[Web4lib] Watson - IBM's "question-answering" machine (potential implications for libraries?)

[Steve Cramer]

I think the holy grail of AI would be an AI that could provide useful
responses to a question like this (what I have been working on this
hour):

"Hi Steve, I am a student in both BUS/ENT 300 and BUS/ ENT 336, but I
have a question concerning something I am trying to do for a local
nonprofit called the IRC as part of an internship that I'm doing:
they are interested in starting a water barrel business targeting
Guilford County in which they would make and sell water barrels to
help their homeless participants gain job skills, while also making
some money and promoting sustainability. They wanted me to write a
business plan for them but of course a feasibility analysis should
probably be done first...I was wondering if you have any advice as to
where I should begin my research on a feasibility analysis on this?"
(from an email)

Jeopardy? Come on, that's just Ready Reference -- i.e. 1990's
reference work. (-;

____________________________________________
Steve Cramer
Business & CARS Librarian
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
smcramer at uncg.edu , 336-256-0346
http://uncg.libguides.com/cramer


On Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 2:28 PM, Robert Balliot <rballiot at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The New York Times used my guide to train their editorial staff on how to
> search the web way back in 1997. My simplistic representation of boolean
> search strategies aligned with their need for training.
>
> The holy grail of AI that time *would* have been - We want a computer that
> can understand a question based on a broad range of archived human knowledge
> and provide the correct answer.
>
> But, isn't it really  'ground breaking'  based on old paradigms?
>
> Does that even seem ground breaking now given the information available from
> structured queries in Google?
>
>
> R. Balliot
> http://oceanstatelibrarian.com
>
> On Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 1:31 PM, B.G. Sloan <bgsloan2 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Robert Balliot said: "I don't think that matching answers to questions is
> > particularly ground breaking from an AI standpoint - coming up with the
> > questions would be".
> >
> > Well, technically, it IS coming up with questions...this is Jeopardy after
> > all. :-)
> >
> > Seriously, though, the Op Ed piece I cited calls this project
> > ground-breaking: "Open-domain question answering has long been one of the
> > great holy grails of artificial intelligence."
> >
> > A NY Times article from June also noted:
> >
> > "Technologists have long regarded this sort of artificial intelligence as a
> > holy grail, because it would allow machines to converse more naturally with
> > people, letting us ask questions instead of typing keywords. Software firms
> > and university scientists have produced question-answering systems for
> > years, but these have mostly been limited to simply phrased questions.
> > Nobody ever tackled 'Jeopardy!' because experts assumed that even for the
> > latest artificial intelligence, the game was simply too hard: the clues are
> > too puzzling and allusive, and the breadth of trivia is too wide."
> >
> > Bernie Sloan
> >
> > --- On Sun, 2/6/11, Robert Balliot <rballiot at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > From: Robert Balliot <rballiot at gmail.com>
> > Subject: Re: [Web4lib] Watson - IBM's "question-answering" machine
> > (potential implications for libraries?)
> > To: "B.G. Sloan" <bgsloan2 at yahoo.com>
> > Cc: web4lib at webjunction.org
> > Date: Sunday, February 6, 2011, 12:59 PM
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > I don't think that matching answers to questions is particularly ground
> > breaking from an AI standpoint - coming up with the questions would be.
> >
> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aboZctrHfK8
> >
> > R. Balliot
> > http://oceanstatelibrarian.com/contact.htm
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 12:26 PM, B.G. Sloan <bgsloan2 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > From the New York Times:
> >
> > "I.B.M.’s groundbreaking question-answering system, running on roughly
> > 2,500 parallel processor cores, each able to perform up to 33 billion
> > operations a second, is playing a pair of 'Jeopardy!' matches against the
> > show’s top two living players, to be aired on Feb. 14, 15 and 16."
> >
> > I'm definitely going to be tuning in to these Jeopardy episodes. I'm
> > curious to see how well "Watson" does against two smart humans.
> >
> > Can't help but wonder about long-term implications for libraries, say, ten
> > years down the road? What if we had sophisticated affordable
> > "question-answering" machines in ten years? What would that mean for
> > libraries?
> >
> > For some background, here's a link to an Op Ed piece in today's New York
> > Times: http://nyti.ms/hXaoWX
> >
> > Bernie Sloan
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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> >
> >
> >
> >
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