Comments on: In The News 3-9-11

By: Mike Lundberg

Mike Lundberg — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 00:58:51 +0000

Watson is always “flying by the seat of his pants”. That is why he can come up with really outlandish wrong answers. The programmers weighted the “Catagory Name” lighter than the clue information because of the tendency to have puns, odd references, or just strange stuff there. Watson couldn’t be prompted on what might be important or absolute in the title box. Alex can tell the humans things like “All questions will end in letter E” or whatever applies. The handlers could not give that kind of help to Watson, he most likely thought all US cities are in North America, Toronto is a North American city, maybe it could be an answer. The probability numbers were low for it and he did say something like “I’m taking a guess, is it Toronto?”(Not exact words but what I remember).
Watson can synthise new information by taking clues from the hints, from previous right answers, the catagory name and the contents of his database. As he plays he learns and can make new rules for himself beyound what the programmers gave him.

By: tony courtney

tony courtney — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 16:31:51 +0000

Ms. Lori,
Loved your article about Computers being able to read and respond to Human feelings and emotions… I agree it is in the very near future… don’t believe it will take until 2025… thanks for a great article… It was “ACES”…
I can tell you love your work…It shows… Keep up the great work!!!
Admiringly,
Tony C.

By: Robert

Robert — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 07:05:50 +0000

I liked this comment. It got me thinking about artificial intelligence and why people can never be replaced by machines. Machines are only as good as we program them to be, even with artificial emotions, they have no souls or heart to guide them. Like the Scarecrow, if I only had Brain, or the Tin Man if I only had heart! They will never be human; only human like.

By: Jonathan Gardner

Jonathan Gardner — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 05:07:37 +0000

Apparently DARPA has never heard of Cylons…