64 thoughts on “Watson Beats Humans in Practice Bout”
“I think if you have any feeling for anyone or any greater cause you are not a zombie.”
How do I know I have feeling? I observe the tears, the trembling of my lips, the heaving sobs that come into my body when I contemplate my wife and what she means to me. But a p-zombie would react in exactly the same way.
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The interesting thing about this is: I believe it’s quite possible to build a machine and program it in such a way that it believes itself to have an inner life. We couldn’t yet build something that can act convincingly like a human, but giving a machine a way to perceive something it cannot articulate is easy–the program I write that adds 2 and 3 and spits out 5 has no intellectual understanding of arithmetic, it merely has a value in a register that, because I have programmed it to have a small capacity for self-observation, it can see it also associates with the sum of 4 and 1. I have chosen not to give it insight into arithmetic, but because I have given it this capacity to spot patterns it has this inexplicable feeling that there is something linking the couplet 2 and 3 to the couplet 1 and 4. You might think that sounds a bit like our esthetic judgement. We may experience a feeling of connectedness without being able to explain it.
Is this all there is to human emotions. I don’t know. Does anybody?
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Tony S.,
I hope I am not a zombie. I think if you have any feeling for anyone or any greater cause you are not a zombie.
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There is a concept in philosophy known as the “zombie”. Unlike the shambling, shuffling brain-eating creatures of the Romero films, these philosophical zombies (p-zombies) are like you and me in every respect, except they have no inner life.
The clever thing about p-zombies is that they act *exactly* like you and me, but inside there is only machinery to keep the pretence going. If a p-zombie sees a lovely sunset it will react exactly like a human would. If you poke it with a stick it will react as if in pain. But inside there is nothing.
I have often wondered if there is any way in which I could tell whether or not I am a p-zombie. As yet I have not found any such test. I suspect that the idea itself is a misconception. Perhaps there is no such thing as an inner life, and all humans are zombies. Or perhaps some of us are and some of us are not. Or perhaps we don’t understand enough about the inner life to be able to distinguish it from its zombie facsimile.
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Blouise,
That is a neat story about how science and ingenuity allowed your granddaughter to have a promising future. Who knows, maybe she will sasve someone else with her mind and creativity down the road.
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Well, I’m disagreeing with what I think are false characterizations of the difference between what machines can do and what humans do. As a human I certainly do express emotions, but I think machines can do the same. And of course referring to Watson’s actions as “regurgitation” would certainly get any programmer a little hot under the collar.
Machines don’t seem to feel emotions but I don’t find that surprising. I’m not sure we really understand yet what we mean when we say we feel something. We do know that the supposedly subjective response to human physical beauty can be fairly well predicted by spacial relationships in a face, and of course one could tie any such set of characteristics to a register, so that a pretty face produces a high value. If the machine associates such a value with the word “happy” does that mean it experiences pleasure on seeing a pretty face? Perhaps not, but it might well believe so and tell you so.
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M. Wrytter and Tony Sidaway,
It’s interesting to note the defense of Watson when no real attack was made upon its wondrous being. Emotion perhaps?
Not to worry gentlemen, I am indeed in awe of those whose curiosity and desire to better the lives of their fellow human beings have led us into this astounding and constantly achieving present. The telephone as a tool to help the deaf is now a device very few can do without. My granddaughter lives today when only twenty years ago her hampered heart was an infant’s death sentence thanks to the genius and hard work of those who have much in common with the developers of Watson.
Will Watson eventually be able to experience emotion, judgement, inspiration? If the humans can figure out how to do it then I’m sure Watson will. After all … look what Mozart did with mere notes, what Joyce did with mere words, what Plato did with mere thoughts, what Bosch did with mere paint, and what Walt Disney did with mere stick figures. Here’s to a future Watson outshining them all.
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I only have one question about this Watson machine. Is there an App for my IPad?
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Mespo wrote
The point is that Watson can regurgitate data but not judgment. For example, knowing when to speak and when not to is a distinctly human judgment that could very well decide the outcome of a situation, especially when dealing with another human.
I’ll concede the broader point, but Watson does “know” when to speak and develops confidence in its answers and reasoning as it goes along. Part of the clever design for the Jeopardy game is that Watson will promote and demote lines of thinking among solution algorithms based on their real-time accuracy in certain categories. Watson learns quickly what solution approach best applies to the questions before it. The more questions are asked in tricky categories the better Watson will be at scoring confidence in its answers. You can see the confidence in answers superimposed on the screen in this video:
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“You could have described the scene in the local pub in such a manner as to call up a recognition within me of the emotions you wished me to feel … perhaps loneliness, or warmth. Instead you chose to give me the bare bones and thus you passed the simple Turing Test.”
I’m unaware of any emotions specific to the place. I could, I suppose, have overlaid my account with words that invoke an emotion, but that would also have been a fairly mechanical exercise and a rather dishonest one in the circumstances. The truth is I felt only an intellectual curiosity about what it might mean to have more to report than I, the human being on the spot reporting on the thread, feel. I felt only what I reported. I like the place but it isn’t the kind of venue that inspires strong emotions.
Do you believe that a machine could not express emotions it does not feel? I’m pretty sure they can. We humans readily assign emotions to stick men, so it isn’t a difficult trick.
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mespo: “The point is that Watson can regurgitate data but not judgment. For example, knowing when to speak and when not to is a distinctly human judgement that could very well decide the outcome of a situation, especially when dealing with another human.”
You may be surprised to hear that I think such judgement is exactly the kind of thing that can be reliably achieved with the kind of statistical analysis Watson uses in understanding and responding to natural language. It isn’t just regurgitating data, but analyzing complex human verbal signals, contextualizing them, and deciding what answer to give. According to the linked report, in the test game it had a 100% success rate in doing all that in real time and comfortably beat two champions at the game. That’s very convincing when you consider it didn’t have an assistant around tweaking it to decide whether, say, “duck” in this context means a feathered fowl, a zero score at cricket, or a bobbing motion of the head.
Its judgement seems to be pretty good.
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culheath: How about Mr Data?
ok, I’ll admit, he’s definitely got some stuff…
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Blouise, thank you! Our sour politics aside, 2011 remains a wondrous time to be alive.
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If Blousie your in awe of the men and women who created Watson, is it that much of a stretch to perhaps consider the fact that the day will arrive when Watson & et al will be able to voice human feeling and needs & concerns perhaps along with other such human qualities?? The simple device we call the ” telephone ” started out as well a ” simple ” device, yet today a round a hundred years later what do we have and how far has it advance then. Did anyone know when it was first created that it would have such an endearing impact on society as it does. I think not. So think of Watson what you will today as tomorrow and down the road we will all think, ” What has God wrought.” Thank you Samuel Morse and equal contributer to our present condition.
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James in LA is totally blowing my mind … in a good way
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AY,
(I used to like to visit Fort Marcy Park … we should email about this as I can’t understand why someone would want to murder him … I don’t want to hijack the thread)
Buddha can’t drink liquor so we’ll have to concoct something special for his sustenance … I wonder if he’ll feel safe in our culinary hands …
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Mespo7272, at best we can say is, “not yet.” Our universe is finite. Ergo, the number of variables in the equation governing when and when not to speak are likewise finite. As are all processes of the mind. Watson teaches us quite clearly that what was not quantifyable yesterday is today. Watson did not emerge from the Ether; it is based on a long evolution of computers, each one needed to make the next. If we set aside the need to “feel special,” the universe takes on greater harmonic vibrancy.
Wisdom suggests we then prepare for our First Contact moment, when we will be compelled to decide the 3/5ths question on a machine that passes all tests, even emotional ones, to the extent any citizen of the universe would be required to pass them. By that time, many humans will be walking around with elective implants that will mimic organs, and extend existence, mostly into cyberspoace, so the lines are going to be blurry indeed.
We’ll know it when it arrives. It will be the day that unplugging the damnned thing is utterly unthinkable. Such as unplugging the routers which allow me access to the Internet, for example.
And now, we Converge.
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Blouise,
Sometimes, if its intentional it can be made to look like an accident….ask….someone that words for the cia….vince foster….
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AY,
Yeah … but it’s our best defense … I get tired of pleading insanity
“I think if you have any feeling for anyone or any greater cause you are not a zombie.”
How do I know I have feeling? I observe the tears, the trembling of my lips, the heaving sobs that come into my body when I contemplate my wife and what she means to me. But a p-zombie would react in exactly the same way.
The interesting thing about this is: I believe it’s quite possible to build a machine and program it in such a way that it believes itself to have an inner life. We couldn’t yet build something that can act convincingly like a human, but giving a machine a way to perceive something it cannot articulate is easy–the program I write that adds 2 and 3 and spits out 5 has no intellectual understanding of arithmetic, it merely has a value in a register that, because I have programmed it to have a small capacity for self-observation, it can see it also associates with the sum of 4 and 1. I have chosen not to give it insight into arithmetic, but because I have given it this capacity to spot patterns it has this inexplicable feeling that there is something linking the couplet 2 and 3 to the couplet 1 and 4. You might think that sounds a bit like our esthetic judgement. We may experience a feeling of connectedness without being able to explain it.
Is this all there is to human emotions. I don’t know. Does anybody?
Tony S.,
I hope I am not a zombie. I think if you have any feeling for anyone or any greater cause you are not a zombie.
There is a concept in philosophy known as the “zombie”. Unlike the shambling, shuffling brain-eating creatures of the Romero films, these philosophical zombies (p-zombies) are like you and me in every respect, except they have no inner life.
The clever thing about p-zombies is that they act *exactly* like you and me, but inside there is only machinery to keep the pretence going. If a p-zombie sees a lovely sunset it will react exactly like a human would. If you poke it with a stick it will react as if in pain. But inside there is nothing.
I have often wondered if there is any way in which I could tell whether or not I am a p-zombie. As yet I have not found any such test. I suspect that the idea itself is a misconception. Perhaps there is no such thing as an inner life, and all humans are zombies. Or perhaps some of us are and some of us are not. Or perhaps we don’t understand enough about the inner life to be able to distinguish it from its zombie facsimile.
Blouise,
That is a neat story about how science and ingenuity allowed your granddaughter to have a promising future. Who knows, maybe she will sasve someone else with her mind and creativity down the road.
Well, I’m disagreeing with what I think are false characterizations of the difference between what machines can do and what humans do. As a human I certainly do express emotions, but I think machines can do the same. And of course referring to Watson’s actions as “regurgitation” would certainly get any programmer a little hot under the collar.
Machines don’t seem to feel emotions but I don’t find that surprising. I’m not sure we really understand yet what we mean when we say we feel something. We do know that the supposedly subjective response to human physical beauty can be fairly well predicted by spacial relationships in a face, and of course one could tie any such set of characteristics to a register, so that a pretty face produces a high value. If the machine associates such a value with the word “happy” does that mean it experiences pleasure on seeing a pretty face? Perhaps not, but it might well believe so and tell you so.
M. Wrytter and Tony Sidaway,
It’s interesting to note the defense of Watson when no real attack was made upon its wondrous being. Emotion perhaps?
Not to worry gentlemen, I am indeed in awe of those whose curiosity and desire to better the lives of their fellow human beings have led us into this astounding and constantly achieving present. The telephone as a tool to help the deaf is now a device very few can do without. My granddaughter lives today when only twenty years ago her hampered heart was an infant’s death sentence thanks to the genius and hard work of those who have much in common with the developers of Watson.
Will Watson eventually be able to experience emotion, judgement, inspiration? If the humans can figure out how to do it then I’m sure Watson will. After all … look what Mozart did with mere notes, what Joyce did with mere words, what Plato did with mere thoughts, what Bosch did with mere paint, and what Walt Disney did with mere stick figures. Here’s to a future Watson outshining them all.
I only have one question about this Watson machine. Is there an App for my IPad?
Mespo wrote
I’ll concede the broader point, but Watson does “know” when to speak and develops confidence in its answers and reasoning as it goes along. Part of the clever design for the Jeopardy game is that Watson will promote and demote lines of thinking among solution algorithms based on their real-time accuracy in certain categories. Watson learns quickly what solution approach best applies to the questions before it. The more questions are asked in tricky categories the better Watson will be at scoring confidence in its answers. You can see the confidence in answers superimposed on the screen in this video:
“You could have described the scene in the local pub in such a manner as to call up a recognition within me of the emotions you wished me to feel … perhaps loneliness, or warmth. Instead you chose to give me the bare bones and thus you passed the simple Turing Test.”
I’m unaware of any emotions specific to the place. I could, I suppose, have overlaid my account with words that invoke an emotion, but that would also have been a fairly mechanical exercise and a rather dishonest one in the circumstances. The truth is I felt only an intellectual curiosity about what it might mean to have more to report than I, the human being on the spot reporting on the thread, feel. I felt only what I reported. I like the place but it isn’t the kind of venue that inspires strong emotions.
Do you believe that a machine could not express emotions it does not feel? I’m pretty sure they can. We humans readily assign emotions to stick men, so it isn’t a difficult trick.
mespo: “The point is that Watson can regurgitate data but not judgment. For example, knowing when to speak and when not to is a distinctly human judgement that could very well decide the outcome of a situation, especially when dealing with another human.”
You may be surprised to hear that I think such judgement is exactly the kind of thing that can be reliably achieved with the kind of statistical analysis Watson uses in understanding and responding to natural language. It isn’t just regurgitating data, but analyzing complex human verbal signals, contextualizing them, and deciding what answer to give. According to the linked report, in the test game it had a 100% success rate in doing all that in real time and comfortably beat two champions at the game. That’s very convincing when you consider it didn’t have an assistant around tweaking it to decide whether, say, “duck” in this context means a feathered fowl, a zero score at cricket, or a bobbing motion of the head.
Its judgement seems to be pretty good.
culheath: How about Mr Data?
ok, I’ll admit, he’s definitely got some stuff…
Blouise, thank you! Our sour politics aside, 2011 remains a wondrous time to be alive.
If Blousie your in awe of the men and women who created Watson, is it that much of a stretch to perhaps consider the fact that the day will arrive when Watson & et al will be able to voice human feeling and needs & concerns perhaps along with other such human qualities?? The simple device we call the ” telephone ” started out as well a ” simple ” device, yet today a round a hundred years later what do we have and how far has it advance then. Did anyone know when it was first created that it would have such an endearing impact on society as it does. I think not. So think of Watson what you will today as tomorrow and down the road we will all think, ” What has God wrought.” Thank you Samuel Morse and equal contributer to our present condition.
James in LA is totally blowing my mind … in a good way
AY,
(I used to like to visit Fort Marcy Park … we should email about this as I can’t understand why someone would want to murder him … I don’t want to hijack the thread)
Buddha can’t drink liquor so we’ll have to concoct something special for his sustenance … I wonder if he’ll feel safe in our culinary hands …
Mespo7272, at best we can say is, “not yet.” Our universe is finite. Ergo, the number of variables in the equation governing when and when not to speak are likewise finite. As are all processes of the mind. Watson teaches us quite clearly that what was not quantifyable yesterday is today. Watson did not emerge from the Ether; it is based on a long evolution of computers, each one needed to make the next. If we set aside the need to “feel special,” the universe takes on greater harmonic vibrancy.
Wisdom suggests we then prepare for our First Contact moment, when we will be compelled to decide the 3/5ths question on a machine that passes all tests, even emotional ones, to the extent any citizen of the universe would be required to pass them. By that time, many humans will be walking around with elective implants that will mimic organs, and extend existence, mostly into cyberspoace, so the lines are going to be blurry indeed.
We’ll know it when it arrives. It will be the day that unplugging the damnned thing is utterly unthinkable. Such as unplugging the routers which allow me access to the Internet, for example.
And now, we Converge.
Blouise,
Sometimes, if its intentional it can be made to look like an accident….ask….someone that words for the cia….vince foster….
AY,
Yeah … but it’s our best defense … I get tired of pleading insanity
Blouise,
I don’t believe in accidents….