Jeopardy!?? Elementary my dear Watson.

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Originally Posted by Burninator

You are giving far too little credit to the computer figuring out the actual answers to the questions. Buzzer speed is nothing if it doesn't know the answer. That's the hard part, not the buzzer.

Exactly.
Again I'll reiterate my point that the people that are complaining about the buzzer are comletely missing the point of the competition, and really don't understand how impressive Watson is.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Bring_Back_Shantz

Exactly.
Again I'll reiterate my point that the people that are complaining about the buzzer are comletely missing the point of the competition, and really don't understand how impressive Watson is.

But what about the other criticisms, see Theed's and my own. It's like a really neat toy, but it doesn't approach anything we humans are capable of.

[You Need a Thneed]

Originally Posted by peter12

But what about the other criticisms, see Theed's and my own. It's like a really neat toy, but it doesn't approach anything we humans are capable of.

Mine wasn't really a criticism, I'm in awe of the machine.

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Originally Posted by peter12

But what about the other criticisms, see Theed's and my own. It's like a really neat toy, but it doesn't approach anything we humans are capable of.

Again that's not the point.
Just because it doesn't do everything humans are capable of doesn't mean it isn't a VERY important step forward in computing technology.
Saying, "Yeah, it did something completely revolutionary, but it wasn't 100% correct all the time" is incredibly short sighted.

Do you have the same criticism of Deep Blue? Did you think a computer beating the best human chess player for the first time wasn't impressive because it didn't sweep him and beat him in record time?

Do you think the first manned space missions weren't important because they didn't put a man on the moon?

All three are all very important events becaue they did or will lead to some pretty big advancements.

The first space missions did lead to a man on the moon.
Deep Blue did show that in some areas where we thought the human brain would never be beaten, a computer can actually compete with the best minds in the world.

And Watson has shown that we can come even closer to replecating how the human brain works. Who knows what it will lead to, but it's an important step forward. Hand waving away that achiement becasue it thought Toronto was an American city is incredibly short sighted.

In any case simply asking "Yeah but is it really that amazing", linking to a wikipedia article that isn't really relevant, and then saying that what it did was easy, isn't a criticism, it's just a sign that you dont' really understand what IBM has accomplished.

[habernac]

The most amazing thing? How about Ken figuring out his timing with the buzzer once again. Great finish on day two.

[kirant]

Originally Posted by Bring_Back_Shantz

And Watson has shown that we can come even closer to replecating how the human brain works. Who knows what it will lead to, but it's an important step forward. Hand waving away that achiement becasue it thought Toronto was an American city is incredibly short sighted.

In any case simply asking "Yeah but is it really that amazing", linking to a wikipedia article that isn't really relevant, and then saying that what it did was easy, isn't a criticism, it's just a sign that you dont' really understand what IBM has accomplished.

While I don't doubt it's a huge accomplishment for IBM to build such a computer (something that hasn't been done before), I don't buy all the hype. It seems to be basically capable of deconstructing the text file (easy enough), sort through all the key information to find the key statements (the hard part), then play offline search engine (relatively easy) while being able to calculate probabilities down to the dollar (child's play for a computer).

I'm not sure we're much, if any, closer to replecating the human brain (as I think deconstructing files for their key words has been done before, albeit to a little weaker extent), but we're definately 1 step closer to building one heck of a calculator/search engine.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Bring_Back_Shantz

Again that's not the point.
Just because it doesn't do everything humans are capable of doesn't mean it isn't a VERY important step forward in computing technology.
Saying, "Yeah, it did something completely revolutionary, but it wasn't 100% correct all the time" is incredibly short sighted.

Do you have the same criticism of Deep Blue? Did you think a computer beating the best human chess player for the first time wasn't impressive because it didn't sweep him and beat him in record time?

Do you think the first manned space missions weren't important because they didn't put a man on the moon?

All three are all very important events becaue they did or will lead to some pretty big advancements.

The first space missions did lead to a man on the moon.
Deep Blue did show that in some areas where we thought the human brain would never be beaten, a computer can actually compete with the best minds in the world.

And Watson has shown that we can come even closer to replecating how the human brain works. Who knows what it will lead to, but it's an important step forward. Hand waving away that achiement becasue it thought Toronto was an American city is incredibly short sighted.

In any case simply asking "Yeah but is it really that amazing", linking to a wikipedia article that isn't really relevant, and then saying that what it did was easy, isn't a criticism, it's just a sign that you dont' really understand what IBM has accomplished.

The current paradigm regarding AI vs. Human intelligence is based on a fundamental logical fallacy. That the human mind processes information like a machine, and the human mind is constrained by biology. That is, machines have the capacity to advance, but we do not.

Deep Blue's victory was amazing, although not resounding, and IBM refused a rematch, even going so far as to dismantle Deep Blue. Now do you seriously believe the next round wouldn't have been much closer? Do you really think the human player wouldn't have responded differently?

If you do not understand the Wikipedia article that I posted, you don't understand AI, or human intelligence, which is my point. We have forgotten exactly what we are comparing machines to. Dreyfus' point was that AI intelligence was purely calculation power, which is not the fundamental basis of human intelligence, which is far more socially spatial and instinctual. So according to Dreyfus, who has essentially destroyed the theoretical basis of AI, we are building machines that do not copy us, but that we strive to copy instead, which is completely pointless.

Ultimately, what lies at the bottom of all of this is the utopianism of the futurists, like Kurzweil, who against all evidence posit the future of humanity as a cyborg singularity.

This is anti-human, and is why I remain completely unimpressed with these largely wasteful demonstrations.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by You Need a Thneed

Mine wasn't really a criticism, I'm in awe of the machine.

I took it as an unintentional criticism which was not picked up by anyone in here. We are awed by the machine's capacity to demonstrate the power of our own brains? That's absolutely ludicrious and shows the current mileau of human thinking on this subject. We are in awe of machines, temporarily confounded by these technological miracles, and we've forgotten what it's like to dream as humans.

[J pold]

Originally Posted by Burninator

You are giving far too little credit to the computer figuring out the actual answers to the questions. Buzzer speed is nothing if it doesn't know the answer. That's the hard part, not the buzzer.

That's not entirely true, buzzer speed is a huge part of the game. In fact what Ken Jennings and people who studied his 74 game win streak attribute to this success the most is his ability to buzz in so much faster than other contestants. Yes his knowledge also plays a huge part but if you gave another player the same level of knowledge and only average buzz in speed they would not come close the success Jennings.

But I agree that arguing about Watson's buzz speed is a moot point, what it can do is amazing.

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Originally Posted by peter12

The current paradigm regarding AI vs. Human intelligence is based on a fundamental logical fallacy. That the human mind processes information like a machine, and the human mind is constrained by biology. That is, machines have the capacity to advance, but we do not.

Deep Blue's victory was amazing, although not resounding, and IBM refused a rematch, even going so far as to dismantle Deep Blue. Now do you seriously believe the next round wouldn't have been much closer? Do you really think the human player wouldn't have responded differently?

If you do not understand the Wikipedia article that I posted, you don't understand AI, or human intelligence, which is my point. We have forgotten exactly what we are comparing machines to. Dreyfus' point was that AI intelligence was purely calculation power, which is not the fundamental basis of human intelligence, which is far more socially spatial and instinctual. So according to Dreyfus, who has essentially destroyed the theoretical basis of AI, we are building machines that do not copy us, but that we strive to copy instead, which is completely pointless.

Ultimately, what lies at the bottom of all of this is the utopianism of the futurists, like Kurzweil, who against all evidence posit the future of humanity as a cyborg singularity.

This is anti-human, and is why I remain completely unimpressed with these largely wasteful demonstrations.

Again dude you're looking at this from entirely the wrong perspective to be critisizing it from.

IBM cleary didn't build a computer that replicates the human brain, that much is obvious by the way it answered some questions. So why then are people celebrating this acievement if IBM failed to replicate the human brain? Because that's not what they were trying to do.

What they were trying to do, and succeeded at, was to prove that it's possible to build a computer that people can interact with in a more natural way, and that the computer can draw conclusions from a VERY VAST database from that interaction with a very high degree of accuracy.

It's one thing to Google "Beatles Song" + "Don't make it bad" and get "Hey Jude" back as a response.

It's enitely another to tell a computer "Beatles people" "He won't make it bad" and have the computer figure out that you're asking for "Jude".

Belittling this accomplishment because you think there is some philosophical problem with humans trying to replicate our brains and thus trying to replicate the machines themselves is just silly. Moreover, dismissing this accomplishment because a human brain can't be replicated by a computer is equally as silly, because you obviously don't see or understand the potential that Watson has shown is achievable. To me, your comments are akin to someone telling the Wright brothers "Yeah, that machine is pretty good, but if God had intended us to fly, he'd have given us wings".

[Teh_Bandwagoner]

Watson sure did own Andy on Conan last night:

http://video.teamcoco.com/video/conan.jsp?oid=243881

[Hack&Lube]

AI shouldn't be trying to emulate genuine intelligence. It's simulated intelligence and that's what it's going to be for another century. You want to get to that point where the simulation is so good, that you can carry on a conversation with a computer and be able to talk to it and have it understand you and serve your needs.















Robot sex dolls!!!

[You Need a Thneed]

Originally Posted by peter12

The current paradigm regarding AI vs. Human intelligence is based on a fundamental logical fallacy. That the human mind processes information like a machine, and the human mind is constrained by biology. That is, machines have the capacity to advance, but we do not.

Deep Blue's victory was amazing, although not resounding, and IBM refused a rematch, even going so far as to dismantle Deep Blue. Now do you seriously believe the next round wouldn't have been much closer? Do you really think the human player wouldn't have responded differently?

If you do not understand the Wikipedia article that I posted, you don't understand AI, or human intelligence, which is my point. We have forgotten exactly what we are comparing machines to. Dreyfus' point was that AI intelligence was purely calculation power, which is not the fundamental basis of human intelligence, which is far more socially spatial and instinctual. So according to Dreyfus, who has essentially destroyed the theoretical basis of AI, we are building machines that do not copy us, but that we strive to copy instead, which is completely pointless.

Ultimately, what lies at the bottom of all of this is the utopianism of the futurists, like Kurzweil, who against all evidence posit the future of humanity as a cyborg singularity.

This is anti-human, and is why I remain completely unimpressed with these largely wasteful demonstrations.

I don't exactly call a machine that could virtually eliminate false medical diagnoses "largely wasteful".

This is ultimately about creating a machine that compliments humans, where humans lack - sheer data memory and quick recall. The idea here is that this technology could be used so that a doctor could ask the computer a question, stating the patient's symptoms, and the computer could go through every medical journal ever written within a few seconds and come up with a diagnosis. No human could ever have that kind of knowledge. It would take more than a lifetime to read everything that Watson has programmed into it. Watson can go through all of that information in a couple seconds.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Bring_Back_Shantz

Again dude you're looking at this from entirely the wrong perspective to be critisizing it from.

IBM cleary didn't build a computer that replicates the human brain, that much is obvious by the way it answered some questions. So why then are people celebrating this acievement if IBM failed to replicate the human brain? Because that's not what they were trying to do.

What they were trying to do, and succeeded at, was to prove that it's possible to build a computer that people can interact with in a more natural way, and that the computer can draw conclusions from a VERY VAST database from that interaction with a very high degree of accuracy.

It's one thing to Google "Beatles Song" + "Don't make it bad" and get "Hey Jude" back as a response.

It's enitely another to tell a computer "Beatles people" "He won't make it bad" and have the computer figure out that you're asking for "Jude".

Belittling this accomplishment because you think there is some philosophical problem with humans trying to replicate our brains and thus trying to replicate the machines themselves is just silly. Moreover, dismissing this accomplishment because a human brain can't be replicated by a computer is equally as silly, because you obviously don't see or understand the potential that Watson has shown is achievable. To me, your comments are akin to someone telling the Wright brothers "Yeah, that machine is pretty good, but if God had intended us to fly, he'd have given us wings".

Truly bizarre response. So I am criticizing this from a humanist perspective, which is wrong? What a ridiculously canned response? Luddite, LUDDITE, he crys. Silly.

Technology like this challenges our very nature, thus, the response should be measured philosophically, first, and as laudatory praise for a techno-feat, second.

As I have stated many times, it's an amazing super-calculator. Truly incredible. I am not ignoring the technical prowess of the creation team, nor the amazing capacity of the machine, itself. My response is... so what?

We put it up against people in a quiz show. Should we be surprised that a computer, which for decades now have far exceeded human computational capacity, would easily beat human beings in a contest which is primarily factual key word recognition? It's a silly contest, and I am still not convinced that it proves anything we didn't know already. Simply that machines are better machines than we are.

These breakthroughs are not breakthroughs in the sense that the Wright Bros. conquered the air, or Edison creating entirely new ways we could comfortably enjoy life. The ultimate impact of these breakthroughs will not be to make human life better, but to change human life into something else.

If you cannot see that than you truly do not know or understand the power of Watson

[JohnnyB]

Meh, I'll be impressed when it fits into my pocket.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Bring_Back_Shantz

And Watson has shown that we can come even closer to replecating how the human brain works.

No, not even close. We are one step closer to mimicking one specific human behavior. Nothing more.

Watson is good at parsing natural language and looking up facts contextually, but it doesn't infer, deduce, or synthesize information it doesn't have. Have you ever correctly answered a question on a multiple choice test by looking at your answer to previous questions and deducing the correct answer? Watson can't do that.

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Originally Posted by peter12

Truly bizarre response. So I am criticizing this from a humanist perspective, which is wrong? What a ridiculously canned response? Luddite, LUDDITE, he crys. Silly.

Technology like this challenges our very nature, thus, the response should be measured philosophically, first, and as laudatory praise for a techno-feat, second.

As I have stated many times, it's an amazing super-calculator. Truly incredible. I am not ignoring the technical prowess of the creation team, nor the amazing capacity of the machine, itself. My response is... so what?

We put it up against people in a quiz show. Should we be surprised that a computer, which for decades now have far exceeded human computational capacity, would easily beat human beings in a contest which is primarily factual key word recognition? It's a silly contest, and I am still not convinced that it proves anything we didn't know already. Simply that machines are better machines than we are.

These breakthroughs are not breakthroughs in the sense that the Wright Bros. conquered the air, or Edison creating entirely new ways we could comfortably enjoy life. The ultimate impact of these breakthroughs will not be to make human life better, but to change human life into something else.

If you cannot see that than you truly do not know or understand the power of Watson

Yes they most certainly are.
If you cannot see that THEN you truly do not know or understand the power of Watson.

Firstly, your assertation that Jeopardy is a simple game based mostly on keyword recognition is flat out wrong. This isn't a matter of just building a calculator with a big database. It's a way of taking an entire lifetime's (or more) of general knowledge and building abstract connections between that knowledge and being able to draw conclusions from it, something that even now with Watson, humans are much better at. Though it would seem IBM is closing the gap.

Watson is no better at knowing that 2>1 than any other computer, and as humans we are no better at it either. Where we've always had a huge advantage is being able to hear someone say something like "Hey what's the name of that Beatles song where they sing about all the stuff that guy should or souldn't do" and coming up with "Hey Jude". Those are the types of things it would seem we're on the brink of being able to ask a computer.

That's a huge benefit. For example, now instead of referencing a limited number of resources about a few symptions, a doctor can ask a computer "Hey, what kind of disease would cause someone to XXXX with spots on their XXXX" and the computer can reference ALL the literature in the world and come to a conclusion that the doctor can then use as a starting point. That will make human life better and it isn't going to turn us into something differnt any more than the airplane did. It's a tool, and a VERY powerful one at that. Again, if you don't see that then you truly do not know or understand the power of Watson.

Finally I'm not saying that looking at this from a humanist perspective is wrong. Certainly when we achieve certain breaktroughs we should stop and ask "Just becasue we can do something, does that mean we should do it?" That's a perfectly valid question, but using that as a basis to downplay the acievement itself is even worse than someone screaming "Luddite". Certainly there are a lot of breakthroughs that have come with some pretty hefty moral questions, but does the question of whether or not we should have split the atom mean it was any less of an accomplishment? Of course not.

[MarchHare]

Saw this on another forum and thought it was apt:

Complaining that Watson has a buzzer advantage in Jeopardy is like complaining that a giraffe playing in an NBA game has a height advantage. You should be amazed that a giraffe is able to play basketball at a competitive level against top human players at all, not that it has a physical advantage!

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

Saw this on another forum and thought it was apt:

Complaining that Watson has a buzzer advantage in Jeopardy is like complaining that a giraffe playing in an NBA game has a height advantage. You should be amazed that a giraffe is able to play basketball at a competitive level against top human players at all, not that it has a physical advantage!

That's probalby the best analogy I've heard for this yet.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Bring_Back_Shantz

Yes they most certainly are.
If you cannot see that THEN you truly do not know or understand the power of Watson.

Hahaha... As if they'd waste a breakthrough of that magnitude on a game show and not finding Osama.


Sorry. Watson is all about great internal architecture (plumbing) that lets it work in speeds approaching real-time on truly staggering data sets. The algorithms its running to compete at Jeopardy are so specialized and tweaked for the game it plays that Watson is useless outside that arena.

Otherwise, we could just keep feeding it data and asking questions like you proposed. Not gonna happen.