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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)

#391

Post by jkestner »

amptorn wrote: post #294
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…

> The other was companies who had tricked people into learning a new kind of handwriting [...] It's interesting parallels with spoken word interfaces. I don't know what the answer is. Well, here's a possibility: we'll meet in the middle. Companies will train humans into learning a new kind of speech which is more easily machine-recognisable. These dialects will be very similar to English but more constrained in synta…

Of course, voice assistants are already doing this to us a bit. Once I learn the phrasing that works reliably, I stick with it, even though repeating "Add ___ to shopping list" for every item feels like the equivalent of GOTO statements.

The challenge with learning anything new from our voicebots is the same as it already is: discoverability. I don't have the patience to listen to Siri's canned response when it's done what I've asked it to, and I'm probably not going to listen to it tell me "Next time, you can say xyz and I'll work better."

The easiest way to learn a new language is to be a kid and listen to native speakers converse. Unless Amazon produces a kids' show starring a family of Echos speaking their machine code, I don't see that happening.

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

#392

Post by Waterluvian »

laichzeit0 wrote: post #121

The 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 was convinced it was singular when they had a big mainframe sitting there to play He. Today I strongly believe it's simply a brand.

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

#393

Post by sriku »

I don't have gripes with this marketing approach and I read it more as "expect to be surprised by what is possible" rather than harp on what isn't .. at least not yet. For a comparison, it is like apple branding their display tech as "retina display" to communicate the intention (you can't tell pixels apart), possibilities (you can now use any font) and quality rather than any claims about mimicking the eye.

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

#394

Post by empath75 »

jacquesm wrote: post #158
mcguire wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the neat parts of expert systems was that you could get surprising and bizarre interactions between rules, leading to entertainingly nonsensical answers. One of the neat parts of neural networks is that you have no idea what rules it's using, but it still manages to produce answers that are sometimes not entertainingly nonsensical.

The bigger problem is that they produce that are most of the time making perfect sense and then every now and then they spectacularly fail on input that is indistinguishable from inputs that gave correct answers.

I think this also happens in the human brain quite a bit. There’s a lot of times where you see something out of the corner of your eye that isn’t there, or you duck because you think something was coming towards you, or you wave because you think you recognize someone.

I bet at a lower level, various systems in the mind fail constantly but we have enough redundant error correction to filter it out.

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

#395

Post by spearmunkie »

raincom wrote: post #12

Chomsky calls it a sophisticated form of computational behaviorism. Just like the research program of behaviorism died out, this will eventually too. There are other respectable criticisms of AI, like Hubert Dreyfus' 'What computers can't do'. Neither Chomsky nor Dreyfus claimed that machine learning and/or AI won't solve any problems, but rather that the kind of problems these solve are not relevant in terms of aspi…

Chomsky's "Where AI went wrong" is often ignored by the mainstream AI community or dismissed. Peter Norvig's retort was poorly constructed, and showed that he didn't comprehend Chomsky's argument.

Machine Learning and AI are stuck in a rut and apparently these so called ML/AI experts know better. The Deep Learning (along with ML) craze is a hindrance to a true scientific theory of intelligence.

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

#396

Post by perl4ever »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #235
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…

I think you have a good point. Something that was fascinating for me was that one of the things the search engine did after being acquired by IBM was looking at search queries for common questions people would ask a search engine. Taking 5 years of search engine query strings (no PII[1]) and turning them into a 'question' that someone might ask. What was interesting is that it was clear that search engines have train…

I've been using search engines since Lycos and before, so I reflexively use what you call "search engine" language. However, due to the evolution of Google, I've started experimenting with more english-like queries, because Google is getting increasingly reluctant to search for what I tell it in a mechanistic way, often just throwing away words, and from what I've read it's increasingly trying to derive information from what used to be stopwords.

One thing that is very frustrating now is if there are two or three things out there related to a query, and Google prefers one of them, it's more difficult than ever to make small tweaks to the query to get the one you want. Of course, sometimes I don't know exactly what I want, but I do know I don't want the topic that Google is finding. The more "intelligent" it becomes, the harder it is to find things that diverge from its prejudices.

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

#397

Post by brownbat »

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'd just like to see a voice interface that has any attempt at natural error correction.

We do this in a hundred ways in English, emphasis, meta-words, too many to fold into a system. But with a little user prodding, I think you could cover enough of this ground to still sound almost natural.

  Asst.: Would you like me to read that back to you?
  User: Yes
  A: The click brown ox...
  U: The _quick_ brown _fox_...
  A: Ok. The the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy log. 
  Is that correct?
  U: No.
  A: Which part [is incorrect]?
  U: The the quick
  A: The the quick. What should it be?
  U: The quick.
  A: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy log. Is that 
  correct?
  U: No. Lazy dog.
  A: Lazy log?
  U: No. Lazy dog.
  A: Spell "log." 
  U: D-O-G.
  A: Ah. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. Do 
  I have it now?
  U: Yes.
  A: Say 'send' to send message.
Agreed that voice systems are an incredibly hard problem, but I suspect rule-based natural language correction systems would go a long way.

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

#399

Post by snowwrestler »

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.

Back in the early 2000s, the hybrid models (the ones with a keyboard) became the most popular Windows tablet products. A keyboard is a pretty convenient way to work around the shortcomings of handwriting recognition.

Most owners eventually used them like laptops unless illustrating, or operating in a sort of "personal presentation mode," where folding the screen flat was convenient. For most people, handwriting recognition was a cool trick that didn't get used much (as I suspect it was for you, eventually).

The utility of a handwriting recognition system is ultimately constrained by the method of correcting mistakes. Even a 99% accuracy means that on average you'll be correcting about one word per paragraph, which is enough to feel like a common task. If the only method of correction is via the pen, then the options are basically to select from a set of guesses the system gives you (if it does that), or rewrite the word until it gets recognized.

But if a product has a keyboard, then you can just use the keyboard for corrections. But if you're going to use the keyboard for corrections, why not just use it for writing in the first place...

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

#400

Post by perl4ever »

slg wrote: post #314
fjsolwmv wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "market for lemons" theory proved that used car dealerships can't exist. And yet they do. People understand that ads are just a hint and a tease, not a precise value proposition.

That isn't the conclusion of the market for lemons. It predicted that the price of used cars would be substantially depressed due to unknown quality, especially when the seller had little reputation. Considering the huge depreciation a new car experiences as soon as it is driven off the lot and that prices are lower when buying from individual sellers rather than used car dealerships, there is plenty of evidence that…

What I find interesting is that free Carfax reports are becoming pretty common, which seems like a mechanism to deal with the problem of a market with only lemons. But I was browsing cars online and started looking for "good" ones, defined as no accidents and regular oil changes at the dealer, and interestingly they were almost non-existent. So in fact, the proposition that cars for sale will be lemons seems to be true even though the compensatory mechanisms exist. It would appear maybe buyers don't utilize information to their advantage, which reminds me of a recent article about how investors don't seem to digest all the information in SEC filings, even though orthodox market theory assumes prices incorporate all public data.
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