Last night I watched NOVA on PBS and found myself completely taken in watching the program. That’s something rare for me these days when I watch a science program because almost always somebody figures out a way to work in climate change or global warming or Al Gore or catastrophic weather and ruins the moment. Last night’s episode was the rare exception.
Yes, in case you have not heard, IBM has created an AI machine to play Jeopardy!. Now mind you, this is not just any game of Jeopardy!, but a game against the two biggest superstars the program has ever produced; Ken Jennings, who won 74 games straight, and Brad Rutter, the all time money winner. The show debuts next week, on the Jeopardy! IBM Challenge, February 14, 15, and 16.
I was very impressed for two reasons:
- The strength of programming behind this machine
- The fact that this is a uniquely American achievement that we can be proud of
Watch this video of a test round with the players to get an idea of the scale of this accomplishment.
There’s lot’s more to learn at the IBM website here, it is fun learning about this great achievement and well worth the look. The strategy behind the programming was interesting too.
But what is it good for besides playing Jeopardy!?
The science behind the programming is pattern recognition combined with machine learning, and this feature, combined with a huge database of knowledge, may soon allow for a truly interactive computer that we’ve all come to know via SciFi like the ships computer on Star Trek. For example, a health care computer that could take in your symptoms and respond with a possible diagnosis.
Mark your calendar to watch Jeopardy! next week, this is science history being made.
Can I have singularity for $400 please 🙂
Unfortunately this type of A.I. is risky to use in real world situations where lives are at stake. Since the programmers don’t really know what’s going on inside of the computers silicon, they can’t confirm that it will get things right.
Many years ago an experiment with a “A.I.” computer that could correctly detect which photographs showed military weapons, and which ones didn’t, started to get things wrong one day. The programmers were puzzled until one noticed that on prior test runs, all the photos with military hardware were taken on sunny days, and those without on cloudy days. The computer was detecting photo differences based on if the sun was shining or not.
I still think Google could do it better if they decided too. As good as the computer will be at Jeopardy, it is still not AI. It will be interesting to watch though.
As someone who had a small role in bringing the silicon in this machine to the marketplace I can’t wait to see how it does.
I have said for a long time that the current goal for computers is the Starship Enterprise computer. Not because it is a good example, although it, but because it is the most well known. I always thought it was a long way away, but that may be Microsoft’s and Apples’ faults. Now I see that IBM may be pretty close to finding a way to do this.
Go IBM!
Now make me a computer that can understand user requirements, and we may have a sale…….
@ur momisugly Gary Mount
That is an anecdote (not sure how true) regarding Neural Networks (NN’s). NN’s work without proper data evaluation, they merely match patterns. This is a big step beyond because it is really making inferences from spoken language and stored concepts. That is whole different ball game, and one that is not ‘hidden’ like pattern matching is. This one can, and indeed does if I understand it, follow a ‘train of thought’ that can be analysed.
@John Kehr
What Google does (with its search engine) is a part of what this computer does, but only a small part. The real difference here is the analysis and evaluation of ‘concepts’. Google cannot even begin to do that.
Google may well be one of IBM’s most likely customers for this machine, however!
The medical diagnostic tool could be good. At least for getting ideas.
Kurzweil has a good article up on this by Stephen Wolfram, and comparing to
Wolfram Alpha’s more conceptual and computational approach.
http://kurzweilai.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=aad1a7eea269839c7d10845e8&id=4889870b58&e=044cdab5d8
Such a system could be useful for automatic troubleshooting of things such as complex communications networks. Imagine if it could collect the monitoring information, parse log files, etc. It could even regularly comb through such networks spotting sub-optimal configurations and such. It might, for example, notice that a particular path wasn’t redundant and subject to partition in case of a single failure that might be hard for a human to spot if the path passes through many nodes. It might appear that there is a second path but that alternate path might not be complete, it might have a segment missing somewhere. A program such as this could constantly watch over the configuration and if a change is made someplace, it could spot how that change might impact a path that isn’t intuitive to the person who made that change.
Or it could even vet configuration changes before they are made if it also has a current view of the configuration of the entire network. Better than a human could do it. Probably better than a team of humans could do it. It could probably vet a config change in seconds for a global network and point out where it might cause some problem (IP address selection in Omaha conflicts with something in use in Dubai) that would take a human hours to find.
Great! Going to be free like Google? (or double health care yet another time?)
@ur momisugly JER0ME
My anecdote comes from the documentary “The Machine That Changed the World”.
Apparently, according to some research I just did, I am one of the few people in the world that has a copy of the documentary, as I recorded the episodes when they first aired, and I have them on VHS tape. I should digitize them before the last remaining VHS player stops working.
See…
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-machine-that-changed-the-world/
If it works then the time is coming when the computer can run the economy. Perhaps then we can get some of the sensible solutions this world needs.
I reckon Baa Humbug after surviving his northern oceanic trip to the Middle East ought to comment.
Open the pod door, Watson.
“Must kill all humans.” – Bender, 6502 Processor, Muh ha ha
Not terribly impressive in the context of other modern software. You can get the same results by googling the questions. I’m not an expert on Jeopardy, but it appeared that all the answers could be found by googling the question, taking the first hit, knocking off any words that are in the question, and asking ‘what is’ [everything left].
“Smartest Machine on Earth?”
Nonsense. Everyone knows it’s the thermos bottle.
Layne Blanchard says: February 10, 2011 at 1:56 am
Medical diagnostics for tools.
Alas, no Medicare benefits for that service.
However women do answer online, in place of the Merck manual, the added benefit to the former being diaries, adapted from the science of the kitchen.
Current generation AI excel in knowledge based rule orientated areas like games. Unfortunately in the real world the rules are ill defined and the knowledge has large gaps, so applications are limited to fairly tight areas of the decision process. However, in the right niche, they can often perform as well as a skilled human.
I’m looking forward to seeing the outcome of this IBM initiative.
When i read the headline i immediately thought of Bob Watson, former IPCC chairman. Will IBM name the next version Pachy? 😉
Win or lose Watson is an incredible achievement. The folks at IBM have done something quite extraordinary, but rather than a medical expert system they should go for a political one, so we could get rid of the whole flock of bone heads we’re stuck with now.
Jessie says:
February 10, 2011 at 3:22 am
Huh??????????????????
My memory fails me. On the original Star Trek, what was the question that Captain Kirk asked that floating robot (NOMAD?) that caused it to go into overload and blow itself up? Oh, here it is: The Changeling.
It could work!
Anyway, it’s nice to see that the computer is being put to a simple, fair test. Imagine if Watson had been designed by the likes of you-know-who.
“You can get the same results by googling the questions.”
I doubt it’s that simple. Besides, Google itself uses very sophisticated search algorithms.