The Watson craze last week didn't fully hit me until my cab driver got lost and cheerily exclaimed in thickly-accented English, "Watson! Heeeeelp me!" I find it interesting how the so-called "artificial intelligence" (AI) systems I studied decades ago at MIT are on their way to becoming the Fonzies (Watson can tell you who that is) of our times. There are a few misconceptions about our "new overlord" that I attempted to clarify within the confines of my taxi ride lost in a suburb of DC. Here they are:
1/ The computer is smart as us, and dumb as us. When Watson slipped up with the Oreo/crossword puzzle answer of "19-teens" it was our fault for not teaching Watson what that means. And if you do a Web search for "19-teens" it's brutally clear that the invention of "Oreos" or other innocent games doesn't come first to mind in the darkness of the online world.
2/ The computer never makes mistakes -- or the same mistake over and over -- unless we let it do so. If left alone, like the proverbial broken record, a computer will do the exact same thing it has always done. There is a construct in computer programming called "the infinite loop" which enables a computer to do what no other physical machine can do -- to operate in perpetuity without tiring. In the same way it doesn't know exhaustion, it doesn't know when it's wrong and it can keep doing the wrong thing over and over without tiring.
3/ The computer still needs us to make the right decision. That little exercise you do countless times with the computer on a daily basis of clicking "Yes," "No," or "Cancel" is the important moment when you are able to prevent the computer from doing harm to you or to itself. Were it to decide to, say, show up on Jeopardy unannounced and without asking, that's a completely different story for Watson 5.0 -- a world where Watson can click its own Yes/No/Cancel buttons.
4/ The computer doesn't care -- at best it can act like it cares. In the movie WALL-E we see a trash collector robot that breaks out of its daily routine and discovers consciousness through love. Given that we humans still don't understand how love works (and doesn't work), it's impossible to imagine that we could ever program a computer to truly love the way that we do -- and yes -- in that special case we can't seem to press our own Yes/No/Cancel buttons.
The taxi driver seemed to nod in disinterest until he asked me, "So, where is this place you're looking for?" I solved the problem by pulling out my iPhone and asking my "other overlord", Google, how to get there. S/he delivered the right answer.
PS I suggested the cab driver visit one of the many sites running the original software systems "Eliza" from the 60s, and to tell Eliza, "The first modern crossword is published and Oreo cookies are introduced." When I tried that just now Eliza simply responded, "I see."
John Lundberg: Robot Wins Jeopardy, But Can It Write Poetry?
John Rogers: IBM Watson Supercomputer A Reminder Of Education Shortcomings
Michael L. Millenson: Is A Physician's Cyber-Assistant Next?
in the human mind can't be programmed in the computer at this time - or in the foreseeable future. The only program in the human mind that can presently be placed in a computer is the mind's "survival" program, and those in a position to program the human mind deny the existence of such a program. Thus, they can't program it.
For more about the only computer program of the human mind that will work, see: RevolutionOfReason.com and YouTube: RobertLBlackburn.
Then, a computer will be our ideal friend...
Always loving us,never misbehaving...
BTW,does anyone know the "market price "Watson might have,if offered to consumers ?
But its seems to me a sort of super-google would also be a logical next step. Something that instead of giving you links to pages that you have to scour for your answer actually gave you specific answers to questions (as well as the links to tell you where it got the answer and where to look for more info). It could use the Google model of just having ads or a small subscription fee. That's all just speculation though, I have no idea if they are actually planning something like that.
Kurzweil said that AI will reach HI in..2029...
It will definitely have surpassed HI by Aug 4,2097...
They store massive amounts of information and execute software programs (WRITTEN BY HUMAN BEINGS) at extremely fast speeds.
And that is ALL computers are.
My apologies to all the sci-fi fans who know nothing about the actual nature of computer programming and have been hoodwinked by shows like BSG and Caprica, etc. (And note that there is no more rabid sci-fi fan than I am, having read Rocketship Galileo when I was 7 years old, it making me into an instant, lifelong sci-fi nerd.)
The computer receives inputs from humans...
The more inputs it receives,the more "human " it becomes...
If humans teach the machine some...100k variations of human behaviour,the computer
will function accordingly...
Getting nervous,being diplomatic,commenting on Huffpost as conserrvative/independent/leftist
& so on...
Quotes about how some scientific achievement will never happen have a way of turning out to be wrong.
When I first started programming there were many serious philosophers who claimed that a computer would never be able to play chess. Then they claimed it would never be able to play at the Grand Master level which of course it has.
I'm not sure how you define "intelligence" but it seems to me it should include things like playing jeopardy or chess. Or perhaps flying an airplance. Or making a medical diagnosis. Computers have been doing all those things for years.
I do strongly agree with you that all the talk about Watson as Skynet or HAL are nonsense. While Watson is an amazing AI achievement and IMO clearly "intelligent" its not even close to being conscious or self aware.
However, I don't think any responsible scientist should say we know for a fact that a computer can NEVER be conscious for one simple reason: we don't have an accepted scientific definition for what it means for HUMANS to be conscious yet. Until we do we can hardly say for sure whether computers can or can't be. And that is why I find work like Watson ultimately so fascinating, it gives us insight into what intelligence and thought are that may help us understand how those things work for humans.
What Watson does is similar but much more difficult than Google. It parses natural language. It deals with puns and other word play and colloquialisms. It then searches through its knowledge base (that is somewhat similar to Google) and finds the best answer and again uses natural language processing to present the answer in a form acceptable in Jeopardy.
It has ramifications everywhere but actually I think there are many more promising than defense. As an intellgent assistant to physicians or stock traders for example.
Call me when the computer can understand what the host is saying and buzz in for itself.
Watson also does a very good job quantifying how well it knows what it knows and recognizing when it doesn't know anything about a subject -- something most humans have trouble doing well.
BTW: Watson did buzz in for itself. Did you actually watch the show?
However, Watson gets his buddies to work in a social network (direct cable I imagine) and demands quality education...
So what exactly is this proof? I would like to see it. I'm pretty familiar with computer science and logic and I've never heard that.
Now, if sporty1 could demonstrate that humans *can* solve the halting problem for all algorithms but computers can't, that would be pretty impressive. But there's no reason to believe that any human can do it, either.
You could very easily teach a computer "practical" infinity that would suit all but 1 in a google of it purposes, though. Dear computer, when you reach a billion to the power of a billion, stop and try something else, that's one line of code.
Also, the author posits an infinite loop as 'to operate in perpetuity without tiring' which also isn't true. The world's most powerful supercomputer consumes the equivalent of 50,000 BLT sandwiches in energy every day.