February 6, 2013 at 10:43 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item A Computer Goes to College
February 7, 2013 at 7:24 am
The specs posted for the Jeopardy system include 2880 cores and 16TB of RAM. That's not the size of system many of us every get to work with. The software, called DeepQA, is the core of the system and allows it to process vast amounts of data and make connections between the data to answer questions.
If we wanted to hire Watson as a conultant to help crunch numbers, what would his hourly rate would be?
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
February 7, 2013 at 9:46 am
Back in 1975 IBM or one of it's team unofficially stated it would take a two story computer the size of the state of Texas to replicate the capabilities of the human brain. I know Watson does not rival the complete human brain in all areas of intellect and process, but I still wonder how large it really is.
M.
Not all gray hairs are Dinosaurs!
February 7, 2013 at 10:01 am
Miles Neale (2/7/2013)
Back in 1975 IBM or one of it's team unofficially stated it would take a two story computer the size of the state of Texas to replicate the capabilities of the human brain. I know Watson does not rival the complete human brain in all areas of intellect and process, but I still wonder how large it really is.M.
Watson capabilities are impressive, but they are also narrow in scope when compared to the human brain. The human brain does a lot more than applying a semantic searches against a huge database.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
February 7, 2013 at 10:14 am
Eric M Russell (2/7/2013)
Miles Neale (2/7/2013)
Back in 1975 IBM or one of it's team unofficially stated it would take a two story computer the size of the state of Texas to replicate the capabilities of the human brain. I know Watson does not rival the complete human brain in all areas of intellect and process, but I still wonder how large it really is.M.
Watson capabilities are impressive, but they are also narrow in scope when compared to the human brain. The human brain does a lot more than applying a semantic searches against a huge database.
As you can tell from the post, I am in complete agreement. Watson has a limited functional set to be sure but still for what it does it is amazing. The human brain far surpasses we can produce or program, however listening to the news I often wonder if some people are using even a half a percent of what they have between their ears. 🙂
Not all gray hairs are Dinosaurs!
February 7, 2013 at 10:17 am
Miles Neale (2/7/2013)
Back in 1975 IBM or one of it's team unofficially stated it would take a two story computer the size of the state of Texas to replicate the capabilities of the human brain. I know Watson does not rival the complete human brain in all areas of intellect and process, but I still wonder how large it really is.M.
The picture in the editorial, AFAIK, is correct. Looks around container-ish size.
February 7, 2013 at 10:43 am
I'm interested in what the first quantum computer will look like. Will it need as much memory? Fewer CPU's? Maybe the more important issue is how do we write better software to more efficiently process our data and leverage our hardware? There seems to be an ever-growing disparity in the quality of our logic and the hardware that runs it.
February 7, 2013 at 10:49 am
Miles Neale (2/7/2013)
Eric M Russell (2/7/2013)
Miles Neale (2/7/2013)
Back in 1975 IBM or one of it's team unofficially stated it would take a two story computer the size of the state of Texas to replicate the capabilities of the human brain. I know Watson does not rival the complete human brain in all areas of intellect and process, but I still wonder how large it really is.M.
Watson capabilities are impressive, but they are also narrow in scope when compared to the human brain. The human brain does a lot more than applying a semantic searches against a huge database.
As you can tell from the post, I am in complete agreement. Watson has a limited functional set to be sure but still for what it does it is amazing. The human brain far surpasses we can produce or program, however listening to the news I often wonder if some people are using even a half a percent of what they have between their ears. 🙂
I'd bet money that a human with an IQ of 120 and access to Google could probably beat Watson at Jeopardy more often than not.
I mean, why does Watson get to have a database on not the human opponents?
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
February 7, 2013 at 11:13 am
Here’s how Watson works: The computer has been preloaded with information taken from encyclopedias, news articles and even the Internet. Other components include software that analyzes the question or clue and figures out what category — person, place or thing, for example— the clue is referring to, as well as software that can use the result of the clue analysis to generate a large number of candidate answers.
Rather than relying on preloaded databases that have been selected by human engineers with the anticipation that it will compete in a game of Jeopardy, I think it would be interesting to have a Watson clone start out "life" with a clean slate. Give it nothing but the sensory inputs and basic algorthms needed to interact with it's environment, and then let it learn experientially through classrooms, the internet, and human interactions. For example, when it gets an aswer wrong, it can learn from it's mistakes, gradually indexing and ranking it knowledge in terms of context and reliability.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
February 7, 2013 at 12:02 pm
I think some of the idea here is to see if we can do, or the DeepQA stuff can do, what Eric suggests. I thought I'd read the the medical version of Watson was kind of like this, learning over time as it interacted with doctors.
As far as Jeopardy goes, the computer was loaded with a database, just like humans are. They tried to mimic some fast learning. Once the show started, the computer had no connections to any databases other than what was in it's storage/mind.
I'm not sure this was a bad test.
February 7, 2013 at 12:32 pm
Reality appears infinite to me yet all rational viewpoints are finite. I'm not sure any statement can be factually true from all viewpoints. Transcending all viewpoints and becoming aperspectival will force one into Empiricism. Empiricism stomps Rationalism into the dirt.
Scientists are failing to rise to Empiricism. They perform tests and use the scientific method. But they reject results that contradict their hypothesis. Then they use induction to generalize a law to apply to all reality.
This is the state of humans. Everyone promotes their theory as truth even though it may only be 60 - 70% accurate. So, how can Deep Blue or some other computer perform experiments on reality? For humans this is a time and resource problem so we accept hearsay just to be able to function.
I think the real advantage of computers over humans is a lack of bias to facts or attachment to ego. Synthesizing all knowledge may be of value. I've read 1200 non-fiction books and now see the cracks in competing theories and gaping holes and deep flaws in many of them. I can tell what parts of the puzzle certain authors are lacking and how ignorance screwed up their theory.
We will always have an infinite need for knowledge. This won't be solved by a computer.
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