Watson Premieres on PBS Special

[why06]

Just watched the NOVA special on PBS, and it was awesome. They did a little background on how WATSON was developed and the immense challenges. I already have seen other videos on this so most of it was old info for me, but if you want to get a general idea of how WATSON will work Febuary 14,15,and 16 on Jeopardy, click here: NOVA | Smartest Machine on Earth


So discussion: Machine learning is going to blow up after this, especially funding for it. Watson proves that the best way to solve specific types of problems in with large data sets, and just throwing questions at it, but real life isn't a game show, there's hardly ever a right answer, and in medical technology if Watson gets an answer wrong that could be someone's life at stake. I see AI taking off in very dedicated fields in the next few years. I think the next challenge will be things like merging A.I. together. Gaining knowledge from multiple disciplines so an A.I. that can experiment with applying patterns it sees in one case to another broad case to create new insight and not simply learn old knowledge.

Also I think programmers should realize if Watson can learn to answer question it can learn other things. Writing code will be one of those things I think. There are millions of source codes, an A.I. can learn from all of them, this combined with an DeepQA A.I. (the merging A.I. thing I mentioned earlier) would create a Programming A.I. able to create code as an answer to a question.

So I think next decade, lots of specific A.I.'s like Watson, but in the next A.I. merger will become a bigger and bigger thing, as programmers try to get multiple complex things to work together.

Lastly I think a lot of people fear computers and A.I., that they might take over jobs. Programmers will never be replaced by A.I., because ultimately only humans are good at making things for humans. People thought calculators would make math obsolete, and it may for must of us, but for the mathematicians a computer has a long long way to go. And as A.I. grows so will humans, the human condition has always evolved. So while I feel A.I. may grow exponentially and outstrip humans its meant to serve are conditions which are constantly changing. In 10,000 years we went from fire and stones to electricity and computers, and things will continue to change, but the best judge of the human condition will always be humans, so I don't see robots taking over, if your feeling threatened then it's because your no longer growing.

I think a lot of people have this notion like you go to college once and that's all you need to ever do. Unfortunately this isn't the case anymore. We must be learning everyday, but I feel people will eventually adapt to this lifetime student philosophy, because knowledge will become more easily accessible and more valuable then money or power.

[Lyoto Machida]

A new generation beggins ! XDDD