{"id":38341,"date":"2011-03-31T12:00:06","date_gmt":"2011-03-31T12:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/why-watson-thought-toronto-was-a-us-city\/"},"modified":"2011-03-31T12:00:06","modified_gmt":"2011-03-31T12:00:06","slug":"why-watson-thought-toronto-was-a-us-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/why-watson-thought-toronto-was-a-us-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Watson Thought Toronto was a US City"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why Watson Thought Toronto was a US City<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

heyitsnoah<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

In an interview over at The Browser<\/a>, Stephen Baker, who has a new book on IBM\u2019s Watson and computer intelligence<\/a>, explains how the computer could have possibly thought Toronto was a US city<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s review this. TheJeopardy! category was U.S. Cities, and the clue was, \u2018This city\u2019s largest airport is named after a World War II hero, and its second largest airport after a World War II battle.\u2019 Watson starts hunting around, looking for these two connections to airports throughout the U.S. and, more broadly, North America and the world. Why would it look beyond the U.S.? Because Watson is never completely sure that it understands the clue. It has to hedge a bit, and allow for the fact that it might not understand.<\/p>\n

Watson has also learned, through statistical analysis of the Jeopardy! categories, that they don\u2019t always coincide with the question. For example, a clue on American novelists might say, \u2018This masterpiece features a young man named Holden Caulfield.\u2019 The answer to the clue is not J D Salinger, it\u2019s Catcher in the Rye. Watson is aware – statistically at least \u2014 that categories can\u2019t always be trusted.<\/p>\n

So in the U.S. cities\/airport question, Watson goes on a hunt and never really finds an answer it has high confidence in. It has abysmal confidence in both Toronto, which has a couple of airports named after World War I heroes, and Chicago. It probably doesn\u2019t understand the Battle of Midway, so it doesn\u2019t make that connection. Because it has very low confidence, it doesn\u2019t rule out Canada. A lot of people would say, \u2018Well, that\u2019s a sign of idiocy,\u2019 and you could argue that, in this case, it was. But Watson has to allow for exceptions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The whole interview, which is actually about other books around the topic of artificial intelligence<\/a> is worth a read. Also, on the topic of Watson, Stephen Wolfram (of WolframAlpha<\/a>) has an interesting take<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Via: Why Watson Thought Toronto was a US City \/\/ NoahBrier.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why Watson Thought Toronto was a US City heyitsnoah: In an interview over at The Browser, Stephen Baker, who has a new book on IBM\u2019s Watson and computer intelligence, explains how the computer could have possibly thought Toronto was a US city: Let\u2019s review this. TheJeopardy! category was U.S. Cities, and the clue was, \u2018This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[780,781,1539],"class_list":{"0":"post-38341","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-link","5":"hentry","6":"tag-edp","7":"tag-emergent-digital-practices","9":"post_format-post-format-link"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-9Yp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}