Getting a Failing Grade in Artificial Intelligence: Watson and Siri
February 12, 2014
I read “Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid” in 1999 or 2000. My reaction was, “I am glad I did not have Dr. Douglas R. Hofstadter critiquing my lame work for the PhD program at my university. Dr. Hofstadter’s intellect intimidated me. I had to look up “Bach” because I knew zero about the procreative composer of organ music. (Heh, heh)
Imagine my surprise when I read “Why Watson and Siri Are Not Real AI” in Popular Mechanics magazine. Popular Mechanics is not my first choice as an information source for analysis of artificial intelligence and related disciplines. Popular Mechanics explains saws, automobiles, and gadgets.
But there was the story, illustration with one of those bluish Jeopardy Watson photographs. The write up is meaty because Popular Mechanics asked Dr. Hofstadter questions and presented his answers. No equations. No arcane references. No intimidating the fat, ugly grad student.
The point of the write up is probably not one that IBM and Apple will like. Dr. Hofstadter does not see the “artificial intelligence” in Watson and Siri as “thinking machines.” (I share this view along with DARPA, I believe.)
Here’s a snippet of the Watson analysis:
Watson is basically a text search algorithm connected to a database just like Google search. It doesn’t understand what it’s reading. In fact, read is the wrong word. It’s not reading anything because it’s not comprehending anything. Watson is finding text without having a clue as to what the text means. In that sense, there’s no intelligence there. It’s clever, it’s impressive, but it’s absolutely vacuous.
I had to look up vacuous. It means, according to the Google “define” function: “having or showing a lack of thought or intelligence; mindless.” Okay, mindless. Isn’t IBM going to build a multi-billion dollar a year business on Watson’s technology? Isn’t IBM delivering a landslide business to the snack shops adjacent its new Watson offices in Manhattan? Isn’t Watson saving lives in Africa?
The interview uses a number of other interesting words; for example:
- Hype
- Silliest
- Shambles
- Slippery
- Profits
Yet my favorite is the aforementioned—vacuous.
Please, read the interview in its entirety. I am not sure it will blunt the IBM and Apple PR machines, but kudos to Popular Mechanics. Now if the azure chip consultants, the failed Webmasters turned search experts, and the MBA pitch people would shift from hyperbole to reality, some clarity would return to the discussion of information retrieval.
Stephen E Arnold, February 11, 2014
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