MIT Embraces Google DeepMinds Intuitive Technology Focus
October 6, 2016
The article on MIT Technology Review titled How Google Plans to Solve Artificial Intelligence conveys the exciting world of Google DeepMind’s Labyrinth. Labyrinth is a 3D environment forged on an open-source platform where DeepMind is challeneged by tasks such as, say, finishing a maze. As DeepMind progresses, the challenges become increasingly complicated. The article says,
What passes for smart software today is specialized to a particular task—say, recognizing faces. Hassabis wants to create what he calls general artificial intelligence—something that, like a human, can learn to take on just about any task. He envisions it doing things as diverse as advancing medicine by formulating and testing scientific theories, and bounding around in agile robot bodies…The success of DeepMind’s reinforcement learning has surprised many machine-learning researchers.
Of the endless applications possible for intuitive technology, the article focuses on the medical, understanding text, and robotics. When questioned about the ethical implications of the latter, Demis Hassabis, the head of Google’s DeepMind team, gave the equivalent of a shrug, and said that those sorts of questions were premature. In spite of this, MIT’s Technology Review seems pretty pumped about Google, which makes us wonder whether IBM Watson has been abandoned. Our question for Watson is, what is the deal with MIT?
Chelsea Kerwin, October 6, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
IBM Watson: Cut! Cut! You Will Never Work in This Town Again
September 9, 2016
I read “Watson Made a Movie Trailer, Paving the Way for Police Worn Body Cameras.” The idea is that IBM Watson can convert images into a story line. There are quite a few video editors who may be following IBM Watson’s new functionality. Who needs to sit in an edit bay, eating pizza at 2 30 am, trying to make the tweaks which calm down a wild and crazy Hollywood director? This is a job for Watson.
I learned in the write up:
producers at Fox nonetheless thought it might be a good idea to get a real artificial intelligence involved in preparing it for release (the movie came out on Friday). So they asked a research team at IBM to leverage their multitasking AI, Watson, to pick the scenes for a movie trailer.
This artificial intelligence technology is definitely of interest to the Hollywood crowd. Hey, if humans can’t figure out that Ben Hur is a loser from the dailies, maybe IBM Watson can do the job. Even better is Watson’s doing a good job so the moguls can fire some expensive folks with a penchant for spending weeks, if not months, in an edit bay with the aforementioned pizza.
The write up revealed:
The team used systems that they had already developed, known as the visual recognition services part of the IBM Watson Developer Cloud, which allows companies tap into the abilities of this particular AI. Watson already understood how to process video footage, and can interpret emotional content. All the team needed to do was teach Watson about the horror genre, specifically. After feeding the AI roughly 100 horror movies from various eras (including the 1976 classic The Omen), it didn’t take much for the software to begin picking out patterns.
I interpret this to mean that movie moguls can pay IBM to produce with the denizens of the edit bay once did. The idea, of course, is that Watson performs better than the team behind the box office disappointment — possibly disaster — of the summer. Giddy up, Ben.
The article reveals that the payday for IBM Watson may be processing police videos from body camera. IBM Watson would make sense of these. My recollection is that for London authorities to locate suspects of the tube and bus bombings, humans had to look at surveillance camera footage. The humans got the job done.
But if IBM Watson were on the job, the intrepid sleuth Watson might have done the job better, faster, and cheaper. Oh, pick two of these attributes.
The possibilities boggle my tiny goose brain. Visualize a feature film created entirely by IBM Watson. The source would be raw footage from a crew of videographers using the nifty 8K technology.
One question: How long will it take to train Watson on “great” film? Then how long will it take Watson to process the dailies for a two month shoot? Next how long will it take Watson to select scenes, order them in a semi coherent fashion, and output a motion picture? It might be less complex and more economical and stick to the old mogul formula: Pick a script with inputs from a person 22 years old. Add money. Pray.
The formula almost worked for Ben Hur.
Stephen E Arnold, September 9, 2016
Revenue Takes a Backseat to Patent Filings at IBM
September 9, 2016
The post on Slashdot titled IBM Has Been Awarded an Average of 24 Patents Per Day So Far in 2016 compares the patent development emphasis of major companies, with IBM coming out on top with 3,617 patent awards so far in 2016, according to a Quartz report. Patents are the bi-product of IBM’s focus on scientific research, as the report finds,
The company is in the middle of a painful reinvention, that sees the company shifting further away from hardware sales into cloud computing, analytics, and AI services. It’s also plugging away on a myriad of fundamental scientific research projects — many of which could revolutionize the world if they can come to fruition — which is where many of its patent applications originate. IBM accounted for about 1% of all US patents awarded in 2015.
Samsung claimed a close second (with just over 3,000 patents), and on the next rung down sits Google (with roughly 1,500 patents for the same period), Intel, Qualcomm, Microsoft, and Apple. Keep in mind though, that IBM and Samsung have been awarded more than twice as many patents as Google and the others, making it an unstoppable patent machine. You may well ask, what about revenue? They will get back to you on that score later.
Chelsea Kerwin, September 9, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
There is a Louisville, Kentucky Hidden Web/Dark Web meet up on September 27, 2016.
Information is at this link: https://www.meetup.com/Louisville-Hidden-Dark-Web-Meetup/events/233599645/
Weekly Watson: IBM Watson Plays Tennis
September 8, 2016
My recollection is that IBM has provided a range of services to various sporting activities. I did not know that IBM Watson could serve, volley, and deal with love. Advantages, yes. Love, not so much. I learned that IBM Watson will be attending the US Open in “IBM Watson’s Next Match? The U.S. Open.” The story appeared on USA Today’s Web site along with a number of compelling pop up pleas for me to subscribe to the dead tree version of the Gannet newspaper. Err, no thanks.
I learned:
IBM has collaborated with the United State Tennis Association on technology for more than a quarter-century, but Watson, IBM’s self-proclaimed cognitive computer, is a newbie at the Open. IBM is leveraging Watson’s machine learning smarts and cloud-based analytics to try and bolster the fan experience during the tournament–while simultaneously raising Watson’s profile.
Just imagine. IBM is trying to raise Watson’s profile.
I highlighted another knowledge nugget from the McPaper online write up; namely:
Behind the scenes at the U.S. Open, Watson’s speech-to-text technology is “listening” to interviews with players and video clips of tennis action to generate transcripts and subtitles for videos published to the tournament’s website and other digital platforms.
I have always wondered if squeaky clean female tennis players from Eastern Europe cursed on court after losing a point. Perhaps Watson will monitor, translate, and display what real players say in natural language.
Even more interesting, USA Today revealed:
Through Watson’s natural language capabilities, fans can use the artificial intelligence-infused U.S. Open mobile app to ask such questions as, “Where can I get a hamburger?” or “Where are the bathrooms?”
Right. The facilities’ question. The crack journalism outfit was not, it appears, swept game, set and match by Watson.
I noted this statement:
I consider this one to be a fault.
Clever. The fault referenced informed McPaper that its social media alter ego was Pamela Anderson. Does Ms. Anderson play a vigorous game of tennis?
Stephen E Arnold, September 8, 2016
Watson Ads for Branded Answers to the Little Questions of Life
September 6, 2016
Here is a potent new way for brands to worm their way into every aspect of consumers’ lives. “IBM Watson Is Now Offering AI-Powered Digital Ads That Answer Consumers’ Questions,” we learn from AdWeek. Watson Ads will hook users up with answers to their everyday questions—answers supplied by advertisers. Apparently, IBM’s Weather-Company acquisition supplied the tools behind this product. Writer Christopher Heine explains:
IBM’s relatively new ownership of The Weather Company’s digital properties is coming into play in a serious fashion: Watson Ads will first appear on Weather.com, the Weather mobile app and the company’s data-driven WeatherFX platform. Later, IBM plans to allow them to appear on third-party properties.
Campbell Soup Company, Unilever and GSK Consumer Healthcare are some of the brands that will run the ads in the coming days. Watson Ads’ pricing details were not disclosed.
Jeremy Steinberg, global head of sales, The Weather Company, described how they work, stating that ‘machine learning and natural-language capabilities will allow it to provide accurate responses. What we’re doing is moving away from keyword searches and towards more natural language and well-reasoned answers.
Heine outlines Campbell’s plan as an example—their Watson Ads will present “Chef Watson,” the helpful AI which suggests recipes based on criteria like available ingredients, the time of day, and what the weather is like. Those recipes will be pulled from Campbell’s existing site Campbell’s Kitchen. Not surprisingly, their ingredient lists rely heavily on Campbell’s product line (which goes well beyond soup these days).
Another Watson Ads client is GSK Consumer Healthcare, which plans to use the tech to help users make better real-time health decisions—a worthy project, I’ll admit. I am curious to see how Unilever, and other companies down the line, will leverage their digital voices of authority. See the article for more details on the project.
Cynthia Murrell, September 6, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
There is a Louisville, Kentucky Hidden Web/Dark Web meet up on September 27, 2016.
Information is at this link: https://www.meetup.com/Louisville-Hidden-Dark-Web-Meetup/events/233599645/
IBM Takes Its University Initiative to Scotland
August 22, 2016
The article on Inside HPC titled IBM Partners with University of Aberdeen to Drive Cognitive Computing illustrates the circumstances of the first Scottish university partnership with IBM. IBM has been collecting goodwill and potential data analysts from US colleges lately, so it is no surprise that this endeavor has been sent abroad. The article details,
In June 2015, the UK government unveiled plans for a £313 million partnership with IBM to boost big data research in the UK. Following an initial investment of £113 million to expand the Hartree Centre at Daresbury over the next five years, IBM also agreed to provide further support to the project with a package of technology and onsite expertise worth up to £200 million. This included 24 IBM researchers, stationed at the Hartree Centre, to work side-by-side with existing researchers.
The University of Aberdeen will begin by administering the IBM cognitive computing technology in computer science courses in addition to ongoing academic research with Watson. In a sense, the students exposed to Watson in college are being trained to seek jobs in the industry, for IBM. They will have insider experience and goodwill toward the company. It really is one of the largest nets cast for prospective job applicants in industry history.
Chelsea Kerwin, June 22, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph There is a Louisville, Kentucky Hidden /Dark Web meet up on August 23, 2016.
Information is at this link: https://www.meetup.com/Louisville-Hidden-Dark-Web-Meetup/events/233019199/
An IBM Watson Retrospective
August 20, 2016
We love IBM Watson. We avidly devoured “A Look at IBM’s Watson 5 Years After Its Breathtaking Jeopardy Debut.” The “singularity” is associated in my mind with Google, but the write up is about IBM Watson. What’s not to like?
The review kicks off by reminding the reader (in this case, me) that Watson is a version of DeepQA software. I added this mental footnote: Lucene, home brew code, and acquired technologies.)
I did not know that IBM wanted to create a Siri for business. IBM and Apple have formed a bit of a teamlet in the last year or so.
I highlighted this passage:
Watson shrunk from the size of a large bedroom to that of four pizza boxes and is now accessible via the cloud on tablet and smartphone. The system is 240% more powerful than its predecessor and can process 28 types (or modules) of data, compared to just 5 previously.
In 2013, IBM open-sourced Watson’s API and now offers IBM Bluemix, a comprehensive cloud platform for third-party developers to build and run apps on top of Watson’s many computing capabilities.
But one of the biggest moves that’s made Watson into what it is today was when, in 2014, IBM invested $1 billion into creating “IBM Watson Group,” a massive division dedicated to all things Watson and housing some 2,000 employees. This was the tipping point when Watson went from “startup mode” to making cognitive computing mainstream. It’s when Watson started to feel very, well, “IBM.” Fast-forward to 2016, and Watson has more enterprise services and solutions than I can list here—financial advisor, automated customer service representative, research compiler—you name the service, Watson can probably do it.
The confidence in Watson seems unbounded.
The write up explains the future of Watson. I learned:
IBM is aware of deep learning and last year told MIT Technology Review that the team is integrating the deep learning approach into Watson. The original system was already a bit of a mashup—combining natural language understanding with statistical analysis of large datasets. Deep learning may round it out further.
I was under the impression that training Watson with data was part of the plumbing. Deep learning, I conclude, is a bit of frosting on the cake.
The review ends with a reminder that Watson is an augmented intelligence system just like Palantir Technologies’ Gotham and Metropolitan systems, not an artificial intelligence system.
The future is “powerful ways” for IBM, humans, and Watson to work together. I believe this. I believe this. I believe this. I believe this. I believe… Sustainable revenues and profits will follow. I believe this too.
Stephen E Arnold, August 20, 2016
Has IBM Channeled Palantir with Augmented Intelligence?
August 17, 2016
I have been compiling publicly available information about Palantir Technologies, the former $20 billion unicorn. One of the factoids I located in my research was Palantir’s use of the notion intelligence augmentation. Palantir tries to make clear that humans are needed to get the most from the Gotham and Metropolitan products. This idea is somewhat old fashioned. There are some firms who explain that their content processing systems are intelligent, automatic, and really smart. As you may know, I think that marketers who suggest a new magic world of software is here and now are full of baloney. For some reason, when I describe a product or service as baloney, the wizards responsible for the product get really annoyed.
Augmented intelligence is a popular phrase. A quick check of my files related to search and content processing, turned up a number of prior uses of the phrase. These range from MondoBrain which offers “the most powerful simplest decision making and problem solving solution” to the slightly more modest write up by Matteo Pasquinelli.
In the intelligence niche, Palantir has been one of the companies bandying about the phrase “augmented intelligence” as a way to make clear that trained personnel are essential to the effective use of the Palantir framework. I like this aspect of Palantir because humans really are needed and many companies downplay that fact.
I read “IBM: AI Should Stand For ‘Augmented Intelligence’.” I love the parental “should” too. IBM, which owns the Palantir precursor and rival Analyst’s Notebook system wants to use the phrase too. Now the world of government intelligence is a relatively small group when compared to the users of Pokémon Go.
IBM, via what seems to be some content marketing, takes this position:
IBM says it is focused on augmented intelligence, systems that enhance human capabilities, rather than systems that aspire to replicate the full scope of human intelligence.
I am okay with this approach to smart software.
The write up adds this onion to the goulash:
IBM also acknowledges that AI must be trustworthy. The company argues that people will develop trust as they interact with AI systems over time, as they have done with ATMs. The key, the company suggests, will be ensuring that systems behave as we expect them to.
I check ATMs to make certain there is no false swiper technology attached to the user friendly gizmo, however.
The write up adds:
AI, IBM concludes, represents a partnership between people and machines, one that may alter the job landscape without eliminating jobs overall. The partnership comes with risks, the company says, but contends that the risks can be managed and mitigated.
My hunch is that IBM’s use of augmented intelligence may be a gentle poke at Palantir. Imagine a presentation before a group of US Army procurement professionals. IBM is pitching IBM Watson, a system consisting of open source software, home brew code, and technologies acquired by acquisition as the next big thing. IBM then tosses in the AI as augmented intelligence bedrock.
Palantir has made a similar presentation and presented Gotham and its integrated software system as an augmented intelligence framework.
How does a savvy US Army procurement professional determine how alike or dissimilar are the IBM and Palantir systems.
My thought about this semantic muddle is that both Palantir and IBM need to use language which makes the system differences more distinctive the way Endeca did. As you may know, Endeca in the late 1990s described its presentation of related content via links as “Guided Navigation.” The company then complained when another firm used its phrase. I think more about Endeca’s policing of this phrase as an innovation than I do Endeca’s computationally intensive approach to content processing.
I know I don’t use “Guided Navigation” when I am rested and talking about facets.
If I were IBM, I would search for lingo that makes sense. If I were Palantir, I would find a way to communicate the Gotham benefits in a distinctive manner.
There are significant differences between IBM Analyst’s Notebook and Palantir Gotham. Using the same phrase to describe each confuses me. I am pretty confident government procurement officials are not confused too much. Is it possible that IBM is having some fun with the AI definition as “augmented intelligence”?
Stephen E Arnold, August 17, 2016
Watson Weakly: Everything about Watson Mostly
August 16, 2016
We know you want to know everything about Watson. Well, almost everything because you are, gentle reader, a “smart person.” You can get IBM’s collection of information you and other “smart people” definitely want to know. Navigate to this Cubic Zirconia gem of a content marketing “news” story: “IBM Watson: The Smart Person’s Guide.”
What does a “smart person” want to know? The write up answers that question for you. Here’s a run down of the article and its content about Watson:
- Four TechRepublic stories about the origins of Watson, a case study, machine learning for a “smart person”, and a peep into the future
- Five TechRepublic stories about case studies of Watson in action, a write up about what companies do with Watson, photos of products with Watson inside, a glossary of Watson speak, and an answer to the question “What Is Watson?”
- Five TechRepublic and ZDNet stories about IBM declaring a “new era,” the Watson Health medical image initiative, Watson in Cisco routers, an apology for slow revenue growth, and Watson in robot restaurants
- Six articles about the “affect” of Watson including how Watson detects early stage dementia, Watson and health analytics, Watson as a short cut to treating cancer, a partnership with the American Diabetes Association, how Watson delivers personalized customer experiences, and some objective information that says 63 percent of business will benefit from artificial intelligence, recently renamed by IBM to augmented intelligence
- The timeline for all things Watson; for example, seven articles about autonomous vehicles, Cisco again but this time with WebEx, eight universities on the Watson bandwagon, the “saving Macy’s” application of Watson, digital wellness [wait, shouldn’t that article have been in the health care group?], Watson delivering cloud based cyber security, and Watson helping a Spanish bank
- How to license Watson is easy with these articles: Six lessons from an early adopter [Isn’t that a how to?], the Watson ecosystem, the Watson developer cloud, Watson health [wait, doesn’t that belong in the health care dot point too?], Watson university programs [wait, wait, don’t tell me that belongs with the earlier reference to universities on the bandwagon].
All in all the write up is an amazing illustration of how much content marketing IBM is pumping through the TechRepublic channel. That’s good for TechRepublic. How good is this investment for IBM? Who knows.
What is clear is that some more logical clustering of Watson marketing collateral seems to be needed. A question: What if this categorization of items you as a smart person need to know was performed by Watson? Hmm. There are some rough edges. Perhaps the subject matter expert providing the “augmentation” did not focus on his or her job. If fully automated, how accurate is this Watson technology?
Sorry, smart person, I have no answers. That’s because I am not a smart person and I did not read this cornucopia of marketing collateral. You will, right?
Stephen E Arnold, August 16, 2016
IBM’s Champion Human Resources Department Announces “Permanent” Layoff Tactics
August 16, 2016
The article on Business Insider titled Leaked IBM Email Says Cutting “Redundant” Jobs Is a “Permanent and Ongoing” Part of Its Business Model explores the language and overall human resource strategy of IBM. Netherland IBM personnel learned in the email that layoffs are coming, but also that layoffs will be a regular aspect of how IBM “optimizes” their workforce. The article tells us,
“IBM isn’t new to layoffs, although these are the first to affect the Netherlands. IBM’s troubled business units, like its global technology services unit, are shrinking faster than its booming businesses, like its big data/analytics, machine learning (aka Watson), and digital advertising agency are growing…All told, IBM eliminated and gained jobs in about equal numbers last year, it said. It added about 70,000 jobs, CEO Rometty said, and cut about that number, too.”
IBM seems to be performing a balancing act that involves gaining personnel in areas like data analytics while shedding employees in other areas that are less successful, or “redundant.” This allows them to break even, although the employees that they fire might feel that Watson itself could have delivered the news more gracefully and with more tact than the IBM HR department did. At any rate, we assume that IBM’s senior management asked Watson what to do and that this permanent layoffs strategy was the informed answer provided by the supercomputer.
Chelsea Kerwin, August 16, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
There is a Louisville, Kentucky Hidden /Dark Web meet up on August 23, 2016.
Information is at this link: https://www.meetup.com/Louisville-Hidden-Dark-Web-Meetup/events/233019199/
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
