They fed the Urban Dictionary into Watson, and then had to delete it because it started cursing at them.
Getting supercomputers like IBM's Watson to understand slang may be the final frontier in machine intelligence.
Eric Brown of IBM inside Watson
FORTUNE -- The scientific test to gauge if a computer can "think" is surprisingly simple: Can it engage in small talk? The so-called Turing test says a computer capable of carrying on a natural conversation without giving itself away can be considered intelligent. So far, no machine has made the cut.
Eric Brown, a research scientist with IBM (IBM), is charged with changing that. The 45-year-old is the brains behind Watson, the supercomputer that pummeled human opponents on Jeopardy! in 2011. The biggest difficulty for Brown, as tutor to a machine, hasn't been making Watson know more but making it understand subtlety, especially slang. "As humans, we don't realize just how ambiguous our communication is," he says.
MORE: Will.i.am: Corporate America's hit machine
Case in point: Two years ago, Brown attempted to teach Watson the Urban Dictionary. The popular website contains definitions for terms ranging from Internet abbreviations like OMG, short for "Oh, my God," to slang such as "hot mess."
But Watson couldn't distinguish between polite language and profanity -- which the Urban Dictionary is full of. Watson picked up some bad habits from reading Wikipedia as well. In tests it even used the word "bullshit" in an answer to a researcher's query.
Ultimately, Brown's 35-person team developed a filter to keep Watson from swearing and scraped the Urban Dictionary from its memory. But the trial proves just how thorny it will be to get artificial intelligence to communicate naturally. Brown is now training Watson as a diagnostic tool for hospitals. No knowledge of OMG required.
Unfortunately Watson no longer knows what a shart is.
Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.
-Alexander Hamilton
No longer will they say, “He’s going to end up flipping burgers.” Because now, robots are taking even these ignobly esteemed jobs. Alpha machine from Momentum Machines cooks up a tasty burger with all the fixins. And it does it with such quality and efficiency it’ll produce “gourmet quality burgers at fast food prices.”
With a conveyor belt-type system the burgers are freshly ground, shaped and grilled to the customer’s liking. And only when the burger’s finished cooking does Alpha slice the tomatoes and pickles and place them on the burger as fresh as can be. Finally, the machine wraps the burger up for serving.
And while you fret over how many people you invited to the barbecue, Alpha churns out a painless 360 hamburgers per hour.
San Francisco-based Momentum Machines claim that using Alpha will save a restaurant enough money that it pays for itself in a year, and it enables the restaurant to spend about twice as much on ingredients as they normally would – so they can buy the gourmet stuff. Saving money with Alpha is pretty easy to imagine. You don’t even need cashiers or servers. Customers could just punch in their order, pay, and wait at a dispensing window.
“There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent? Take a look at what we’ve done, too.” - Donald J. Trump, President of the USA The Kushner sh*t is greasy - Stevie B.
Even before the Jeopardy! success, IBM began to hatch bigger plans for Watson and there are few areas more in need of supercharged decision-support than health care. Doctors and nurses are drowning in information with new research, genetic data, treatments and procedures popping up daily. They often don’t know what to do, and are guessing as well as they can. WellPoint’s chief medical officer Samuel Nussbaum said at the press event today that health care pros make accurate treatment decisions in lung cancer cases only 50% of the time (a shocker to me). Watson, since being trained in this medical specialty, can make accurate decisions 90% of the time. Patients, of course, need 100% accuracy, but making the leap from being right half the time to being right 9 out of ten times will be a huge boon for patient care. The best part is the potential for distributing the intelligence anywhere via the cloud, right at the point of care. This could be the most powerful tool we’ve seen to date for improving care and lowering everyone’s costs via standardization and reduced error. Chris Coburn, the Cleveland Clinic’s executive director for innovations, said at the event that he fully expects Watson to be widely deployed wherever the Clinic does business by 2020.
May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
Even before the Jeopardy! success, IBM began to hatch bigger plans for Watson and there are few areas more in need of supercharged decision-support than health care. Doctors and nurses are drowning in information with new research, genetic data, treatments and procedures popping up daily. They often don’t know what to do, and are guessing as well as they can. WellPoint’s chief medical officer Samuel Nussbaum said at the press event today that health care pros make accurate treatment decisions in lung cancer cases only 50% of the time (a shocker to me). Watson, since being trained in this medical specialty, can make accurate decisions 90% of the time. Patients, of course, need 100% accuracy, but making the leap from being right half the time to being right 9 out of ten times will be a huge boon for patient care. The best part is the potential for distributing the intelligence anywhere via the cloud, right at the point of care. This could be the most powerful tool we’ve seen to date for improving care and lowering everyone’s costs via standardization and reduced error. Chris Coburn, the Cleveland Clinic’s executive director for innovations, said at the event that he fully expects Watson to be widely deployed wherever the Clinic does business by 2020.
Came to post this. Thans for beating me to it, Col Sun- Sama.
Implications of this( potential):
There's your death panel. Who you gonna believe; your misplaced hopes or a machine twice as accurate as a human?
This thing will get out as infrastructure ,uniformity of connections and protocols improve.
I prefer Wilsom's last name. Skynet.
One of these days, we're going to look back and just laugh our heads off about the government being out to get us.
it would certainly get interesting if the machine moves beyond allocating scarce resources for the sick into treating living humans as resources, it is but a minor step.
sorry mr toilet cleaner you have precious organs of a rare blood type which are needed by a brilliant scientist, its for the greater good.
the point being that it will be humans and human politics which sets the priority judgements in this computer - this kind of ai isnt capable of doing that step.
noddy wrote:it would certainly get interesting if the machine moves beyond allocating scarce resources for the sick into treating living humans as resources, it is but a minor step.
sorry mr toilet cleaner you have precious organs of a rare blood type which are needed by a brilliant scientist, its for the greater good.
the point being that it will be humans and human politics which sets the priority judgements in this computer - this kind of ai isnt capable of doing that step.
Those sorts of priority assumptions are just a matter of expanding the parameters and your data set.
There will be a Deus Ex Machina moment where we realize all of the major decisions are being made by machines. We are already there. Most people don't realize it. The thing is, human beings have already submitted to the machine. We inhabit nodes of control within the system. As people decide human beings are too inefficient to take part in the important work of making decisions about what's best for humanity, people will be slowly replaced in those positions of authority.
Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.
-Alexander Hamilton
noddy wrote:it would certainly get interesting if the machine moves beyond allocating scarce resources for the sick into treating living humans as resources, it is but a minor step.
sorry mr toilet cleaner you have precious organs of a rare blood type which are needed by a brilliant scientist, its for the greater good.
the point being that it will be humans and human politics which sets the priority judgements in this computer - this kind of ai isnt capable of doing that step.
Those sorts of priority assumptions are just a matter of expanding the parameters and your data set.
There will be a Deus Ex Machina moment where we realize all of the major decisions are being made by machines. We are already there. Most people don't realize it. The thing is, human beings have already submitted to the machine. We inhabit nodes of control within the system. As people decide human beings are too inefficient to take part in the important work of making decisions about what's best for humanity, people will be slowly replaced in those positions of authority.
noddy wrote:it would certainly get interesting if the machine moves beyond allocating scarce resources for the sick into treating living humans as resources, it is but a minor step.
sorry mr toilet cleaner you have precious organs of a rare blood type which are needed by a brilliant scientist, its for the greater good.
the point being that it will be humans and human politics which sets the priority judgements in this computer - this kind of ai isnt capable of doing that step.
Those sorts of priority assumptions are just a matter of expanding the parameters and your data set.
There will be a Deus Ex Machina moment where we realize all of the major decisions are being made by machines. We are already there. Most people don't realize it. The thing is, human beings have already submitted to the machine. We inhabit nodes of control within the system. As people decide human beings are too inefficient to take part in the important work of making decisions about what's best for humanity, people will be slowly replaced in those positions of authority.
oh well, least it will be consistent
Maybe there is an optimal configuration for the Bureaucratron, where it maximizes benefit while minimizing harm.
We are literally building ourselves a giant automated crib.
Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.
-Alexander Hamilton
I am far more concerned about a continued outsourcing of decision making until it is a legacy system not actually receiving much input from human controllers. As it is the machine is largely goingto be controlled by a small elite.
Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.
-Alexander Hamilton
Enki wrote:I am far more concerned about a continued outsourcing of decision making until it is a legacy system not actually receiving much input from human controllers. As it is the machine is largely goingto be controlled by a small elite.
the humanist mantra is harm minimization.. if you notice the way humans turn nuanced symbols into bedrock principles well... so it will be.
Enki wrote:I am far more concerned about a continued outsourcing of decision making until it is a legacy system not actually receiving much input from human controllers. As it is the machine is largely goingto be controlled by a small elite.
the humanist mantra is harm minimization.. if you notice the way humans turn nuanced symbols into bedrock principles well... so it will be.
In my writing I am exploring the idea of outlawing death.
Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.
-Alexander Hamilton
Yeh, yer boned. Anything that can be advanced in the name of safety, wins. We made tech to preserve us, it's our teeth and claws. We cannot deny it, even when it denies and supersedes the very reason for constructing it.
I for one welcome our new machine overlords. In its very construction, it remembers us to the stars, as our 3D printing remembers the flint tools of Austrolopithicus.
Yeh, yer boned. Anything that can be advanced in the name of safety, wins. We made tech to preserve us, it's our teeth and claws. We cannot deny it, even when it denies and supersedes the very reason for constructing it.
I for one welcome our new machine overlords. In its very construction, it remembers us to the stars, as our 3D printing remembers the flint tools of Austrolopithicus.
Selah.
The trap here is that a single system will always learn and act in the same way. So new treatments would never be recommended unless real breathing doctors practiced on new victims...er patients.
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
Federal authorities step up efforts to license surveillance aircraft for law enforcement and other uses, amid growing privacy concerns.
I'm wondering how long it will take to make shooting one down an assault on a law enforcement officer. You can be charged for assaulting a police dog as assaulting a police officer so why not drones? Is evading one considered a criminal act in the future?
Federal authorities step up efforts to license surveillance aircraft for law enforcement and other uses, amid growing privacy concerns.
I'm wondering how long it will take to make shooting one down an assault on a law enforcement officer. You can be charged for assaulting a police dog as assaulting a police officer so why not drones?
Indeed. My guess is that it is only a matter of time.
Hoosiernorm wrote:Is evading one considered a criminal act in the future?
If you have nothing to hide, then why are you hiding seems to be the new norm.
May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
Federal authorities step up efforts to license surveillance aircraft for law enforcement and other uses, amid growing privacy concerns.
I'm wondering how long it will take to make shooting one down an assault on a law enforcement officer. You can be charged for assaulting a police dog as assaulting a police officer so why not drones? Is evading one considered a criminal act in the future?
No, but felony malicious mischief is probable if you shoot one down. I can see useful purposes for drones in law enforcement and don't believe they would necessarily become like those big white balloons in "The Prisoner". Find some lost people, intercept some drug running zodiacs and illegal immigrants and public perception will change.
“Christ has no body now but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks among His people to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses His creation.”
Hoosiernorm wrote:I don't want so much surveillance that I have to be afraid of myself. I think that's what it really boils down to.
Between the lack of source coordination and the number of analysts with the fund of knowledge to make sense of all that information I bet it will be a while before Hoosiernorm shows up on America's Funniest Drone Videos.
“Christ has no body now but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks among His people to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses His creation.”
