Comments on: IBM creating pocket-sized Watson in $16 billion sales push

By: Bri

Bri — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 15:51:49 +0000

Imagine what the kids will be like! Oh well. There goes the neighborhood!

By: Michael108

Michael108 — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 13:52:54 +0000

…obviously skilled at parallel processing ; )

By: Editor

Editor — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 13:17:13 +0000

… plus he was hanging out with Iris.

By: Michael108

Michael108 — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 13:02:32 +0000

Siri was dating Watson, but broke it off because he was asking too many questions.

By: Bri

Bri — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 15:18:14 +0000

Aren’t we all!!!!!

By: Editor

Editor — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 15:04:34 +0000

Good at putting myself IN jeopardy, maybe … :)

By: trakk

trakk — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 15:01:27 +0000

and we will try our best to prevent it from doing so. Humanity wont go down without a fight :)

By: Bri

Bri — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 11:48:47 +0000

In the recent videos section there was a great video on the Da Vinci surgical robot. Every action taking place with it is recorded in detail. A Watson style program can cull the best attributes from the every procedure. In a short time it’s visual acuity will be far better at differentiating diseased tissue from good. An autonomous robot with extreme dexterity could operate it better than the best human. After that in it’s spake time it could do data entry. It doesn’t need a break or vacation. It doesn’t care if it’s cleaning toilets! In a short time it will be able to really think like a human. No matter how much we augment our brains, if it has to go through biological circuits, it will slow to a crawl , in comparison to an optimized robot. We won’t loose all jobs to robots tomorrow. In less than twenty it could happen. What will really be interesting is how they increase productivity. They don’t waste time with small talk or any of the other things that we do, that slow down what we can accomplish in a day. No implored will be able to afford our inefficiency. They WILL be optimized to all job niches. It’s in the employers best interests to incorporate them, or else not be able to compete.

By: Bri

Bri — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 11:22:25 +0000

I wouldn’t do that anytime too soon. If we get a solar flare as bad as they have been in recorded history, our electric grid will lose ALL it’s substations. Read up on the problem. It would take years to replace them and we would be right back in the 1800s .

By: Bri

Bri — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 11:17:07 +0000

My landlord has a house in upstate NY. The farmer next to him gives him all kinds of things. He can’t bring it to market because it’s too expensive to pick and transport!

By: Bri

Bri — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 11:13:23 +0000

I bet your good at jeopardy!

By: Cybernettr

Cybernettr — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 01:51:59 +0000

Right, and we should get rid of those lousy things called books, too, since libraries can be burned down so easily. Besides, they never seem to have the book you want when you want it, anyway.

By: Cybernettr

Cybernettr — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 01:48:03 +0000

I don’t see new technologies putting people out of work anytime soon, because new technologies always tend to create new jobs. The problem is that the new jobs usually seem to require more skill, more technical savvy, and more intelligence than the old ones they replace. Therefore, I see a greater and greater gap between the rich and poor, with more and more oppressive taxes being used to balance out the income discrepancies a.k.a. class warfare.

By: Pejman

Pejman — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 00:25:45 +0000

Thanks

By: getnet

getnet — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 17:37:28 +0000

What I see is (the time needed to search facts from the google minimized + World Smart Phone Distribution Rate + Ideal People resource becouse of AI Applicaion + Emergence of New Applicaion Area + Political risc + Economic , Social, Heailthy, Education growth + Better applicaion of SmartPhone) Pushed towardes better AI Development the speed of growth become unimagenable,

By: getnet

getnet — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 17:26:31 +0000

what else the mind can do other than searching the fact,

By: Starheart

Starheart — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 13:46:19 +0000

We have been replacing our memory with artificial aids since time immemorial. Your sentiment seems to stem from the fact that having potential access to knowledge does not make a person more knowledgeable until they actually absorb said knowledge into their own memory by learning. But as long as the situation keeps being as such, humans do need to have the basic framework in their memory that is required to access various encyclopaedic data and make sense of it. In short, we would not devolve into mindless creatures as long as we know what do we need to ask the machine and why. This is very much comparable to having various types of processor memory: processor cache used to control kernel memory used to access the entirety of RAM used to access hard drive storage.

Eventually, though, we might integrate central database access into a BCI. With seamless enough access, we eventually wouldn’t even know the difference between our own memories or the “motherbox”, thus preventing excessively long times spent learning, and the borders between man and machine, individual and network, would become increasingly nebulous.

By: Ron Fontes

Ron Fontes — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 12:57:03 +0000

Great! Nobody needs to know nuttin’: Just stand around scratching your empty head and ask the MotherBox what to do IF you can formulate the question. And one bomb would take out the server. Whoopee! We can all be morons and just do what we’re told by Big Brother.

By: Roland

Roland — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 07:16:29 +0000

Ah, a benign version of Skynet. Before you know it robots will arriving from the future and ride around on motorcycles to do Watsons work of mercy. :)

By: bobc4012

bobc4012 — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 04:46:32 +0000

Not if you take it a step further. Watson will tell you that a certain set on nanoprobes or nanocells or nano-whatever, need to be injected into the carotid artery and they will rush to the site to cure the problem. You will need to know how to operate the tricorder and know the injection points for the various nanoprobes. If things go bad, you could always tell the ambulance chasing lawyers to sue Watson (or have Watson defend you in court)!

By: bobc4012

bobc4012 — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 04:38:51 +0000

Do you think you could carry the “Empire State” building in your pocket? The real work is done at the server farm, not in the hand held unit The hand held unit is nothing more than a wireless connection to the main SIRI facility – the hand held has just enough computing power to facilitate the connection. It is akin to attaching a microphone to your PC and then saying “Google” to bring up your browser with a connection to Google and then deciphering your sentence (hopefully, correctly) and doing a “Google” search and coming back with an answer (hopefully, a desired one).

By: bobc4012

bobc4012 — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 04:24:52 +0000

Only if you ask Watson for job help and it tells you that you are a “loser” and head on down to the “Solyent Green” plant, where they have a “job” for you.

By: bobc4012

bobc4012 — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 04:21:04 +0000

John, it depends upon what is your job. If you work on an assembly line, that job is pretty much gone anyway. If you work at some type of data entry, then you will have to learn some new skills (maybe Watson can provide you a good answer and even where to move, if necessary). Or maybe it can create that Brave New World where you can spend all your time at the “feelies”.

By: bobc4012

bobc4012 — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 04:16:10 +0000

And, if you are single, even pick out the future Mrs. Lincoln for you! LOL

By: bobc4012

bobc4012 — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 04:14:15 +0000

Its not a cell phone problem, it is a server problem. First you have to “load” the data base with all the possible known answers to the world’s problems (or in this case, IF it was only handling crop plantings, all those possibilities). However, since it would be far broader than crop plantings, – i.e. for each field of endeavor, all the known knowledge for that field – each field at a time. The next step would be to build an intelligence into the system to scan for any possible connections across fields that might have some relevancy. Eventually, you would arrive at a system which has all the knowledge of the world. A considerable effort. So another step would be to have the system help “load” itself with that knowledge, still a formidable task. Remember, in the Jeopardy contest, Watson gave an occasional off the wall answer – whether it was programmed to deliberately do that (not too likely, but ???) or just wasn’t coming up with the correct correlations.

By: Duh

Duh — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 01:01:31 +0000

Someone still has to think, find, research and ENTER the answers into the system. The software only FINDS them.

By: Luchian

Luchian — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 22:16:22 +0000

Great! You’re THE MAN Frank! no kiddin’….

By: Giuseppe

Giuseppe — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 21:56:23 +0000

I always thought that IBM has the best technology in the field of natural language understanding and man-machine interaction. This is just the commercial application of the technology. I think Watson 2.0 will represent a turning point in the use of smartphones and tablet.

By: Giuseppe

Giuseppe — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 21:49:50 +0000

I always through that IBM has the best technology in the field of the natural language understanding and in the software of man-machine interaction. This is the commercial application of the technology. I think Watson 2.0 will represent a turning point in the use of smartphone and tablet.

By: Brian Balke

Brian Balke — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 16:51:39 +0000

Well, all you Luddites, all Watson can do is answer your questions. Somebody still has to do the work. I think that most MDs would prefer to work with the best diagnosis possible, as a diagnosis only defines the process to be implemented to achieve a cure.
And there will still be the edge cases that must be investigated and studied to provide the raw data for a diagnosis.
The real losers will be the TV show writers that make a pile of money on dysfunctional personalities like House. Although I’d love to see Watson suggest lupus in conference with the diagnostic team.
As regards more prosaic applications: the farmer that loves his job and is willing to work hard may actually be able to survive in competition with the large conglomerates with their massive information systems that enable them to target crops and markets with such effiicacy.

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 14:42:43 +0000

Nice lol

By: Alan K. Balkany

Alan K. Balkany — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 14:36:43 +0000

It’s interesting that virtually everyone glossed over one of the most amazing breakthroughs demonstrated by Watson: The ability to read and understand text automatically, without human intervention.

This was one of the ambitious goals of the AI project, CYC, in the 1990s, and it’s finally been achieved by Watson.

By: Alan

Alan — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 13:31:47 +0000

What exactly are you talking about? The “Cloud” is not a replacement for cellphone signals, it’s a fancy marketing term for server based services that do the processing on the server and return you the result to your client device.

By: Editor

Editor — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 13:17:01 +0000

It’s the same system concept as Siri. The system is processor-bound, not I/O-bound.

By: Editor

Editor — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 13:14:24 +0000

Or say “Watson, come here, I need you,” to quote Alexander Graham Bell out of context

By: Giulio Prisco

Giulio Prisco — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 13:12:44 +0000

Marcos, I hope a successful campaign will facilitate spreading transhumanist ideas on the mainstream, bu showing that we care for our own people. But at this moment, helping a living, breathing and feeling person is even more important to me.

By: John von

John von — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 13:00:20 +0000

Who’s going to pay for my new higher standards of living when I lose my job to Watson?

By: S0ulman

S0ulman — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 12:49:10 +0000

fully agree – that smells like trouble. There will be winners and an awful lot of losers.

By: Dave Torgersen

Dave Torgersen — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 12:49:08 +0000

… yeah, except that this is going to put every call center technician out of a job… in fact every knowledge-based worker. the same way that every manufacturing job has disappeared. The issue is that machines, of all kind, can be made to be better and more efficient than those that create them… If it is a fundamental expectation that everyone works to earn a living… will there be sufficient service-sector employment? Not sure.

By: Marcos Marin

Marcos Marin — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 12:48:58 +0000

You people want this audience to donate? Stop advertising as “helping Kim”, as many will no doubt, but more effectively focus their attention on the benefits to spreading transhumanist ideas on the mainstream once she is successful. Stop praying and start thinking…

By: S0ulman

S0ulman — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 12:47:32 +0000

I tend to disagree Glenn. This definitely will cost jobs and you will not only have to work with the new assistants but you will have to compete with them. What happens to all the people with low education and low IQ? What happens to those whose job may be easily automated with the newer generation of robots/software? I fear Hugo de Garis visions and predictions could be more real then lots of people believe. Do you really think big corporations are interested in the happiness of our lifes?

By: Joseph

Joseph — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 12:45:10 +0000

With Watson, I can finally realize my dream of becoming Sherlock Holmes.

By: Marcos Marin

Marcos Marin — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 12:40:57 +0000

We already have more than enough lost people hysterically over-dependent on their smartphones.. it is just a matter of time until they begin screaming “Mr. WATSOOOON!” the next time they misplace it.. now that they will have a name to scream :-)

By: Marcos Marin

Marcos Marin — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 12:33:29 +0000

Just be glad you wont have to climb the mountain to get enough signal to the Cloud… (the servers, not heaven, lol) It is already better than cellphone signal in many cities today!

By: Chrispium

Chrispium — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 12:22:41 +0000

Not where, but when.

By: kjmclark

kjmclark — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 11:35:50 +0000

The question was ‘when’, not ‘where’. That was a terrific question this year, and almost all farmers got it wrong one way or another. The right answer this year was *very* early, and a short-season variety. We planted ours at the normal time, which was way too late this year, and didn’t get a good stand because the rains had already stopped.

By: John B

John B — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 10:49:04 +0000

Well, the server rack represents the processing power of a single Watson. How are you going to get this to service several million remote Watson hand-helds ?

This suggestion is less practical than developing the full blooded Watson Hand Held.

By: Jimmy Corn

Jimmy Corn — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 07:42:15 +0000

Why would you ask a computer where to plant corn after you’ve entered the darn field?

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 07:28:03 +0000

Oh, please, don’t ever plug Watson into YouTube comments. It would take pity on humanity and likely would work quickly to end our suffering.

By: Editor

Editor — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 07:13:25 +0000

As noted, “a Watson smartphone application would still consume too much server power for it to be practical today.” (I added the word “server” to clarify that the problem is on that end).