Supercomputers Have Individual Personalities

July 1, 2016

Supercomputers like Watson are more than a novelty.  They were built to be another tool for humans, rather than replacing humans all together or so reads some comments from Watson’s chief technology officer Rob High.  High was a keynote speaker at the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California.  The Inquirer shares the details in “Nvidia GTC: Why IBM Watson Dances Gangam Style And Sings Like Taylor Swift.”

At the conference, High said that he did not want his computer to take over his thinking, instead he wanted the computer to do his research for him.  Research and keeping up with the latest trends in any industry consumes A LOT of time and a supercomputer could potentially eliminate some of the hassle.  This requires that supercomputers become more human:

“This leads on to the fact that the way we interact with computers needs to change. High believes that cognitive computers need four skills – to learn, to express themselves with human-style interaction, to provide expertise, and to continue to evolve – all at scale.  People who claim not to be tech savvy, he explained, tend to be intimidated by the way we currently interact with computers, pushing the need for a further ‘humanising’ of the process.”

In order to humanize robots, what is taking place is them learning how to be human.  A few robots have been programmed with Watson as their main processor and they can interact with humans.  By interacting with humans, the robots pick up on human spoken language as well as body language and vocal tone.  It allows them to learn how to not be human, but rather the best “artificial servant it can be”.

Robots and supercomputers are tools that can ease a person’s job, but the fact still remains that in some industries they can also replace human labor.

 

Whitney Grace, July 1, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph

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