A Smarter Planet
asmarterplanet.com · Company blog · on HN since 2010
IBM's A Smarter Planet blog covers IBM research and products, including Watson, Jeopardy, quantum computing and its annual 5 in 5 predictions.
What HN saysHN links it as the primary source for Watson details, such as its Prolog use and low confidence on the airport clue, and for IBM predictions.
21HN people shared it
7linked it in comments
16stories submitted
247story points
10 years agolast shared
2010people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Watson: The Confusion over an Airport Clue4 people · 41 points · first shared 2011 · 19 comments on HN
- 2IBM Watson Acquires Technology from Blekko2 people · 114 points · first shared 2015 · 69 comments on HN
- 3Answers from the Watson Team2 people · 2 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 4IBM : Five Innovations That Will Alter the Tech Landscape Within Five Years2 people · 1 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 5We're Entering a Golden Era of Quantum Computing Research1 people · 68 points · first shared 2015 · 19 comments on HN
- 6Watson on Jeopardy Day Three: What We Learned about How Watson Thinks1 people · 5 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 7IBM Forecast of Inventions that Will Change the World Within 5 Years1 people · 3 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 8IBM Chief: "Innovation flourishes best on the social spaces between machines"1 people · 3 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 9IBM Research Takes Watson to Hollywood with the First “Cognitive Movie Trailer”1 people · 2 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 10Watson on Jeopardy Day One Scores1 people · 2 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 11IBM denies PRISM link1 people · 2 points · first shared 2014 · 1 comments on HN
- 12The Promise of Deep Learning by Yoshua Bengio1 people · 1 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 13Technology for turning the promise of personalized medicine into a reality1 people · 1 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
- 14IBM invents Corelet lang to program brain-inspired computers1 people · 1 points · first shared 2013 · 1 comments on HN
- 15IBM's Grand Challenges: Pitting Machine Against Man1 people · 1 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
DanBC · 2016-05-04
Here's some more discussion about using word analysis to predict psychosis:
http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2015/08/word-analysis-proves-effective-…
And here's an Atlantic article: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/speech-analysis-…
profquail · 2015-03-22
IBM's Watson system is partially written in Prolog:
http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2011/02/the-watson-research-team-answer…
(see the answers to questions #3 and #6)
brown9-2 · 2011-12-20
I think it says something about this "prediction" that most of the text on the IBM page about it (http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2011/12/the-next-5-in-5-mind-reading-is… is:
Vote for this as the coolest IBM 5 in 5 prediction by clicking the “Like” button below.
Join the Twitter conversation at #IBM5in5
brendn · 2011-12-20
Can someone change this to link to the actual IBM blog entry [1] instead of the CNET fluff piece?
[1] http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2011/12/the-next-5-in-5-our-forecast-of…
scott_s · 2011-02-24
Watson was not confident in that answer - only 30% (http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2011/02/watson-on-jeopardy-day-two-the-… Had that been a normal question, it wouldn't have buzzed in. It only answered because Final Jeopardy is the only time when not answering and answering incorrectly have the same penalty.
PhantomGremlin · 2015-01-26
> The natural language processing is its biggest weakness.
There were several documentaries about Watson after it won Jeopardy, and this weakness was quite evident to those paying attention.
Watson never really understood Alex's Jeopardy "answers" at all. This was quite obvious in "final Jeopardy". Watson's response clearly showed its limitations.
Here's how it went down:[1]
The category was US Cities, and the answer
was: “Its largest airport was named for a
World War II hero; its second largest,
for a World War II battle.”
The two human contestants wrote
“What is Chicago?” for its O’Hare and Midway,
but Watson’s response was a lame
“What is Toronto???”
Basically Watson's Jeopardy responses were a very refined equivalent of the Google "I'm feeling lucky" button.
I have to believe that the situation gets a lot lot trickier in a "medical context".
Still, couldn't it be possible to harness Watson as a super-smart assistant to humans? But there's probably not enough money to be made in that.
[1] http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2011/02/watson-on-jeopardy-day-two-the-…
ssclafani · 2011-02-16
David Ferrucci, the manager of the Watson project at IBM, on why he thinks Watson got the Final Jeopardy question wrong:
"First, the category names on Jeopardy! are tricky. The answers often do not exactly fit the category. Watson, in his training phase, learned that categories only weakly suggest the kind of answer that is expected, and, therefore, the machine downgrades their significance. The way the language was parsed provided an advantage for the humans and a disadvantage for Watson, as well. “What US city” wasn’t in the question. If it had been, Watson would have given US cities much more weight as it searched for the answer. Adding to the confusion for Watson, there are cities named Toronto in the United States and the Toronto in Canada has an American League baseball team. It probably picked up those facts from the written material it has digested. Also, the machine didn’t find much evidence to connect either city’s airport to World War II. (Chicago was a very close second on Watson’s list of possible answers.) So this is just one of those situations that’s a snap for a reasonably knowledgeable human but a true brain teaser for the machine."
http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2011/02/watson-on-jeopardy-day-two-the-…