<br><br>On Friday, 27 May 2016, Dave Sill <<a href="mailto:sparge@gmail.com">sparge@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><a href="http://www.rogerschank.com/fraudulent-claims-made-by-IBM-about-Watson-and-AI" target="_blank">http://www.rogerschank.com/fraudulent-claims-made-by-IBM-about-Watson-and-AI</a><br><div>
<h2>They are not doing "cognitive computing" no matter how many times they say they are</h2>
<p>I was chatting with an old friend yesterday and he reminded me of a
conversation we had nearly 50 years ago. I tried to explain to him what I
did for living and he was trying to understand why getting computers to
understand was more complicated than key word analysis. I explained
about concepts underlying sentences and explained that sentences used
words but that people really didn’t use words in their minds except to
get to the underlying ideas and that computers were having a hard time
with that.</p>
<p>Fifty years later, key words are still dominating the thoughts of
people who try to get computers to deal with language. But, this time,
the key word people have deceived the general public by making claims
that this is thinking, that AI is here, and that, by the way we should
be very afraid, or very excited, I forget which.</p>
<p>We were making some good progress on getting computers to understand
language but, in 1984, AI winter started. AI winter was a result of too
many promises about things AI could do that it really could not do.
(This was about promoting expert systems. Where are they now?). Funding
dried up and real work on natural language processing died too.</p>
<p>But still people promote key words because Google and others use it
to do "search". Search is all well and good when we are counting words,
which is what data analytics and machine learning are really all about.
Of course, once you count words you can do all kinds of correlations and
users can learn about what words often connect to each other and make
use of that information. But, users have learned to accommodate to
Google not the other way around. We know what kinds of things we can
type into Google and what we can’t and we keep our searches to things
that Google is likely to help with. We know we are looking for texts and
not answers to start a conversation with an entity that knows what we
really need to talk about. People learn from conversation and Google
can’t have one. It can pretend to have one using Siri but really those
conversations tend to get tiresome when you are past asking about where
to eat.</p>
<p>But, I am not worried about Google. It works well enough for our needs.</p>
<p>What I am concerned about are the exaggerated claims being made by
IBM about their Watson program. Recently they ran an ad featuring Bob
Dylan which made laugh, or would have, if had made not me so angry. I
will say it clearly: Watson is a fraud. I am not saying that it can’t
crunch words, and there may well be value in that to some people. But
the ads are fraudulent.</p>
<p>Here is something from Ad Week:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The computer brags it can read 800 million pages per second,
identifying key themes in Dylan's work, like "time passes" and "love
fades."</p>
<p>Ann Rubin, IBM's vp of branded content and global creative, told
Adweek that the commercials were needed to help people understand the
new world of cognitive computing.</p>
<p>"We're focusing on the advertising here, but this is really more than
an advertising campaign," Rubin said. "It's a point of view that IBM
has, and it's going across all of our marketing, our internal
communications, how we engage sellers and our employees. It's really
across everything that we do."</p>
<p>IBM says the latest series is meant to help a broader audience -
companies, decision makers and software developers - better understand
how Watson works. Unlike traditionally programmed computers, cognitive
systems such as Watson understand, reason, and learn. The company says
industries such as banking, insurance, healthcare and retail can all
benefit.</p>
<p>Rubin said Watson's abilities "outthink" human brains in areas where
finding insights and connections can be difficult due to the abundance
of data.</p>
<p>"You can outthink cancer, outthink risk, outthink doubt, outthink
competitors if you embrace this idea of cognitive computing," she said.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Really? I am a child of the 60s’ and I remember Dylan’s songs well
enough. Ask anyone from that era about Bob Dylan and no one will tell
you his main theme was "love fades". He was a protest singer, and a
singer about the hard knocks of life. He was part of the anti-war
movement. Love fades? That would be a dumb computer counting words. How
would Watson see that many of Dylan’s songs were part of the anti-war
movement? Does he say anti-war a lot? He probably never said it in a
song.</p>
<p>This is from <a href="http://ultimateclassicrock.com/bob-dylan-protest-songs/?trackback=tsmclip" target="_blank">this site</a>: </p>
<blockquote>In our No. 1 Bob Dylan protest song, 'The Times They Are
a-Changin,' Dylan went all out and combined the folk protest movement of
the 1960's with the civil rights movement. The shorter verses piled
upon one another in a powerful way, and lyrics like, "There's a battle
outside and it is ragin' / It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your
walls / For the times they are a-changin'," are iconic Dylan statements
that manage to transcend the times.</blockquote>
<p>But he doesn't mention Viet Nam or Civil Rights. So Watson wouldn't
know that he had anything to do with those issues. It is possible to
talk about something and have the words themselves not be very telling.
Background knowledge matters a lot. I asked a 20 something about Bob
Dylan a few days ago and he had never heard of him. He didn’t know much
about the 60’s. Neither does Watson. You can’t understand words if you
don’t know their context.</p>
<p>Suppose I told you that I heard a friend was buying a lot of sleeping
pills and I was worried. Would Watson say I hear you are thinking about
suicide? Would Watson suggest we hurry over and talk to our friend
about their problems? Of course not. People understand in context
because they know about the world and real issues in people's lives.
They don't count words.</p>
<p>Here is more from another site:</p>
<blockquote>Saying that <a href="http://ultimateclassicrock.com/tags/bob-dylan/" target="_blank">Bob Dylan</a> is the <a href="http://ultimateclassicrock.com/bob-dylans-newport-folk-festival-guitar-discovered/" target="_blank">father of folk music</a>
is probably overstepping a bit. However, saying that the vocalist is
one of the most prominent writers of anti-war and protest songs in the
20th century is spot on, thus making him worthy of a Top 10 Bob Dylan
Protest Songs list. The singer did change his range from
anti-establishment to country to pop and back to folk again, <a href="http://ultimateclassicrock.com/bob-dylan-rolling-stones-among-most-collectible-records-of-all-time/" target="_blank"><em>and he remains a seminal force</em></a> for those who rage against "The Man."</blockquote>
<p>That was written by a human. How do I know? Because Watson can’t draw
real conclusions by counting words in 800 million pages of text.</p>
<p>Of course, what upsets me most is not Watson but what IBM actually says. From the quote above:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Unlike traditionally programmed computers, cognitive systems such as Watson understand, reason, and learn.</p>
<p>Ann Rubin, IBM's vp of branded content and global creative, told
Adweek that the commercials were needed to help people understand the
new world of cognitive computing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I wrote a book called <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Computer-Language-Artificial-Intelligence/dp/020106443X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1447943815&sr=8-1&keywords=cognitive+computer" target="_blank">The Cognitive Computer</a><em> </em>in 1984:</p>
<p>I started a company called Cognitive Systems in 1981. The things I
was talking about then clearly have not been read by IBM (although they
seem to like the words I used.) Watson is not reasoning. You can only
reason if you have goals, plans, ways of attaining them, a comprehension
of the beliefs that others may have, and a knowledge of past
experiences to reason from. A point of view helps too. What is Watson’s
view on ISIS for example?</p>
<p>Dumb question? Actual thinking entities have a point of view about
ISIS. Dog’s don’t but Watson isn't as smart as a dog either. (The dog
knows how to get my attention for example.)</p>
<p>I invented a field called Case Based Reasoning in the 80’s which was
meant to enable computers to compare new situations to old ones and then
modify what the computer knew as a result. We were able to build some
useful systems. And we learned a lot about human learning. Did I think
we had created computers that were now going to outthink people or soon
become conscious? Of course not. I thought we had begun to create
computers that would be more useful to people.</p>
<p>It would be nice if IBM would tone down the hype and let people know
what Watson can actually do and stop making up nonsense about love
fading and out thinking cancer. IBM is simply lying now and they need to
stop.</p>
<p>AI winter is coming soon.</p></div></div></blockquote><div>To take just one of your examples, what would you say if Watson did conclude that if your friend was buying a lot of sleeping pills suicide was a possibility? Would that be evidence of understanding? Would *anything* that Watson said be evidence of understanding?<span></span> <br></div><br><br>-- <br>Stathis Papaioannou<br>