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

[B.G. Sloan]

I'm obviously not going to change Robert Balliot's mind about this, so I won't continue to try. Let's just say I think "Watson" is more ground-breaking than Robert thinks...
 
Interesting NY Times Magazine article about this from last summer:
 
http://nyti.ms/idJlpe
 
I know I'll be watching Jeopardy a week from tomorrow. :-)
 
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, 2:28 PM



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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