Jeopardy / Watson Lecture at MIT

[Mark Woodward]

On 01/-10/-28163 02:59 PM, Kurt Keville wrote:
> Well, the good news is that it's all over but the crying... apparently 
> you can watch Watson beat up on us carbon-based units for 3 nights in 
> a row....
>
> here is Watson making mincemeat of mankind's best hope...
>
> http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/geekend/ibm-watson-supercomputer-beats-jeopardy-champs-in-practice-round/6546 
>

I wouldn't be too worried about HAL^^^Watson, it shouldn't be any more 
threatening to us humans or our abilities than google or alltheweb was a 
decade ago. They've gotten better with the language and weighing of 
information, but when all is said and done, its just a huge parallel 
information retrieval system.

It is one thing to index Hamlet, it is quite another to write or 
understand it.

The real value of something like Watson is in interpreting huge data 
sets, the danger is letting that part of our brains atrophy.

>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Woodward" <markw-FJ05HQ0HCKaWd6l5hS35sQ at public.gmane.org>
> To: "Kurt Keville" <kkeville-3s7WtUTddSA at public.gmane.org>
> Cc: <discuss-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2011 2:04 PM
> Subject: Re:Jeopardy / Watson Lecture at MIT
>
>
>> I think I speak for everyone who has a significant other, that 
>> February 14th is more or less impossible. (Well, I say impossible, 
>> but it goes with the assumption that we would like to keep peace at 
>> home and/or in our respective relationships.)
>>
>> Bummer
>>> From: "Kurt Keville"<kkeville-3s7WtUTddSA at public.gmane.org>
>>> Subject: Jeopardy / Watson Lecture at MIT
>>> To:<discuss-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org>
>>> Message-ID:<CA3F3715CD64468F88EF6CC26791CFCA at guestisn5ae5e1>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
>>> reply-type=original
>>>
>>> will be the night of the 14th with a viewing party to follow...
>>>
>>> http://events.mit.edu/event.html?id=13574220
>>>
>>> right now it is listed as the second of 2 events but it looks like 
>>> they are
>>> getting merged.
>>>
>>
>>
>