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posted by janrinok on Saturday October 29 2016, @01:47AM   Printer-friendly
from the not-here-it-won't dept.

In the next five years, every important decision, whether it's business or personal, will be made with the assistance of IBM Watson. That's the vision of IBM president and CEO Ginni Rometty, in a keynote speech at IBM's World of Watson conference Wednesday.

Watson, the company's artificial intelligence-fueled system, is working in fields like health care, finance, entertainment and retail, connecting businesses more easily with their customers, making sense of big data and helping doctors find treatments for cancer patients.

The Watson system is set to transform how businesses function and how people live their lives. "Our goal is augmenting intelligence," Rometty said. "It is man and machine. This is all about extending your expertise. A teacher. A doctor. A lawyer. It doesn't matter what you do. We will extend it."

Is one woman's vision another man's nightmare?


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Snotnose on Saturday October 29 2016, @01:56AM

    by Snotnose (1623) on Saturday October 29 2016, @01:56AM (#420011)

    Sounds like all their other business units are falling apart, they need something to stay relevant.

    IBM, the poster child of what happens when you cut your 20-30 year veterans and bring in H1-Bs and contractors from India.

    --
    Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @03:32AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @03:32AM (#420023)

      Nay-saying aside, this COULD be that very thing...assuming what they have is not vaporware.

      I tried to find something technical on it a while ago for personal interest and could not. Mostly just vapid marketing videos talking about what people "could" be doing with it. The only tech one I could find just described things at a very high level.

      But this is the sort of tech that could take off VERY quickly.

      Once the nut is cracked so to speak, conquering domains one after another is much easier. The natural language maps it boasts could be useful in all sorts of generic ways.

      A shame it was not open source. I have no faith in IBM's stewardship of such a thing - they are not a very good software company.

      Nevertheless, I will believe it when I see it as they say....

      • (Score: 2) by Snotnose on Saturday October 29 2016, @03:53AM

        by Snotnose (1623) on Saturday October 29 2016, @03:53AM (#420031)

        That's the scary thing. Watson could be good enough to do the job. Then all the hedge fund managers and tech company managers will say "Hey, fuck the expensive fucks, fire them and bring in H1-B'S and Indian contractors!"

        Never mind it was the 20-30 year vets who created Watson......

        --
        Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @09:44AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @09:44AM (#420073)

          Watson aims, like many AI/robotics projects today, to make a whole lot of people redundant. In some areas they already have. It is inevitable so arguing against it is also pointless.

          Being "scared" about it is pointless also. (Americans really do seem to have this thing about being "scared" about everything)

          I think we should instead be working on ideas for the new future and a plan for how to achieve it. That is what we need more than anything.

          Also people tend to be selective about which areas (and nationalities) they care about....

          • (Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday October 29 2016, @10:43AM

            by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Saturday October 29 2016, @10:43AM (#420082) Homepage Journal

            Also people tend to be selective about which areas (and nationalities) they care about....

            Yes, sane people tend to care about themselves, their family, their neighborhood, their town, their part of the country, their country, their part of the world, and the rest of the world. In that order. It takes a seriously disturbed individual to place people they have never met and will never meet above the home team so to speak. And an ego the size of the planet to think you know best what's best for the entire world.

            --
            My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 2) by TheLink on Saturday October 29 2016, @07:25PM

          by TheLink (332) on Saturday October 29 2016, @07:25PM (#420221) Journal

          The mistakes ( http://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/Latest-News-Wires/2011/0215/On-Jeopardy-Watson-s-mistakes-reveal-its-genius [csmonitor.com] ) Watson makes show how little it really understands. So it would be a bad move to get rid of the people at this point.

          Watson is like a well trained idiot picking out answers from a pool of answers based on some heuristics and memorizing to not pick the wrong answers.

          It's good enough for some things but I doubt it's good enough to be allowed to work on anything really important without supervision.

          In contrast I daresay even rats have more understanding of the world than Watson does: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/05/rats-forsake-chocolate-save-drowning-companion [sciencemag.org]

          And definitely crows and ravens despite them having brains only the size of walnuts.

          I personally prefer if we took the path of augmenting humans. The technologies involved would be similar but the end results could be different. The AI approach may lead to more humans ending up as slaves or pets while the augmenting approach may be a better future for more of us.

  • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @02:02AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @02:02AM (#420012)

    Then the Human Genome Project will countersue.

    I got that prediction from Watson.

  • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @02:48AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @02:48AM (#420020)

    Is one woman's vision another man's nightmare?

    That's often the case even when AI isn't involved.

    * ba-dum-tsh *

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Nerdfest on Saturday October 29 2016, @03:04AM

    by Nerdfest (80) on Saturday October 29 2016, @03:04AM (#420022)

    IBM is drooling over the prospect of once again charging people for CPU usage (which still goes on in the mainframe world).

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by drussell on Saturday October 29 2016, @03:42AM

    by drussell (2678) on Saturday October 29 2016, @03:42AM (#420026) Journal

    It doesn't matter what you do. We will extend it."

    Really? That will be VERY interesting to see in actual practice!

    And they don't even KNOW what I do....

    I can't wait! :popcorn:

    • (Score: 2) by coolgopher on Sunday October 30 2016, @01:38AM

      by coolgopher (1157) on Sunday October 30 2016, @01:38AM (#420404)

      Somehow this will lead to an extension of rule 34 then. I'm dreadfully curious as to how that will pan out... (as in, I both dread it and am curious about it)

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @05:59AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @05:59AM (#420056)

    ...but with a woman behind the curtain

  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @10:50AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @10:50AM (#420084)

    Hi there, it looks like you're trying to decide something. I can do that for you, why don't you piss off. While I'm at it, I'll email your boss and tell him we don't need you any more. By the way, have you considered upgrading to Watson 3.0? It's a great product. Thanks - have a great day!

  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday October 29 2016, @12:44PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Saturday October 29 2016, @12:44PM (#420098)

    As an upper level exec that the company depends upon for wisdom, you know that speech can be cut and pasted for any random tech fad. Could cut and replace in IoT, Cloud, Java, Dot Net, any meaningless hype.

    Now for a real debate, who thinks she even knows what Watson is, other than a name on a speech written by an underling? I would bet she has no idea, could be a new kind of transistor, a random number generator, a dongle, my bet is she has no idea.

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Saturday October 29 2016, @08:43PM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday October 29 2016, @08:43PM (#420244) Journal

      So you say, she could safely be replaced by Watson?

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 2) by gidds on Monday October 31 2016, @11:39AM

        by gidds (589) on Monday October 31 2016, @11:39AM (#420831)

        So you say, she could safely be replaced by Watson?

        How do you know she hasn't already been???

        --
        [sig redacted]
  • (Score: 2) by datapharmer on Saturday October 29 2016, @06:23PM

    by datapharmer (2702) on Saturday October 29 2016, @06:23PM (#420194)

    I tried Watson analytics when they released the beta. I was not impressed. The interface was buggy and unintuitive and the analytical "revelations" were far from mind blowing. For example a set of anonymized hr data revealed that employees who worked more than 20 years were likely to retire, recently married employees between ages 24 and 40 were more likely to take fmla leave, and employees under 22 were likely to be part time and stay less than 2 years.

    In other words, it quantified the obvious.

    Maybe it has its uses but I didn't find anything that wouldn't be better served by hiring a statistician that knows r.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @06:23PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @06:23PM (#420195)

    Nobody seems to be doing a good job of working out what the energy costs of all this AI will be.

    And before someone starts whining about tiny AI circuits doing lens management in their smartphone camera, I'm talking about the deep AI stuff; something that is smart enough to understand a pun, analyse legal ambiguities and the track record of a given judge, and suggest to a composer how the timbral shifts in the synths could be used to match the rise of tension with the movie action.

    I can not see it taking any less than several amps of wall current, which quickly puts you in the territory of needing infrastructure, which ramps up your running costs ... not to mention all the sensitive patient/client/banking security requirements that your new electronic friends will require.

    And what's the incremental benefit to a basic mechanic? To a drywaller? To a receptionist? To replace those people entirely you'd need a very high order of robotics as well, and that ramps the cost way higher.

    It all sounds very nice, very Star Trek. But the economics don't look so good - and once you add in the fossil fuel crunch, they look a lot worse.

  • (Score: 2) by srobert on Sunday October 30 2016, @12:49AM

    by srobert (4803) on Sunday October 30 2016, @12:49AM (#420385)

    "helping doctors find treatments for cancer patients"

    And someday maybe even helping patients find treatments without needing a doctor. Good work. Congratulations to Doctor Dunzel.