Techdirt. Stories filed under "watson" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "watson"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Fri, 11 Jan 2013 09:53:14 PST IBM Researcher Feeds Watson Supercomputer The 'Urban Dictionary'; Very Quickly Regrets It Tim Cushing http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130110/14542221635/ibm-researcher-feeds-watson-supercomputer-urban-dictionary-very-quickly-regrets-it.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130110/14542221635/ibm-researcher-feeds-watson-supercomputer-urban-dictionary-very-quickly-regrets-it.shtml together, culminating in a comfortable retirement in which you live off their immense earnings as a person of brilliance.

Shortly thereafter, you begin to rue the day they ever learned the (now) cursed language of their ancestors.

It starts with the incessant barrage of questions in a meandering quest for knowledge, followed by the barrage of questions (mainly, "Why?") that greet every suggestion, criticism or direct order. Shortly thereafter, it's followed by questions directed at your parenting skills, cultural tastes, archaic slang use, rhetorical devices and sense of direction. At the point where you're wishing their language development had followed Charlie Gordon's "learning curve," you're asked to make a surprise appearance at the school administrator's office to explain a sudden outburst of particularly inventive cursing from your former "pride and joy."

So it is also with artificial life.

Watson, IBM's Jeopardy-contestant supercomputer, showed the world that, with the right programming, any puny human could be bested in a mildly snooty game show that handed out answers and asked for questions. However, the quest for true artificial intelligence is still ongoing.

So, in the interest of science, the whole of human knowledge (Internet Edition™) was dropped into Watson's brain and then... the problems began.
Two years ago, Brown attempted to teach Watson the Urban Dictionary. The popular website contains definitions for terms ranging from Internet abbreviations like OMG, short for "Oh, my God," to slang such as "hot mess."

But Watson couldn't distinguish between polite language and profanity -- which the Urban Dictionary is full of. Watson picked up some bad habits from reading Wikipedia as well. In tests it even used the word "bullshit" in an answer to a researcher's query.
Well, it appears that every teacher's distrust of the internet in general is well-earned. It's nothing but quasi-facts dressed up in four-letter words, like a World Book Encyclopedia annotated by 4chan's /b/ board. (I'm not going to link to it. I won't have your misclicks weighing on my soul.) Still, it's disheartening to know that the use of the word "bullshit" (even correctly) is not considered a sign of intelligence, artificial or otherwise. Sure, the word itself may be inappropriate, but under certain circumstances, it is by far the most appropriate answer.

Fortunately for Watson's team, they had the option to remove all this useful knowledge before it offended other researchers who weren't as used to being coldly called on their bullshit.
Ultimately, Brown's 35-person team developed a filter to keep Watson from swearing and scraped the Urban Dictionary from its memory. But the trial proves just how thorny it will be to get artificial intelligence to communicate naturally.
It also shows that artificial intelligence has one huge advantage over regular intelligence: the ability to permanently forget. We lowly humans are stuck with a brain that constantly reminds us (especially if we spend much time at places like the aforementioned /b/ board) that what is seen, cannot be unseen.

Watson, having been de-swearified and brainwashed, is now headed to a better place.
Brown is now training Watson as a diagnostic tool for hospitals.
There it will be able to use its acquired knowledge to battle health issues like cancer, AIDS, diabetes and Dissociative Facebook Identity Disorder. 

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]]> hateful-day-when-I-received-life-you-only-live-once-smh-and-etc. http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20130110/14542221635 Wed, 2 Mar 2011 13:44:01 PST Finally Found: A Human That Can Beat Watson... And It Turns Out To Be Rep. Rush Holt Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110302/02425613325/finally-found-human-that-can-beat-watson-it-turns-out-to-be-rep-rush-holt.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110302/02425613325/finally-found-human-that-can-beat-watson-it-turns-out-to-be-rep-rush-holt.shtml winning its big national TV challenge against two Jeopardy stars, apparently, IBM is taking the Jeopardy playing machine on tour, with a key stop being Congress. It got to play against a group of our elected officials... and one of them actually beat Watson. Say hello to Rep. Rush Holt -- who was a bit of a ringer, since he's actually a five-time Jeopardy champion. Holt apparently outscored Watson $8,600 to $6,200, though all the other Congressional Reps who went up against Watson were unable to master the computer. I guess this means that we should make Rep. Holt our new leader when the machines come to try to enslave us.

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]]> bow-down-to-the-superior-mind http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110302/02425613325 Thu, 17 Feb 2011 12:55:00 PST Did Watson Succeed On Jeopardy By Infringing Copyrights? Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110217/11093713153/did-watson-succeed-jeopardy-infringing-copyrights.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110217/11093713153/did-watson-succeed-jeopardy-infringing-copyrights.shtml asks whether or not Watson infringes on copyrights:
From IBM’s Watson Supercomputer Wins Practice Jeopardy Round in Wired Magazine: "Researchers scanned some 200 million pages of content -- or the equivalent of about one million books -- into the system, including books, movie scripts and entire encyclopedias."

It seems unlikely that IBM got permission to scan one million books. Can we expect soon a lawsuit from the Author's Guild against IBM and the producers of Jeopardy! (which, after all, is profiting from this scanning)?
This is a really good point and (once again) highlights the ridiculousness of copyright in certain circumstances. Of course, your viewpoint on this may depend heavily on whether or not you believe Google's book scanning infringed on copyright (I don't). But, for those who do, do you believe that IBM's scanning of books does infringe? Technically, it's the same basic process. In fact, you could argue that with Watson it's much more involved, because Watson then actually made use of the actual data to a much greater extent than Google did with Google books.

But, really, a bigger point is how this highlights one of the oddities of copyright. If you read something and retain it in your brain, is that infringement? Most people say no, of course. Now, if a computer "reads" something and retains it in memory is that infringement? Well, that's a bit more borderline according to many. So take it a step further and as we reach the point that people can augment their wetware brains with computer brains... when do we hit a copyright infringement issue?

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]]> good-questions http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110217/11093713153 Wed, 16 Feb 2011 17:00:00 PST DailyDirt: Add Jeopardy! To The List Of Games That AI Is Better At Than You.... Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110216/13575213130/dailydirt-add-jeopardy-to-list-games-that-ai-is-better-than-you.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110216/13575213130/dailydirt-add-jeopardy-to-list-games-that-ai-is-better-than-you.shtml
  • Deep Blue won its first game of chess against Garry Kasparov in 1996. The computer didn't win the match that year, but it won the re-match in 1997. [url]
  • Checkers was declared "solved" in 2007 by the Chinook project. Chinook was actually stronger than any human player by 1996, but it took a few more years for Chinook to realize checkers was a futile game (like tic-tac-toe) and retire. [url]
  • A few years ago, the Polaris poker bot beat a few professionals at Texas hold'em. So be careful playing poker online... [url]
  • The famous long bet between Mitchell Kapor and Ray Kurzweil has $20,000 riding on the question of whether or not AI will pass a Turing test by 2029. The bet started in 2002, and Kapor even suggested back then that a machine might win at a Jeopardy! game show. [url]
  • To discover more interesting stuff on artificial intelligence, check out what the robots at StumbleUpon suggest. [url]  
    • By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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    ]]>     urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110216/13575213130     Fri, 14 Jan 2011 01:32:00 PST First Test Of Computer Jeopardy Player Goes Well; Watson Beats Mere Humans Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110113/14193812659/first-test-computer-jeopardy-player-goes-well-watson-beats-mere-humans.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110113/14193812659/first-test-computer-jeopardy-player-goes-well-watson-beats-mere-humans.shtml take on real Jeopardy contestants in February of this year (just a few years after the project first came to life). While the big test isn't until Valentine's Day, apparently they had a dry run, and things are looking pretty good for Watson, who beat Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. It wasn't a complete domination. Apparently Watson just narrowly edged out Jennings, though Rutter couldn't keep up. Of course, between now and the real test, Watson can be tweaked. Jennings' and Rutters' brains are pretty much set, and I'd imagine that their ability to cram more useless trivia in their brains is outmatched by Watson.

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