I'm sure when they say "understand", they mean it acts in some way comparable to what we do when we understand, not like it has the feeling of understanding the way people do. Just a metaphor. Also, "learn" can mean many different things, so this will just be somewhat like one or two of our many types of learning. andi
On May 23, 2013, at 12:32 AM, Mike Archbold <[email protected]> wrote: > Interesting. I would like to know a little more about the guts of > Watson. It seems like they've linked up some usually disparate > paradigms. It does look like as they go from application to > application domain they need to do some considerable fine tuning, and > they claim this help-center is easier than the medical field, which is > no wonder.... > > As we enter an age when some systems are getting close to flirting > with real strong AI, I just feel like we should watch out for people > dropping phrases like "the computer understands....". I mean, a > computer has always "understood" something. Even the lowly calculator > understands "+", for example. It comes down to how far along the > scale of understanding (which I don't think has ever been completely > defined anyway) the system in question really is. Otherwise, some > people may be taken into believing that HAL is really here. > > Mike Archbold > > On 5/22/13, Jim Bromer <[email protected]> wrote: >> Watson video: >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-gZkqCXOgs >> >> Some interesting comments. It was based on a system that took results from >> a number of probabilistic analytical methods that included natural language >> systems. Two things. Most nlp systems use highly structured relations >> between described parts of language as references for the statistical >> methods that they use. So Watson does not demonstrate how language may be >> learned. Secondly, as Watson solved the problem it had to handle a >> combinatorial explosion (of a manageable size). One of the problems that we >> have is that even if we were able to begin writing programs of that kind of >> complexity we still would not be able to develop them on our computers >> because the run time would be too slow. (However, I am struggling with >> relatively simple programming problems so I am not even sure that is a >> relevant issue for me.) >> >> I don't think that statistical methods are the way to go at this point. The >> only evidence from Watson that I have to offer is that Watson did not truly >> learn a language, much of the structure of a language was incorporated into >> the model that they used and the statistical methods were derived from >> corpuses derived from statistical studies. However, even though I would use >> statistical models in a more constrained way than the contemporary >> prevailing paradigms such as Watson, I would still use multiple paths to >> discovering possible 'solutions' and multiple paths to evaluate the possible >> 'solutions'. >> >> Jim Bromer >> >> >> >> ------------------------------------------- >> AGI >> Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now >> RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/11943661-d9279dae >> Modify Your Subscription: >> https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; >> Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com >> > > > ------------------------------------------- > AGI > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/3870391-266c919a > Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
