IBM Back in the NLP Game?
June 22, 2010
IBM has some interesting technology. Like Xerox Parc, good ideas do not necessarily become market-dominant products or services. Remember Stairs III? If you answer, “No,” there you go. I am never sure whether IBM has come up with a great innovation or if it has fired up its public relations machine. With $100 billion in revenue and a motto like “Think”, how can you go wrong betting on IBM?
My my lonely perch in Madrid, I read a Slashdot item here that pointed me to and IBM Web site which timed out and to the fee starved New York Times story “The Watson Trivia Challenge.” The NYT link may be dead when you read my blog post. Be prepared to go hunting in a Vanderbilt-inspired “go-ahead” way. If you are lucky, you will be able to read “Designing a computer that can process and understand natural language.” Here’s a snippet from the pokey IBM Web site:
Known as a Question Answering (QA) system among computer scientists, Watson has been under development for more than three years. According to Dr. David Ferrucci, leader of the project team, “The confidence processing ability is key to winning at Jeopardy! and is critical to implementing useful business applications of Question Answering.” Watson will also incorporate massively parallel analytical capabilities and, just like human competitors, Watson will not be connected to the Internet, or have any other outside assistance.
The idea is that IBM’s technology can play a popular game show better than I can. No contest. I don’t know what the show is nor do I excel at answering questions. For example, I am baffled at such questions as:
- Why does the IBM.com Web site time out?
- Why can’t I locate information via the search box on IBM.com?
- Why is IBM technology focused on search engine optimization, consulting, and beating game show contestants chosen because each can jump up and down, make good television, and give the host an easy target for sly humor?
- Isn’t this “older” news recycled in what seems to be a World Cup week?
Call me a silly goose, but tracking the IBM innovations which seem to have no significant impact on my information seeking life is confusing. A final question, Watson, “Why is this the case?”
Bring up the theme music. Buzzz. Time’s up. Next week’s contestant? Ask.com. See you then.
Stephen E Arnold, June 22, 2010
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