[Web4lib] AI answering, IBM Watson, whatever...

[Ernest Perez]

Howdy, Webbers,

I'd made my original post on the tail end of the IBM Watson/AI-answering
topic in hopes of hearing more reactions about, "Exactly what is it that we
want a mythical Answer Wizard to do, anyway?"

I offered the information about my company's Web service, and their approach
from the view of linguistic analyzing, summarizing, condensing, and
organizing pertinent information relevant to a user query; of giving the
user the ability to stop when enough and appropriate information had been
delivered.

I have heard from one nearby academic library staff, where I asked the
Reference Director to examine our application. He responded that he and 5 of
the senior Reference staff tried out "iResearch Reporter," and felt they had
to give me negative feedback.

Their comments:

   - Felt that this made it "too easy" for the user.
   - That it would not be effective in teaching them evaluation of
   resources, in the proper methods of research, etc.
   - That it was questionable, maybe a bit like "buying a college degree."
   - That it didn't seem like a proper approach.
   - That because of this, they ethically couldn't give a positive reaction
   to this kind of text-mining application.

Whoa! Am I missing something here? I first associated with development of
our product after my long library career of helping people and organizations
find information, answer questions, solve problems, etc. Or as Mike Keonig
has phrased it, "Putting something away and being able to find it again."

In the past, I'd published two separate articles in Online Magazine about
this kind of software technology, describing this linguistic analysis
approach, and outlining the benefits as I saw them.

Coming from that view, I was surprised by the reactions of these six
academic librarians. I thought the purpose of what we've all been doing was
helping people effectively get the information we need.


Surprise...! Perhaps we may all want to raise ethical objections to such
questionable smoke & mirrors as IBM STAIRS (& Watson), Dialog, BRS, Google,
Bing, Information Access, Ebsco, etc.      8-)

Can't make things too darned easy, after all. Eh?

Cheers,
  --ernest
 ---------------------------
Ernest Perez, Ph.D.
Power Text Solutions, Inc.
http://www.irr-usa.com
ernest at irr-usa.com