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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)

#331

Post by snaky »

emodendroket wrote: post #280
snowwrestler wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a previous job I looked into the viability of pen computing, specifically which companies had succeeded commercially with a pen-based interface. A lot of folks are too young to know this, but there was a time when it was accepted wisdom that much of personal computing would eventually converge to a pen-based interface, with the primary enabling technology being handwriting recognition. What I found is that compute…

I got a two-in-one Windows notebook and I was really, really impressed with the handwriting recognition. It can even read my cursive with like 95% accuracy, which I never imagined. That said, it's still slower than typing.

> it's still slower than typing

In alphabetic languages. What about Chinese, or Japanese?

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

#332

Post by vertexFarm »

fjsolwmv wrote: post #303
arghwhat wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also kinda talk to ELIZA. Google Assistant, Apple Siri and Amazon Echo are all quite fancy natural language parsers . After parsing, it's just a group of "dumb" (wo)man-made widgets.

There not entirely true. Google Search will answer a question with an automatically extracted excerpt from a website page. Watson did the similar with its Jeopardy system

Is that not parsing and keyword searching? Once again there's no "cognitive computing" going on.

Which is a really weird and nebulous thing to define, by the way. I think we aren't going to have super convincing cognitive computing until we have something approaching AGI. Which of course is waaay different from the AI and machine learning that is popular today, despite most laypeople conflating any mention of AI with AGI. Of course, when IBM is making an ad, they are largely aiming at laypeople.

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

#333

Post by opportune »

dahart wrote: post #128
hinkley wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a similar vein, I find a machine beating a grand master fairly boring. Show me a machine that can teach someone to become a master (or even a very good amateur) and we can talk. That is, don’t beat the game, beat the opponent, understand why, and then model an adaptation strategy for the opponent (teach).

> In a similar vein, I find a machine beating a grand master fairly boring. I know a lot of people felt that way even before it happened. It feels like an accounting problem rather than intelligence. But, it's fun to remember when it was thought by some very smart people that chess required more accounting than was ever possible by a machine, so beating a grand master would have to be a demonstration of intelligence.…

A lot of AI "milestones" were actually caused by improvements in computing itself, IMO. That is, they weren't facilitated by novel algorithms or engineering solutions specific to the milestone itself. They kind of just happened, either because computers got faster (e.g. disk I/O, ram size, processor speeds and caching) or because someone finally decided to throw enough distributed computation at the problem.

People knew about the main algorithms that Deep Blue used (alpha-beta minimax with heuristic evaluation) for decades before Deep Blue existed. It was simply a matter of waiting until IBM found marketing value in dedicating a top 300 world super computer to beating Gary Kasparov

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

#335

Post by simen »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #256
kbenson wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately many, many people think that talking to your computer in actually already possible, they just haven't experienced it yet. Given how often another person can't correctly infer meaning when people talk, I doubt it will ever be how people imagine it. Initially, I imagine it will be a lot of people trying to talk normally and a lot of AI responses asking how your poorly worded worded request should be car…

No, you're completely on the right track. People usually judge AI systems based on superhuman performance criteria with almost no human baseline. For example, both Google Translate and Facebook's translation system could reasonably be considered superhuman in performance because the singular systems can translate into dozens of languages immediately more accurately and better than any single human could. Unfortunatel…

Being able to do many things at a level below what trained humans can isn't what any reasonable person would call superhuman performance. If machine translation could perform at the level of human translators at even one pair of languages (like English-Mandarin), that would be impressive. That would be the standard people apply. But they very cleary can't.

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

#336

Post by vertexFarm »

ModernMech wrote: post #305
goatlover wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Current Ai doesn't have any ideas about existing. That's something we'd have to add in to future AI ... isn't something that comes about from crunching large data sets (note: I'm a roboticist who spends a lot of time thinking about long-term autonomy (how can a robot go for months and years without human intervention) so that gives you a sense of where I'm coming from. Since my original comment was more of a questi…

I think we're huge technological leaps and bounds--I mean light-years--away from AGI so advanced it requires some form of computer psychology. But I do think it might eventually happen. And I don't think people are going to do a good job of preparing for it proactively. It's going to require a huge fiasco to motivate people to take that idea seriously.

So I agree that one day we may have to be careful how we treat AGI and maintain a system of ethics for the use of artificial, sensate, sapient beings. But that day is hella not today. Yet when it does come, it will probably still sneak up and surprise us. Like most black swans are wont to do.

Right now IBM is using people's confusion of AI with AGI to make sensationalist ads. But hey, most advertising around trending tech is sensationalist.

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

#337

Post by hacker11235 »

mhermher wrote: post #330
hacker11235 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the part that can be emulated in software. All you have to prove is that what ever platform/language you're using for the programming is Turing Complete, which is the case for almost all of the most popular languages.

So can I run Crysis on my TI calculator? I'm sure whatever platform/language is running on it is Turing Complete. I think you missed the point that the brain is also hardware.

Good point, I'm assuming their Nvidia GPUs have enough power/memory to do the processing they want to do.

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

#338

Post by opportune »

sgt101 wrote: post #325
throwawayWatson wrote: post #234

I used to work for IBM, but a few years ago. One thing about Watson that I remember is this presentation by a very senior guy. He had just come back from the US and was presenting what he learned there about Watson Healthcare (IIRC, that's what it was called), which I assumed was a division of the Watson team that was focused on cancer and stuff like that. I'm paraphrasing, but during the presentation he said somethi…

his customers are CIO's they need help in selling things to the board, I guess that's what he's talking about.

A lot of CIOs are surprisingly non-technical themselves.

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

#339

Post by yongjik »

foldr wrote: post #327
yongjik wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider yourself lucky, then. You are speaking English, with its thousands (if not millions) of competent translators translating everything remotely interesting from other languages. The bar for "good translation" is kept reasonably high for English. As a Korean speaker, if I walk into a bookstore and pick up any book translated from English, and read a page or two, chances are that I will find at least one sentenc…

> Like, using a word for "(economic/technological) development" to describe "advanced cancer" That sounds like a mistake caused by the translator having a (relatively) poor knowledge of English. A bilingual English/Korean speaker wouldn't make that mistake. I mean, I don't know your linguistic background, but you clearly know enough English and Korean to know that that's a bad translation, and you presumably wouldn't…

> A bilingual English/Korean speaker wouldn't make that mistake.

Well, "bilingual" is not black and white. I think you have a point here, but considering that people who are paid to translate can't get these stuff right, the argument veers into the territory of "no true bilingual person".

Anyway, my pet theory is that it is surprisingly hard to translate from language A to B, even when you are reasonably good at both A and B. Our brain is wired to spontaneously generate sentences: given a situation, it effortlessly generates a sentence that perfectly matches it. Unfortunately, it is not trained at all for "Given this sentence in language A, re-create the same situation in your mind and generate a sentence in language B that conveys the same meaning." In a sense, it is like acting. Everybody can laugh on their own: to convincingly portray someone else laughing is quite another matter.

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

#340

Post by hacker11235 »

ucaetano wrote: post #328
hacker11235 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, they have cameras to see and a computer to do rigorous processing. We can compare this to a human, who uses their vision to perceive the outside world while driving. (You could also argue humans use their hearing, well the Tesla's have mic's if they really wanted to use that).

> they have cameras to see and a computer to do rigorous processing. We can compare this to a human, who uses their vision to perceive the outside world while driving My phone also has cameras and a processor. Are you implying that my phone is as equipped to drive a car as a human? A monkey has eyes, a brain, arms and legs. Are you implying that a monkey is as equipped to drive a car as a human?

I'd say the monkey has most of the hardware but not the software, analogously. As for the phone, right I was assuming the cars have enough processing power and memory to do the necessary processing. But granted they haven't exemplified full self-driving on their current hardware, I will have to concede that we do not know how much processing and power are needed to be truly self-driving. For all we know, that last 10% of self-driving capability may require an exponential increase in the amount of processing required.
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