Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Watson Said What?!!!!

What do you get when you mix an urban language dictionary with a supercomputer?  Yep, a foul "mouthed" computer.  At least that is what happened to Watson, IBM's supercomputer.  

It seems that Eric Brown, Watson's "dad" at IBM  wanted to make Watson's conversations to be more "human" in their context.  To accomplish this Brown's team loaded the English language Urban Dictionary into Watson.  

The computer had no problem absorbing the dictionary, but the trouble started when Watson began to pepper its replies with rather profane remarks.  One researcher's inquiry was met with one word from Watson "bullshit".   It seems Watson has no way to differentiate between polite and profane so the only thing the team could do was remove all the dictionary data and install a filter to prevent a 
recurrence.   Brown also revealed that this is not the first time this problem has crept up.  Watson picked up a similar bad habit after reading through Wikipedia. 

Now that is just plain funny!

5 comments:

kallamis said...

LOL. I needed this after the last couple days. This is too funny. Put it back, put it all back.
Stop censoring the poor thing. We have enough of that already in this country. Now we won't even let the poor computer speak freely.
I call prejudice against machines freedom of expression, or something like that.
I laughed so freaking hard I actually cleared up my bronchial deal quite a bit. Hurt like hell, but thank you.

Beam Me Up said...

They can't Kall!

Watson is being used to read patient's hospital charts and make prelim diagnosis....can you imagine? lol

kallamis said...

Hmmm. Well, what do you know. We are getting somewhere with this actually.
But you know, A prelim, with the urban dictionary, and one of those people that put really strange things where they don't belong would be quite interesting indeed.
Or a kid with a toy or penny up the nose.
Or someone that took too much Viagra.
Oh the list is endless to my twisted little mind.
I'm wondering something however. Japan has made great strides in the robotics department. Closer to androids there than here, that's for sure. But with a few decently built robotic units, and a central hub of knowledge, they could be taking over a lot of areas for doctors soon. And though I hate to say this, even on the battlefields which we seem to love to create so much.
Now I am not talking actual surgery, yet. But in terms of triage, and deciding who has to get in there first, they could prove invaluable, freeing up the doctors to begin saving patients.
I wonder though. Has anyone given any of these advanced machines (I hate that word machine being used here so someone give me the real correct term please), full access to the internet. Or the books of Asimov programmed in to them and told to learn.
Okay, so I'm already trying to push for robotic rights. Lets stay off that topic actually about robotic rights for now. (Blog coming later on this tonight or tomorrow at latest).
But I see so many places for robotic and android units to aid us it is unbelievable. Only robotic style, not AI units which are soon to exist I have no doubt, if they will allow it.
But I have always seen robots doing a lot of things for us. Even living in space, or the moon, or even mars would suddenly become nearly as safe as living here. Maybe not easier, but in all truth, probably safer overall than here, especially with their assistance. Again, programmed robotics only.
The freedom that they could give us would be incredible, if we would just use what we know, and use it right, and stop worrying about weaponizing every freaking thing in existence. Oh yeah, wrong planet for that wish.
I could go on for hours here. But it's off to the store I go, for every other sick person around here. Now I'm the only one healthy here.
See, one more perfect reason to live with bots, and not people. People infect you with horrible alien diseases and viruses.
HA. See. Robots are already nicer than people. LOL

Beam Me Up said...

Let me know if this is just someone blowing smoke (oh please ask me where that saying comes from at some time in the future..lol) but wasn't Watson given access to the internet to "study" and then taken offline when the competition started.

kallamis said...

I seem to remember hearing something like that once. I thought it was just some urban myth thing. But now you bring it up. Makes me wonder now. I'm not sure how to go about finding out either.
I need to pay more attention sometimes.