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

[Norma Jean Hewlett]

My point was just that there is nothing new about a computerized question
answering machine. Information companies and libraries have both been
working on this for a very long time.

Maybe in 20 years we'll all have access to something with Watson's power for
answering questions. When I was in library school, information sources on
the scale of Google or Wikipedia were only found in science fiction. Things
change very fast these days.

I'm watching it, but I'm not getting too excited. Not yet.
Jean Hewlett

On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 5:28 PM, Ernest Perez <ernest.r.perez at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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
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