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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)

#351

Post by akvadrako »

akvadrako wrote: post #293
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…

This comment is way too long to justify whatever point you are making. First of all, how long ago do you mean? Are you 100 years old and people in the 1940's thought computers would be operated by pens? But also, when my college had a demo microsoft tablet in their store in 2003, I could sign my name as I usually do (typical poor male handwriting) and it recognized every letter. That seems pretty good to me. I also h…

This is my most down-voted comment ever and I have no idea why.

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

#354

Post by xg15 »

snowwrestler wrote: post #278
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…

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'm not so sure. Maybe I'm naive but I could see imitation and reinforcement learning actually becoming the little bit of magic that is missing to bring the area forward.

From what we know, those techiques play an important roles in how humans themselves go from baby glibberish to actual language fluency - and from what I understand there is already a lot of research ongoing how reinforcement learning algorithms can be used to learn walking cycles and similar things.

So I'd say, if you find a way to read the non-/semiverbal cues humans use to communicate understanding or misunderstanding among themselves and use those as penalties/rewards for computers, you might be on a way to learn some kind of languages that humans and computers can communicate with.

The same goes into the other direction. There is a sector of software where human users not only frequently master highly intricate interfaces, they even do it out of their own motivation and pride themselves on archieving fluency: Computer games. The secret here is a blazing fast feedback loop - which gives back penalty and reward cues in a similar way to reinforcement learning - and a carefully tuned learning curve which starts with simple, easy to learn concepts and gradually becomes more complex.

I would argue, if you combine those two techniques - using penalties and rewards to train the computers and communicate back to the user how well the computer understood you, you might be able to move to a middle-ground representation without it seeming like much effort on the human side.

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

#355

Post by projektfu »

yongjik wrote: post #339
foldr wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Perhaps they're already using mechanical translation and then only correcting sentences that are basically ungrammatical, not just weird.

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

#356

Post by Retra »

ta43509525 wrote: post #324
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've always thought it'd be nice to be able to code at the speed of thought - you can often envisage the code or classes that'll make up part of a solution, it's just so slow filtering that through your fingers and the keyboard; if the neural interface 'thing' could be solved that'd be a winner I think, both for coding and manipulating the 'UI'. It seems within the bounds of possibility to me (from having no experien…

I can't envision code or classes hardly at all. Most of my thoughts are so nebulous it takes my full concentration just to write them down.

I doubt we're going to make much progress there anytime soon.

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

#357

Post by mr_toad »

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…

What makes you think survival instinct has anything to do with intelligence or awareness?

If anything, I’d guess that the most primitive life forms on this planet have the strongest proclivities for survival.

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

#358

Post by emodendroket »

snaky wrote: post #331
emodendroket wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Typing in Japanese is about half as fast as English if you're good. Still better than handwriting.

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

#359

Post by emodendroket »

DonaldFisk wrote: post #348
snaky wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's still slower than typing In alphabetic languages. What about Chinese, or Japanese?

There is software that allows you to draw the characters on a touch screen, but it's still slower than typing and most people either type the words phonetically (e.g. in Pinyin) or use something like Cangjie which is based on the shape of character components. Shape-based methods are harder to learn but can result in faster input. For Japanese there are keyboard-based romaji and kana based input methods. The correct…

Almost nobody uses kana input in Japanese. There are specialized systems for newspaper editors, stenographers, etc., that are just as fast as English-language equivalents, but learning them is too difficult for most people to bother.
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