Ali Kleit
English 1020
Assignment Two
03/07/2013
Man Vs Machine
Are computers and “question answering” machines the answers to our
future? Who is Watson? Is he a Man or Machine? “For the last three years, I.B.M.
scientists have been developing what they expect will be the world’s most advanced
“question answering” machine, able to understand a question posed in everyday human
elocution, natural language, as computer scientists call it and respond with a precise,
factual answer. In other words, it must do more than what search engines like Google
and Bing do, which is merely point to a document where you might find the answer.”
(Thompson 2010, Paragraph 2).
I.B.M (“International Business Machines”) is at the top of its industry in creating,
manufacturing, and distributing computer software and hardware technology services.
I.B.M is has gained massive publicity for creating such “artificial intelligence” to high
boundaries by answering questions and controlling decision-making situations faster
than many intelligent humans. In 2007 a computer system called, Deep Blue created by
I.B.M, was put to test against a world champion, Garry Kasparov, in a game of chess and
won 3 out of 2 times (Wiki). The system was created with a number of mathematical
situations and thousands of mastered games in chess to face the world champion. After
confidently creating a winning mathematical computer system, I.B.M wanted to
advance their technology and elevated it with an idea to push to higher boundaries,
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Ali Kleit
English 1020
Assignment Two
03/07/2013
since “playing chess really well, didn’t translate to real-world business problems and so
produced little direct profit for I.B.M.” In order to create even more publicity and
revenue after their first project, I.B.M formulated an idea of trying to create a “question
answering” machine, engaged with tons of information, documents and algorithms to
craft the best possible solutions and answers. The machine was to be broadcasted
against top competitors in a game of Jeopardy on national television. His name was
Watson. (Which was derived from the last name of Thomas Sr and Jr, who were the
leading men of I.B.M for over 50 years.) (Thompson 2010, last paragraph.)
In this article Thompson speaks about the new technology of computer
answering machines and how Watson came about. After fabricating Deep Blue, I.B.M
started building the ideas of creating a super-answering computer, but didn’t have the
computer memory or speeds to reach such feats. The capabilities to save such
documents in a computer were limited in resources, Thompson indicates, until
technology reached the millennium. Computer power, computer products and software
became cheaper and most types of documents were transferred into digital form.
During the millennium these tools helped I.B.M create “several linguistic tools that
helped computers puzzle through language like rhyming dictionaries, bulky synonym
finders and “classifiers” that recognized the parts of speech” (Thompson 2010), which
furthered Watson’s creation. Nonetheless, Watson still needed adjustments in
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Ali Kleit
English 1020
Assignment Two
03/07/2013
algorithms to speed up the process of a quicker trigging buzzer and answering questions
if the probability of the answer, being correct, was over 80% percent.
The author of this article, Clive Thompson, who is a writer with The New York
Times (who frequently writes about science and technology), was on site during
Watson’s testing sessions. Watson would verse pervious competitors of Jeopardy in a
simulated version of the game. I.B.M set up a similar set with a in game host, Todd Alan
Crain, who played a newscaster on the Onion News Network, to first test out the
capabilities, flaws, and errors of Watson. During the simulation Watson would receive
the questions through text readings and try to construct the best possible answer in
question form (as all answers must be presented in Jeopardy.) The results in the first
few simulations were astonishing, Watson was coming up the answers that didn’t have
anything to do with the question and would lose a few matches to competitors that
were not to the caliber of the potential world champions that he would verse during the
nationally televised Jeopardy game. In every situation Watson would endure an error or
blemish David Ferrucci, a senior manager for its Semantic Analysis Integration
department with I.B.M (Thompson 2010), would jot it down to advance Watson in later
simulations. Ferrucci is an “artificial-intelligence researcher” and specialized in question
answering systems, he was the top dog during the Watson project (Thompson 2010). In
the article Ferrucci speaks about the idea of building a super computer to play in
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Ali Kleit
English 1020
Assignment Two
03/07/2013
Jeopardy as a tough task to handle, with the structure of the how the game is developed
and how the questions are constructed. Saying, “The reaction was basically, ‘No, it’s too
hard, forget it, no way can you do it,’ “ when first approached with the idea. During
Ferrucci task to develop Watson, he would add as much information and documents
into the machine to master his answering abilities for all questions. As each simulation
and game progresses, Ferrucci would add the necessary improvements such as more
algorithms, documents and needed information to “fine-tune” Watson for later games.
Thompson specifies that, Ferrucci was never a huge fan of Jeopardy, but doesn’t want to
see Watson fail because he may lose face and publicity on national television for I.B.M.
Thompson writes about his experience during his stay with I.B.M and attending
Watson’s performances against former players on Jeopardy. He states that the
technology and major advances of I.B.M will change the course of many companies in
the near future. The article contributes to the many faults and peaks of how questions
are answered, within the computers mainframe of documents and ideas inputted into
its system. Thompson explains that, “one important thing that makes Watson so
different is its enormous speed and memory. Taking advantage of I.B.M.’s
supercomputing heft, Ferrucci’s team input millions of documents into Watson to build
up its knowledge base including, he says, “books, reference material, any sort of
dictionary, thesauri, folksonomies, taxonomies, encyclopedias, any kind of reference
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English 1020
Assignment Two
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material you can imagine getting your hands on or licensing. Novels, bibles, plays”
(Thompson 2010.) The article also presents that I.B.M’s head honcho of research labs,
John Kelly, would like to imagine Watson in hospitals calling him, “A Watson M.D if you
will,” allowing the computer to make rapidly quick medical decisions about surgery’s in
the E.R based on procedures and medicines fed into it’s computer system. Kelly also
says they intend on having Watson available in the banking and transportation
industries, as well as in virtual call centers answering questions for customers in quick
speedy fashion.
In the article Thompson explains the use of Watson can “provoke nervous
concerns too.” He states that many Wall Street firms today use a, “millisecond trading”
computers to notice and react faster to stocks that may be falling or shifting and sell on
stocks faster than a human would realize it may be collapsing (Thompson 2010.) He says
that these computers may be the reason for the stock market plunge of the spring in
2010. (Thompson 2010). In the other instances, some scientists suggest that, Watson,
may have a grasp about facts and conclusion of many answers, but how would Watson
face up against real life situations. Thompson writes about one computer scientist
named, Stephen Wolfram, who developed a system called “Wolfram Alpha”, (“a
question-answering engine that can do mathematical calculations about the real world”
by comparing different populations in two major cities), believes the Watson system
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Ali Kleit
English 1020
Assignment Two
03/07/2013
does not relay real life answers and that a “computer won’t learn that stuff just by
encoding English language texts, as Watson does.” “Wolfram Alpha” took years to
design and used “hand-crafted databases” to create such a search engine.
During one of Thompson’s observation of a Jeopardy simulation game the
category was “I.B.M.” Thompson says, “The questions seemed like no-brainers for the
computer (for example, “Though it’s gone beyond the corporate world, I.B.M. stands for
this” — “International Business Machines”). But for some reason, Watson performed
poorly.” Watson would think up answers that didn’t have anything to do with the
question and have no confidence of his answers even though the category pertain to his
developer and creator I.B.M. But on the final question of the category that was worth
$2000 it read, “It’s the last name of father and son Thomas Sr. and Jr., who led I.B.M. for
more than 50 years.” Thompson goes on to say “This time the computer pounced. “Who
is Watson?” and the crowd erupted in cheers.”
Argument. Will Watson be our first computer President of the United States?
Can he run the Senate? Will he lead as the Supreme Commander against North Korea?
Computers and several technological advances have taken over the world in the past
few years. Today we have Siri answering our questions, setting up our tasks and
reminders. Tomorrow we will have computers and technologies running our firms and
making decisions for us based on their calculations and decision-making. Will there be
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Ali Kleit
English 1020
Assignment Two
03/07/2013
any jobs left for us in the future. Can we put a limit on technology? What happens if all
computers fail?
In the year 2000 (Y2K) the world was afraid of computers insufficient memory
crashing due to the double 00 effect on all date and time logs. Several people were
implying there would not only be computer damage but also economic damage. The
issue was that all computers were using a two-digit data form instead of four. This is
where many people thought systems would fail, due to the lack of computers thinking
ability to tell the difference between the year 2000 and 1900 (Quetek 2000.) The scare
settled and created a wide spread of panic throughout the whole world as the New Year
ticked down to double 00. A chain of people were lining up in supermarkets, gas stations
and grocery stores staking up on piles of items necessary to keep them alive if the
disastrous memory on computers failed. The result of the issue was not catastrophic
and people went on with their lives. Even though the issue of computers hadn’t failed,
the fact of the matter is the consequential factors, as any person would pay during the
years needed to recover after systems fail. The type of economic woes we would endure
could last over 5 years of absolute chaos and can be similar to a depression. John Kelly
would see the world, in 10 years, as being Watson controlled in all parts of life; what
would happen if Bank Watson would malfunction and lose all bank mortgage documents
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Ali Kleit
English 1020
Assignment Two
03/07/2013
or send money to wrong clients and customers. Watson would never be punishable by
law if mistakes were made in any kind of setting.
In the case of developing a Watson M.D. there are issues in putting trust in
technology to determine a persons fate. For instance, when a doctor is making rational
decisions for a quick surgery, they base it on new and old medicine, new procedures and
past experiences in surgeries to make their determination. Watson clearly cannot do the
hands on work experience that everyday M.D.’s are challenged when in surgery. Each
doctor may face a similar problem in other surgeries and may use it in another to either
help or divert from using techniques to keep a human alive. That is a one major problem
Watson may encounter, unless he can miraculously pull the “look ma no hands” trick
and starts experiencing the real deal with robot surgical hands. With this issue at hand
another argument, as Watson M.D. is a misstep of choosing a specific surgery over
another. Watson, with the information given, may consider an open-heart surgery;
rather when the entire time the patient only needed a blood transfusion. If computers
are to take over medicines decision-making abilities, during situations or wrong
surgeries, doctors will lose their confidence in making vast decisions while holding the
scalpel. Will Watson be at fault or experience jail time, for a death during surgery?
Maybe lose his job?
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Ali Kleit
English 1020
Assignment Two
03/07/2013
Another argument and reason why computers should only be in limited use, is
the fact that human’s jobs are being over run by machines. Since the turn of the
millennium technology is starting to eliminate lower and higher skilled jobs in many
forms of operation. Being a garbage man, a pharmacist technician, or even a lawyer,
many say any jobs are replaceable. Garbage men today are losing jobs to well
technological garage trucks that only require a one-man team to operate. That means
no more garbage men hanging from the back of their dump trucks waiving goodbye as
they pass you in the morning. Pharmacies today are establishing new dispensing
technologies that will fill, count and tag prescriptions without a human in sight. Are
pharmacists being paid too much to give out medicine and advice? In an article in The
New York Times issue of “More Jobs Predicted for Machines, Not People,”(written by
Steve Lohr) two authors by the name of Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAffe have been
researching the recent war vs. machines. The two authors argue that automation is,
“Faster, cheaper computers and increasingly clever software” and “are giving machines
capabilities that were once thought to be distinctively human, like understanding
speech, translating from one language to another and recognizing patterns. So
automation is rapidly moving beyond factories to jobs in call centers, marketing and
sales — parts of the services sector, which provides most jobs in the economy” (LOHR
2011.) Another economist in the article that Lohr quotes was John Maynard Keynes and
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Ali Kleit
English 1020
Assignment Two
03/07/2013
warned of a “new disease” that he termed “technological unemployment,” the inability
of the economy to create new jobs faster than jobs were lost to automation.
The use of technology today is being tested to its highest limits. Creation of
question answering machines such as Watson, other products including Google, which
are testing out a new robot driving system without the assistance of a human while in
transit, all products that make an easier life for humans but no real life to live. Will there
be any need for taxi drivers with Google robots. People will be dependent on computers
making decisions skills and ability to complete tasks, while they take the time off. The
only technological advances that should be implemented are ones that will advance our
human knowledge of new things, in and out of our world. Technology needs to help
cultivate a better cure for diseases and epidemics and not to try and make decisions.
The more power and decision-making skills we frame into a computers system the faster
humans won’t be needed to run this world.
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Ali Kleit
English 1020
Assignment Two
03/07/2013
Work Cited
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/magazine/20Computert.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://www.quetek.com/dictionary/y2k-scare.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Blue
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/technology/economists-see-more-jobs-formachines-not-people.html?_r=0
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