The Glade 4.0

I wanted to post that yesterday but the irony was so thick I couldn't type.

I know that past performance does not guarantee future results, but enough evidence has been presented through the years that I'm not flabbergasted, I would have even been a bit surprised if it weren't the case.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

It's sort of like how the internet isn't like a truck, it's a series of tubes. We all laugh and chortle over it, but it's actually pretty accurate.

Also...Might be underestimating Google more than a bit.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Oh, I have no doubts that Google already "solves" a lot of similar pieces. I'd certainly put them on the short list for people who could create a solid competitor for Watson in an all-computer Jeopardy challenge. However, to assert that their search engine algorithms already do what Watson does seems to demonstrate a lack of understanding.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

You guys can laugh all you want, but Google and Watson are fundamentally the same. They both parse words semantically to find the most relevant result, and both do this in extremely complex ways. Don't assume that Google has no understanding of irony.

As a programmer I know that if I worked a while on Google's word parsing engine, it would look great on my resume to be hired by IBM to work on this semantic computer. Why? Because they are very similar.

I think you guys have no experience making web crawlers or parsing text for relevant information, and that's why you have no idea what you're talking about.

I don't care about the score. Ken Jennings wins.

Agreed Jeryn.

I thought that was great. During the credit roll, did you see him reach over to Watson and mock strangle it. Thought that was quite amusing too.

I miss Ken Jennings on Jeopardy. He really brought some extra fun to the game.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

*snicker*

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

See? Google is just 10% worse than Ken Jennings (well it returns the whole page not the specific answer). Everyone here who thinks Watson is fundamentally different from a search engine can... well... idk.

Can Google express its answer in the form of a question?

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Besides the point. Can a 4 door sedan carry 129,000 pounds?

Considering that the complexities of human language are the entire goal of the exercise, it's precisely the point.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Yes, Lex, as I said earlier, having the correct answer show up on a search page is easy. Knowing what to pull out of the page and how to construct the answer (question) is the tricky part.

Getting Google's search result percentage is actually very difficult. Maybe 10-20% is easy. Google wasn't tailored to constructing an answer, but I bet they could while keeping almost all of the existing code in place. For example they could look for similarities in their top 15 search results.

Programming argument aside, it was a pretty neat thing to watch. Some friends and I had more fun looking at Watson's 2nd and 3rd answers. Like the one category of Computer Keys, "this 'is where the heart is'", with the answering being 'Home', we laughed at his 2nd answer being 'Delete Key'.

I think it was pretty impressive for Ken to go on that tear around mid-game of round 2. He certainly gave Watson a run his money, especially since I was expecting Watson to bet a low amount on Final Jeopardy again, but he sure did a 180 on that!

It is pretty neat, but nothing too exciting since I've been beaten my entire life in video games by A.I. I guess for the average layperson it seems really new. In the future I won't be surprised if computers can write better than I can, and be more interesting or useful in general.

That's going on in the present.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

I'm surprised no one has referenced Wolfram|Alpha in this thread.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/about.html
Everyone keeps pointing to Google instead which, correct me if I am wrong, relies on relational links established by other people and websites. (300 sites link to CNN under some permutation of the word "news", therefore CNN = news) at least for their non-paid results.

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The links themselves don't usually have news in them. It's the same as different documents talking about the same thing including CNN.

I wonder how accurate Google would be if it could only pose one answer?

Type a couple of Jeopardy questions in, and use the "I Feel Lucky" feature?

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I was amused by the final game-- the category "also on your computer keyboard" or something was the one category that Watson was incapable of getting right.

There's a large difference between relevant links and an actual answer. I was doing my online classwork today and I wanted to find out How many movie theaters are in America. Google didn't flat out give me an answer Watson fast, but yes it did provide me some useful links that I had to pursue. It'd be great if I did and would have saved me several minutes on my school work today.

It's not fundamentally different, just advanced.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I wish IBM would spend less time playing Jeopardy, and spend more time fixing their horrendously crappy software. It would make my life a lot easier.

Yes. **** everything Tivoli. **** it up the arse with a refridgerator.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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