http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/science/17jeopardy-watson.html?emc=eta1
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IBM has been working on a computer that will go where most of us assumed computers would go: basically to that place where intelligent machines can understand and respond like humans. So, Ken Jennings, famous for having won 74 games in a row on Jeopardy, lost to "Watson," IBM's question answering machine, last month.
Watson (named for Thomas J. Watson, IBM's founder) was created to tackle games like Jeopardy that require encyclopedic recall AND the ability to untangle convoluted and often opaque statements. For some of us, we thought that this would have happened sooner but, at least, it's beginning to happen.
According to nytimes.com, IBM will be announcing today that it will collaborate with Columbia University and the University of Maryland to create a physician's assistant service that will allow doctors to query a cybernetic assistant.
I encourage you to click on The Watson Trivia Challenge (it's within the article attached) and play against Watson. I did and thoroughly enjoyed it. I quit while I was ahead 1-0!
Is this "HAL" ("2001: A Space Odyssey.")? I don't know but it's where one company is going with the potential for tomorrow's applications.
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Yeah saw this. Amazing, really. It's not as simple of course as having huge stores of data, it's being able to interpret odd clues and questions from Jeopardy correctly. Not a simple task.
ReplyDeleteCraig: you're right but, at least, it's a great beginning.
ReplyDeleteStarted out really good on the Challenge... then I got crushed!
ReplyDeletePoNCh: you probably did a lot better than I would have! :)
ReplyDelete