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

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

#261

Post by ekianjo »

teach wrote: post #239
itp wrote: post #209

What is the point of changing the headline of an article like this? The headline was an accurate summary of the contents ("THE FRAUDULENT CLAIMS MADE BY IBM ABOUT WATSON AND AI"). Maybe you agree, maybe you don't. But the current headline is just wrong. From the article: > I will say it clearly: Watson is a fraud. I am not saying that it can’t crunch words, and there may well be value in that to some people. But the…

The HN submission guidelines include the following rule: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait." The original headline is a bit sensational/clickbaity. That's a judgment call in this case, IMO, but I suspect that's why the title was changed.

> The original headline is a bit sensational/clickbaity.

Oh, so having an actual opinion about something is clickbaity now?

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

#262

Post by [deleted] »

ekianjo wrote: post #261
teach wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The HN submission guidelines include the following rule: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait." The original headline is a bit sensational/clickbaity. That's a judgment call in this case, IMO, but I suspect that's why the title was changed.

> The original headline is a bit sensational/clickbaity. Oh, so having an actual opinion about something is clickbaity now?

[deleted]

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

#263

Post by dwringer »

itp wrote: post #257
GuiA wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, and do not believe the title is linkbaity/sensational at all, and find it problematic that the title was changed. It is an accurate description of the author’s position, which is that the claims made by IBM are fraudulent. Holding a position isn’t linkbaity or sensationalism. A linkbaity or sensational title would have been “you won’t believe what IBM claims”.

Exactly this. I've been uncomfortable with this trend for a while now, where everything gets labeled "clickbait" and there's a thread of resentment if an article does anything other than lay out dry facts as efficiently as possible. The pendulum has swung too far. This wasn't clickbait, it was a fair and accurate summary of the full piece. Flag the entire post if you think it's inherently inflammatory, downvote, ban…

Perhaps a more NPOV [neutral point-of-view] way to reframe the original would be "Claims made by IBM about Watson and AI considered fraudulent" - thus it is no longer advertising an opinion as implicitly true in the headline, but simply representing the article for what it is.

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

#264

Post by dang »

itp wrote: post #209

What is the point of changing the headline of an article like this? The headline was an accurate summary of the contents ("THE FRAUDULENT CLAIMS MADE BY IBM ABOUT WATSON AND AI"). Maybe you agree, maybe you don't. But the current headline is just wrong. From the article: > I will say it clearly: Watson is a fraud. I am not saying that it can’t crunch words, and there may well be value in that to some people. But the…

I changed it in a bit of a rush earlier. Note the word "unless" in the site guideline: Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait. "Fraudulent" in the title was guaranteed to provoke objections—you might not consider it misleading/linkbait but other readers would.

Normally we look for more accurate and neutral language in the article text to use as a replacement title. Now that I'm not in a rush, it's clear that the subtitle contains such language, so we'll use that instead.

Edit: funnily enough, that's exactly what we did with the title when it was posted two years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11751267.

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

#265

Post by dullgiulio »

shmageggy wrote: post #175
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…

> Not sure how we fix that How about prosecuting them for false advertising? Seems like a classic case, albeit in a new domain.

We could also classify fake ads using machine learning...

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

#266

Post by dqpb »

astro_robot wrote: post #244
teach wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The HN submission guidelines include the following rule: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait." The original headline is a bit sensational/clickbaity. That's a judgment call in this case, IMO, but I suspect that's why the title was changed.

I wish click bait was more well defined. In this case, I feel the original title summarizes the entire claim made in the article. Using the title "Claims made by..." sounds like it'll be an article summarizing the claims made by AI and Watson, rather than a push back on those claims.

I'll go ahead and define clickbait using a simplified and possibly anthropomorphized version of information theory.

First:

- The more improbable a message is, the more information it contains, assuming the message is true

- If the message is untrue it contains no information

- If a message is already known by everyone it contains no information

Not Clickbait:

If a message is surprising (seemingly unlikely or previously unknown), and true, then it contains high information, and will be very likely to be clicked. This is not just a good thing, it's the most optimal thing!

Clickbait:

If a message is surprising and untrue, it will also very likely be clicked if the user cannot easily determine that the message is untrue. The user may then be disappointed when they discover the message actually contained no information because it was false. Incidentally, false messages will always have a high probability of appearing to be high information messages, because they will often appear to have the least likelihood.

Incidentally, this is (in my opinion) the theoretical problem of fake news. It will always appear to be high information to those unable to determine if it's true or false. In other words, it will appear to be of the highest value, when really it has no value (or even negative value if you look at the system level rather than just information level).

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

#267

Post by tomp »

stdgy wrote: post #204
hacker11235 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How do we know the hardware will adequately support full self-driving if it doesn't actually exist yet? That seems overly optimistic, if not an outright fabrication.

Because humans can do driving with comparable (worse, actually) hardware. Superhuman reflexes mean that software with superhuman driving abilities can exist.

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

#268

Post by randcraw »

jpttsn wrote: post #77
samfriedman wrote: post #50

OT from the headline, but I take issue with the author's claim that Bob Dylan's work doesn't relate to the theme "love fades". Dylan has had a vast career beyond his protest song days, and I'd argue that one of his best albums, "Blood on the Tracks" would be accurately summed up as "love fades".

I agree; OP is one of those articles, that start to make a reasonable point only to frame it with a highly debatable specific example.

Dylan didn't win the Nobel for his songs about faded love, and he won't be remembered for them especially.

Schank is 72 years old. He came to know Dylan when when his protest lyrics gave voice to 20-somethings like Schank in the 60's. Like the rest of us, Schank likely remembers Dylan less for his retrospective years thereafter.

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

#269

Post by Shikadi »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #180
PersistentCough wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what "safer" means. Not sure what posting your insistence in other threads has to do with this. 10x or 100x the number of deaths would be small price to pay to get everyone in autonomous vehicles. It's air travel, all over again and there's a price to pay.

>I'm not sure what "safer" means. You can define it however you want. By any common sense definition of safety Tesla has not proven that their autopilot is 'safer' than a human driver. >10x or 100x the number of deaths would be small price to pay to get everyone in autonomous vehicles. This supposes a couple things. Mainly that autonomous vehicles will become safer than human drivers, that you know roughly how many h…

Ignoring Tesla, self driving cars will almost definitely be safer. People die in cars constantly. People don't have to die if companies don't rush the tech to market like Tesla plans to. To be fair, I blame the drivers, but I still think the aggressive marketing pretty much guaranteed someone would be stupid like that, so Tesla should share some of the blame as well.

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

#270

Post by tlb »

nojvek wrote: post #251
itp wrote: post #209

What is the point of changing the headline of an article like this? The headline was an accurate summary of the contents ("THE FRAUDULENT CLAIMS MADE BY IBM ABOUT WATSON AND AI"). Maybe you agree, maybe you don't. But the current headline is just wrong. From the article: > I will say it clearly: Watson is a fraud. I am not saying that it can’t crunch words, and there may well be value in that to some people. But the…

You should the CEO’s of big companies bragging with big buzz words like “AI”, “cognitive”. The truth is very few people understand the current state of AI and it’s limits. Most of the fancy papers in Arxiv are based on NN’s which are just essentially vector algebraic math. Yes, we made huge leaps in image labeling and speech to text but current AI is a far cry from the full abilities of human brain reasoning and comp…

"just essentially vector algebraic math" -- True, but only in the sense that anything done by a computer is just iterated Boolean logic. Yet, Wikipedia and Grand Theft Auto and Mathematica have emergent properties beyond the obvious things that Boolean logic can do. So the fact that neural networks are based on vector algebra doesn't prove that they aren't capable of impressive things.
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