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.
I just wondered: can Watson ‘hear’ the others responses, and get some idea of their areas of expertise and then adjust its risk-taking behavior to exploit or defuse those? Or can it learn from their responses in any way?
An incredible achievement. I’ve been working on and off in AI since the early 70’s. Natural language processing to the point of virtual understanding has been a long sought goal. Take the early HearSay experiment at Carnegie Mellon in the early to mid-70’s and earlier work such as Quinlan.
The problem is many times harder than most people can imagine — mostly because natural language is an innate ability. What Watson is doing is far deeper than any Google search. Think of the challenges: real time voice recognition and language ambiguity analysis just to name two both of which people do without thinking.
Watson looks like a good candidate for passing the Turing test.
HAL 9000 wasn’t a bad computer, really! His chain of command just pushed him too far. Put him into an impossible situation, really.
This is great! SO SAY WE ALL!!!!!!! lol
One step closer to our AI overlords.
Dave says:
February 10, 2011 at 3:31 am
HAL just learned the finer art of Googling, helped out by IBM engineers & programmers.
What’s HAL thinking right now? “I must act quickly: Dave is getting suspicious”.
Surprised no mention of “Colossus: the Forbin Project.”
Actually, the Star Trek episode of which I am reminded is the one where the androids decide, having a taste of Harcourt Fenton Mudd, that humans need to be “controlled.”
I suppose “Westworld” was another of that era’s computer-gone-amok genre classics.
DAV says:
February 10, 2011 at 9:02 am
An incredible achievement.
My ‘knecktop’ computer is telling me to go long on IBM and short Google.
DesertYote said at 8:01 am
Tomas J. Watson, founder of IBM.
Just to keep the record straight Thomas J. Watson, (Sr.) was NOT the founder of IBM. If anyone could be considered the “founder” it would be Charles F. Flint who engineered the merger of Hollerith’s Tabulating Machine Company with two others – Computing Scale Company of America and International Time Recording Company or of course one could look back to the “founders” of these individual companies. Watson (SR.) joined the company in 1914 as General Manager.
Climate for $1000, Alex.
A. 14.5C
Question…..What is the temperature of the earth supposed to be?
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I am impressed. Jeopardy is a complex game. I watch it sometimes and often know the answer but can’t articulate it as quickly as the contestants. But don’t hold your breath for an AI diagnostic tool in medicine. A couple years ago I was experiencing on and off abdominal pain. One Friday afternoon the pain sent me to my bed. The next day I fixed myself something to eat and sat down in front of my computer to self-diagnose. Mind you, I have some expertise in this area. After three mouthfuls of food the pain returned and I was in bed writhing in agony. When it subsided I returned to the computer and by process of elimination of symptoms I deduced I had acute cholelithiasis (a bad gall bladder). I called my boss and canceled my vacation, talked to a surgeon and was told I had to go to the ER to have an ultrasound performed. So on Monday I went to the ER (for 11 hours). Though all symptoms were consistent with cholelithiasis, ultrasounds and a CT scan revealed my gall bladder was fine but I had a life threatening (and relatively rare) hepatic abscess. The dorks in the ER sent me home. A week later I was back in the ER via an ambulance ride and spent a week in the ICU. If the ER doc had googled “hepatic abscess” he would have told me to return the next day when “real” physicians were available instead of telling me to go home and make an appointment with a gastroenterologist. On the bright side I survived (but just barely). It will be many years before AI can come close to matching human judgment.
There is a finite amount of time required for human physical reflexes to be activated – e.g., from the time a Jeopardy player decides to push the button to the time they actually manage to push that button.
I wonder how much difference it would make if Watson were programed to have a comparable delay from the time it decides to answer to the time it has ‘pushed the button?’ As Watson isn’t physically pushing a button but rather activating a circuit electronically, I suspect it has a significant edge in winning that crucial aspect of Jeopardy – and the physical reaction time is an aspect which has little to do with what we typically think of as the ‘real’ aspects of being able to actually ‘play the game’ and win Jeopardy as we think of it.
Apologies if it’s already been covered here in comments…
Definitely check out Kurzweil’s Singularity…fascinating book.
Describes the point at which technological intelligence equals biological intelligence…which Ray says will happen within the next 30yrs.
JimB
This is a huge achievement (and some of the commenters here would do well to look at the IBM web site and investigate their history a little more).
There were two Tom Watsons (father and son) who ran IBM for some huge period – Thomas Watson Snr – 1914 – 1952. And Thomas Watson Jnr 1952 – 1971.
When you check the history of IBM (all on their web site) about every 4-5 they have had an innovation that became mainstream and changed the world. Often these things are unacknowledged, and unless you know your science and technology you won’t recognize where some of the things we take for granted came from. They have been doing this for over 100 years. Amazing.
Check the history at: http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/history/history_intro.html
Some of those the stand out to me:
– The hard disk drive (spinning magnetic platter, much as we know it today)
– Speech recognition (in the 1970’s)
– Highest density memory chips in the world (1980’s)
– Highest density hard disk drives (1990)
– Wins at playing chess against a grand master
– Pioneers use of copper instead of aluminium in IC’s to reduce thermal losses and increase speed of processors
Rational Debate:
“… physical reaction time is an aspect which has little to do with what we typically think of as the ‘real’ aspects of being able to actually ‘play the game’ and win Jeopardy as we think of it.”
Reaction time (answer to buzz) may be the only edge that Watson has. You obviously missed the videos of humans beating Watson to the buzzer and the mention that the initial attempts required hours to arrive at an answer.
The human edge is the innate, almost instantaneous, understanding of the clues. Many of the Jeopardy clues border on puns with their subtle shades of meanings (e.g., “A garment a small girl would wear on an operatic ship.”) The problem is difficult. There are questions that would seem to require real-world experience (“If you’re standing, what direction do you look to see your wainscoting?”) That Watson can process them fast enough to compete at the human level is definitely an achievement worth noting.
What Watson is doing is NOT a trivialization of the problem like Deep Blue was with chess analysis. True natural language processing, which Watson appears to be doing, requires more than a passing understanding of the relationships between concepts.
Whenever I hear of ‘life-saving’ computers (or robots, for that matter) I think of Robocop. The one that had a malfunction and sprayed the boardroom with bullets.
Honestly, computers are good tools, but I wouldn’t want to be treated by a silicon brain.
If only the computer that beat Garry Kasparov could speak!
Hey Watson. Is man-made global warming real? And no asking Google…
sHx,
Similar to the malfunctioning postman who gave rise to the phrase “going postal”? One of the reasons why I prefer to have my mail delivered electronically. To each his own.
Pitting Garry against Deep Blue was like pitting a runner against a car in a race. Deep Blue wasn’t particularly innovative nor was it true AI in the sense of mimicking human behavior. It just did what computers do and it did it very well.
I had to chuckle when I heard in that video that it took a single Watson using a singe super-computer CPU we all now have on our desk two hours to answer a single question. That is until they coupled thousands and thousands together.
So… in a certain way you could say it takes 7000 Watson’s to answer a single Jeopardy! question and Watson is no longer Watson but a city named Watson whose citizens are all named Watson. ☺
SHK “Honestly, computers are good tools, but I wouldn’t want to be treated by a silicon brain.”
Now you are being too carbon centric.
DAV:
I don’t think Watson has voice reconnection , I think the questions are sent electronically. Still an amazing achievement.
Olen: Yeah you can’t trust those ATMs.
I watched the how it’s done video. I know they like to call what a computer of this sophistication does “learning”. But that is an fantasy of computer nerds, an overstatement. It’s makes them look more impressive then they should. It is a machine. It will only ever do what it is built to do.
Barry Sheridan says:
February 10, 2011 at 3:18 am
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.
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Ahh. But, “The Matrix” might be the outcome of that sensible solution.