Watson to Learn about the Samurai Way of Lingo
February 11, 2015
I am taking language lessons. Believe me. At age 70, I marvel at how my memory has changed as I drift toward total obsolescence. My language instructor is a multi degreed human who is a native speaker with a good command of English. I did not consider hiring an investment firm to teach me a new language. Watson is, by golly, going to learn Japanese and work wonders in next generation computing.
IBM, however, appears to see the world through different lenses tinted with the glow of the recent Resource Actions. For background, see the employee comments on the Endicott Alliance site.
I learned in “IBM’s Watson Turns Japanese and Moves Into Robots” that:
IBM and SoftBank Telecom have agreed to bring the technology behind Watson — the IBM computer that won the television game show “Jeopardy!” — into Japan.
There you go. SoftBank and its telco outfit. Softbank is thrilled with the tie up:
Naoyuki Nakagaki, a spokesman for SoftBank Telecom, said in an email that his company would look to the Japanese-enabled Watson to “create new value in the Japanese market.” The company expects to make both business and consumer products. “We believe Watson will help differentiate SoftBank Telecom’s product offerings among telecommunications and other commoditized services,” he said by email.
My view is that Watson will have to generate a lot of money to hit the magical figure of $10 billion in revenue once projected for the Lucene based system.
If the deal does not yield big bucks, I wonder if the executives involved in this commercialization of near magical software will have to learn about bushi, the rules, and the actions expected when a defeat has been suffered.
I had a Japanese customer who delighted in telling me about various samurai customs. He alleged that he was a direct descendent of a samurai. The founder of the company of which he was president also shared this background. Believe me, I made sure I did not screw up with this outfit or my customer who was the managing director of a big Japanese outfit.
I recall his explaining suppuku, which some Americans call harakiri. Suppuku involves killing oneself to release the samurai’s spirit to the afterlife. The idea is that a failure is atoned in a fairly messy way.
According to Asian History,
The more common form of seppuku was simply a single horizontal cut. Once the cut was made, the second would decapitate the suicide. A more painful version, called jumonji giri, involved both a horizontal and vertical cut. The performer of jumonji giri then waited stoically to bleed to death, rather than being dispatched by a second.
Question: How would Watson commit suppuku? I can figure out what the executives should do, but I am not sure a computer, even one as super smart as Watson, could pull its plug.
Well, maybe Watson could. It can talk, calculate, create recipes with tamarind, cure cancer, and do financial cartwheels for investment firms. Pulling a plug seems easy.
Will an IBM pull Watson’s plug when the billions fail to materialize in the next quarter or two?
Stephen E Arnold, February 11, 2015
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
