available on YouTube) where AT&T made all kinds of predictions about the future that seemed crazy in the 1980's, but are reality 35 years later. Video calls, instant electronic toll booth payment, etc...
/ R.I.P, AT&T.
Re: IBM is not doing "cognitive computing" with Watson (2016)
#194Earlier 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…
Hey, I plugged in 2 cameras into an orange. That is enough for self driving as hardware, I can make that claim right?
Re: IBM is not doing "cognitive computing" with Watson (2016)
#195The most ingenious trick that the IBM marketing department pulled was to get non-technical (and probably even technical people, judging by this thread) to think that Watson is some kind of singular thing. Like that it’s a single big neural network with different APIs on it, or something. I honestly think that’s what most people think Watson refers to. Watson is like Google Cloud Platform. It’s just a name for a platf…
I'm not even convinced Watson is a platform. My impression is that it's just a consulting division of the company that deploys teams to build solutions that are in some way related to AI, with each solution or implementation potentially being completely unique from the ground up. Perhaps someone from IBM can correct me though.
I only know specifically about the NLP stuff, e.g. Natural Language Understanding (AlchemyLanguage), Natural Language Classification (it's just a multi-label text classifier) and Watson Knowledge Studio (Basically allows you to create your own named entity recognition classifier (NERC), also supports relations and co-reference resolution. You manually hand-annotate examples through a Web UI).
So by platform I mean, lets say you train a NERC model using Watson Knowledge Studio. Obviously this model has to be "deployed" somewhere so you can call it using an API. They host it for you and they bill you per API call. Anyone can go create their own entity type system and manually annotate a training dataset. So it's definitely a re-usable platform, you don't need to pay for any IBM consultancy to use it. I found that the NLP offerings have many problems, and that the documentation alone is not enough to help resolve all of them. So eventually, IBM will just tell your employer you're stupid and that's why it's not working as it should and you should pay IBM to come in.
But make no mistake, these are all just standard machine learning tools that have been "packaged" so end-users can use them through a web front end. It is in no way, whatsoever, getting any input from any AI/Neural Network/Database/whatever you want to call it/ thing called "Watson".
I personally think it's disingenuous because when people hear Watson they think Jeopardy and they think that somehow that technology is involved when they use any of the Watson.* products.
Re: IBM is not doing "cognitive computing" with Watson (2016)
#196The most ingenious trick that the IBM marketing department pulled was to get non-technical (and probably even technical people, judging by this thread) to think that Watson is some kind of singular thing. Like that it’s a single big neural network with different APIs on it, or something. I honestly think that’s what most people think Watson refers to. Watson is like Google Cloud Platform. It’s just a name for a platf…
Same thing Salesforce is doing with Einstein right now. Means that internally, when someone says a customer wants to talk about Einstein, people are all left wondering which one.
Re: IBM is not doing "cognitive computing" with Watson (2016)
#197Earlier 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.
Self-driving cars or Tesla autopilot?
Re: IBM is not doing "cognitive computing" with Watson (2016)
#198Earlier 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/
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...
While I don't necessarily agree with how they've advertised it I think they are legally safe. All Model 3's DO have the HARDWARE to support full-self driving, even if the software is not there. And regarding the software, it has been shown to be about 40% safer than humans where it is used, which is what they've claimed.
Re: IBM is not doing "cognitive computing" with Watson (2016)
#199Here's a great video that covers "AI winters" for those who are curious: https://vimeo.com/170189199
Re: IBM is not doing "cognitive computing" with Watson (2016)
#200Watson is the IBM marketing department going mad about ways in which IBM can continue to remain relevant in a world that increasingly doesn't care about what hardware a particular computer program runs on. If there is going to be a 'second AI winter' I fully expect Watson and other such efforts to be the cause.
IBM hasn't been about the hardware for a long time, instead it has been about the consulting services contract. And when we, as a startup, first engaged with the Watson folks it was clearly a sales funnel for their consulting services. That said, IBM has a tremendous amount of research they have done in AI over the years. It is not that they don't have a lot of interesting technology they can throw at different busin…
Yes. IBM should be best positioned among AI-aware companies to augment and extend "deep" knowledge-bases into the enterprise. The information infrastructure of Jeopardy Watson was impressive and ought to open doors for IBM to partner productively with other info management vendors to modernize and advance that corporate infrastructure which is driven by deep information. But instead it appears the short-term ROI-think of their non-technical SVPs is what's led them astray.
IBM continues to make the mistake that the flash bang uber-sexiness of ML (esp deep learning) matters more to the enterprise than deep info management (something which IBM can proffer while most competitors can't). If IBM were smart, they'd leverage their deep experience in databases and IR and promote that side of AI -- smarter info management. IMHO, this could do much more for their bottom line than the stupid pretense that Watson really is HAL 9000.