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

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

#21

Post by BadThink6655321 » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:13 PM UTC

nartz wrote: post #7

The way IBM talks about it is completely bs. However, this round of AI is definitely better than the last one. Specifically, whats different this time around is that previously, expert based systems and many machine learning techniques require that you specifically hand code things like: 1. Parsing and providing the input dataset into 'features' 2. Hand coding the logic and rules for many different cases (Expert syst…

Actually, what makes us human is the lack of fixed goals. As McCarthy wrote circa 1958, one of the properties of human level intelligence is that “everything is improvable”. That means innate knowledge that nothing is ever good enough, and an uneasy tension between settling on an answer and the drive to keep going.

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

#22

Post by ModernMech » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:13 PM UTC

nartz wrote: post #7

The way IBM talks about it is completely bs. However, this round of AI is definitely better than the last one. Specifically, whats different this time around is that previously, expert based systems and many machine learning techniques require that you specifically hand code things like: 1. Parsing and providing the input dataset into 'features' 2. Hand coding the logic and rules for many different cases (Expert syst…

> since we humans have goals of things like the need to survive, etc.

What makes you think AI wouldn't have similar ideas about wanting to continue its existence?

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

#23

Post by albertgoeswoof » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:14 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #15

The author's particular gripe is that the Watson advertisements showing someone sitting down and talking to "Watson." They bother me as well (and did so when I was working at IBM in the Watson group) because they portray a capability that nothing in IBM can provide. Nobody can provide it (again to the author's point) because dialog systems (those which interact with a user through conversational speech) don't exist o…

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/

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

#24

Post by ghaff » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:15 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…

A lot of ML behind the scenes. Search, knowledge systems, map routing, etc. You know, the boring stuff that isn’t AI yet. I don’t really disagree with your broader point. I expect a lot of things many think are just around the corner are going to be many years away.

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

#25

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:15 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #15

The author's particular gripe is that the Watson advertisements showing someone sitting down and talking to "Watson." They bother me as well (and did so when I was working at IBM in the Watson group) because they portray a capability that nothing in IBM can provide. Nobody can provide it (again to the author's point) because dialog systems (those which interact with a user through conversational speech) don't exist o…

[deleted]

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

#26

Post by dwighttk » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:17 PM UTC

(2016)

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

#27

Post by fixermark » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:19 PM UTC

"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.

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

#28

Post by goatlover » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:19 PM UTC

ModernMech wrote: post #22

nartz wrote: post #7

The way IBM talks about it is completely bs. However, this round of AI is definitely better than the last one. Specifically, whats different this time around is that previously, expert based systems and many machine learning techniques require that you specifically hand code things like: 1. Parsing and providing the input dataset into 'features' 2. Hand coding the logic and rules for many different cases (Expert syst…

> since we humans have goals of things like the need to survive, etc. What makes you think AI wouldn't have similar ideas about wanting to continue its existence?

Current Ai doesn't have any ideas about existing. That's something we'd have to add in to future AI, which goes to the point of the article and over-exaggerated claims about current AI.

Caring about one's existence (or even having the notion of a self) isn't something that comes about from crunching large data sets. ML isn't going to result in existential feelings or consciousness.

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

#29

Post by neolefty » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:20 PM UTC

Dryken wrote: post #2

Anyway none of the company that pretend doing AI are actually doing AI. AI nowadays is pure branding bullshit.

Personally I define AI as software that you "train" rather than "program". In the sense that neural nets and other ML tools function as black boxes rather than explicit logic.

By that definition, AI is a real thing—it's built on top of programming that uses compilers and languages and ones and zeros—but it's different and it's valuable.

To say it's all bullshit, I feel, is to cut yourself off from new skills. Kind of like "compilers are all bullshit—it's opcodes at the bottom anyway."

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

#30

Post by stickfigure » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 4:20 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…

Not sure what you are using, but speech recognition is amazing on my android device and has been for years. I rarely ever type anything into my phone anymore. It's a usability gamechanger.