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IBM's Watson Goes To College To Extend Abilities

Posted by samzenpus on from the welcome-back-students dept.

An anonymous reader writes in with news that IBM's Jeopardy winning supercomputer is going back to school"A modified version of the powerful IBM Watson computer system, able to understand natural spoken language and answer complex questions, will be provided to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, making it the first university to receive such a system. IBM announced Wednesday that the Watson system is intended to enable upstate New York-based RPI to find new uses for Watson and deepen the systems' cognitive computing capabilities - for example by broadening the volume, types, and sources of data Watson can draw upon to answer questions."

14 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. This bit bothers me for some reason by eksith · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "RPI will extend Watson's reasoning and cognitive abilities to finance, information technology, business analytics, and other areas, IBM says."

    The reason we go to school (at first at least) is really to learn how to learn. Which is what this is doing right now so when it has perfected the ability to learn, there's no real limit to what it can learn considering... well, brain in NAS, not skull.

    Are we sure this thing has a kill-switch somewhere?

    --
    If computers were people, I'd be a misanthrope.
    1. Re:This bit bothers me for some reason by Seumas · · Score: 2

      Watson still just seems like a fancy language parser that passes the query along to any number of plugged in databases, as far as I can tell. I don't feel nearly as impressed as I think everyone wants me to be.

    2. Re:This bit bothers me for some reason by TapeCutter · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Ok, I'll feed you. You're not impressed because (like my wife) you simply don't understand the difficulty of the problem. Watson's Jeopardy answers are in the form of a question and performed in realtime, it is not plugged into a database of questions, it extracts relationships from data via an algorithm (ie: it learns), different from how humans learn, but demonstrably superior to any human in terms of both speed and accuracy.

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
    3. Re:This bit bothers me for some reason by N0Man74 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Watson still just seems like a fancy language parser that passes the query along to any number of plugged in databases, as far as I can tell. I don't feel nearly as impressed as I think everyone wants me to be.

      "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim."- Edsger W. Dijkstra

    4. Re:This bit bothers me for some reason by tehcyder · · Score: 2

      "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim."- Edsger W. Dijkstra

      Proof that you can be a great Computer Scientist but a crap Philosopher.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    5. Re:This bit bothers me for some reason by HideyoshiJP · · Score: 2

      My only concern would be the transference of consciousness. Would it be my current "consciousness," or some sort of duplicate of me who thinks "oh, it worked!" but my current consciousness being destroyed at that point. How would one even know? Then again, how would we know that doesn't happen when we sleep? It's crazy stuff!

  2. They are behind the schedule by pegdhcp · · Score: 4, Funny

    As the system should have been able to gain self awareness in 29 August 1997, way behind. Typical software project management failure........

    1. Re:They are behind the schedule by ByOhTek · · Score: 2

      It uses neurons! They are mystical and MAGICAL things using organic compounds and water-dissolved ions that transmit electrical charges as conductors and semiconductors in order to process, store, and retrieve information... Watson uses plain boring metal and silicon and is in no way MAGICAL.

      *ahem* seriously speaking, the brain is probably still more flexible than Watson, but in general concept, Watson is probably a HUGE step in the right direction.

      --
      Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
    2. Re:They are behind the schedule by tehcyder · · Score: 2
      Something doesn't have to be magical to be incapable of being duplicated, smart arse. If you think that consciousness is a simple matter of information density, it is up to you to prove it.

      The proof of the AI pudding will be in the eating. The idea of the singularity, i.e. some massive step shift in complexity when machines suddenly acquire sentience is just a nice sci fi idea at the moment, whatever Kurzweil and his fan boys might say.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
  3. Re:Really? Extend? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah, and what will happen is that Watson will finish up at school with a burdensome student debt and next we'll have a Slashdot article about Watson working at Starbucks.

  4. Re:What is Toronto?????? under US citys by Internal+Modem · · Score: 2

    I bet it can at least spell "citys" correctly....

  5. Re:What is Toronto?????? under US citys by bws111 · · Score: 3, Informative

    I guess you missed the part where it was smart enough to know it didn't know the correct answer (it gave a very low confidence factor for the answer). And the IBM team explained why it gave that answer, which had nothing to do with not being 'smart enough'. The biggest factor was that they put very little weight on the category (US Cities), because the categories are often misleading.

  6. Unintended Consequences by rlwhite · · Score: 2

    Watson learns to pick up coeds.

  7. Re:First preschool, now college! by Rival · · Score: 2

    Before you even think of going to college you need to go to elementary, my dear Watson.