IBM Watson: Going Back to the Jeopardy Thing
October 28, 2020
IEEE Spectrum ran an interview which I thought was a trifle unusual. Watson is going to modernize legacy code. How much of the legacy code is the work of IBM programmers and acolytes trained in the ways of Big Blue: JCL incantations, chants for PL/I, and abracadabra for Assembler? What about the code for the US air traffic control system? What about the code for the AS/400, a machine series I have lost in the mists of marketing? I remember rocking on with RPG.
The article has a killer SEO-centric title; to wit:
What, pray tell, was the first challenge IBM Watson successfully resolved? Maybe winning the Jeopardy game show. I keep thinking about the wonders of television post-production for programs which shoot a week’s worth of goodness in one day. The behind the scenes Avid users labor away to produce a “real” TV show. Sorry. I remain skeptical.
The article presents five questions. These are not exactly colloquial. The wording is similar to that used in semi-scripted reality TV programs. The answers are IBM-ish. Please, read and enjoy the original document. I will focus on two of the questions. Yes, I selected the ones with the most Watson goodness based on my experience with the giant of White Plains.
The first question probes the darned exciting history of IBM Watson and cancer. As I recall, some of the oncologists in Houston’s medical community were not thrilled with the time required to explain cancer to IBM analysts and slightly less thrilled with the outputs. Hasta la vista, Watson. The article explains IBM Watson and healthcare using wordage like this:
The use of AI in healthcare is still evolving, and it’s a journey. To expect AI to be able to give the right answer in all diagnosis scenarios is expecting too much. The technology has not reached that level yet. However, that’s precisely why we say it’s more about augmenting the healthcare experts than it is about replacing in many ways.
My, “yeah, but” is a memory of an IBM Watson presentation which asserted that Watson could deliver actionable diagnoses. I know I am getting old, but I recall those assurances. That presentation gave me the idea for the “Weakly Watson” series of articles in this blog. There were some crazy attempts to make IBM Watson relevant: Free to use model, build an application to match dogs with dog owners for a festival in Mexico, etc. etc.
The second question I want to highlight is natural language processing (!) and content processing. Here’s the snippet from the IBMer’s answer I circled with my Big Blue pen:
Roughly speaking, rule-based systems will be successful in translating somewhere between 50 to 60 percent of a program. It is true that part of the program can be translated reasonably well, however, that still leaves half of the program to be translated manually, and that remaining 50 percent is the hardest part, typically involving very complex rules. And that’s exactly where AI kicks in because it can act like humans.
There you go. AI “can act like humans.” Tell that to the people shafted by AI systems as documented in Weapons of Math Destruction.
Net net: Where’s IBM going with Watson? I think anywhere money can be generated. Game shows are probably less complex than addressing encrypted text messages and figuring out what’s in a streaming video in real time.
Who knows? Maybe Lucene, acquired technology from outfits like Vivisimo, and home brew code from IBM Almaden can work miracles.
Stephen E Arnold, October 28, 2020
IBM: The Great Entertainer
October 25, 2020
The media never stops reporting news and technology never stops revolutionizing the media. The newest upgrade for media brands and publishers is AI says Advanced Television in the article: “IBM Brings AI At Scale To The Media Industry.” IBM wants to remain one of the leading AI developers and suppliers, especially when they have Watson to do the scaling. As part of IBM’s easy array of industry solutions, the company now offers three new products for brands and publishers. The new products focus on reaching consumers while respecting their privacy. IBM already has an all star client list for its new AI product line, including Beeswax, MediaMath, Nielsen, LiveRamp, Xandr/AT&T, and Magnite.
IBM SVP of Cognitive Applications and Blockchain Bob Lord stated that the advertising industry is undergoing a major transformation when it comes to consumer privacy. Major changes are elimination of some third party cookies, mobile identity, and increased demand in transparency, and increased compliance and regulatory shifts. In order for the advertising agency to respect consumer privacy, but also generate revenue Lord explained AI will be invaluable:
“He added: ‘We believe AI will be the ‘backbone’ of the new era as the industry prepares for the next generation of advertising. We’re using AI to help solve problems across the advertising industry, just like IBM has in countless other industries like Healthcare, Financial Services and Retail. Our work will be a step forward in our evolution to meet the advertising industry’s upheaval, and we are proud to help the advertising industry advance with the value of AI.’”
The newest AI upgrades are for IBM’s Watson Advertising Accelerator, Watson Advertising Social Targeting with Influential, and Watson Advertising Weather Targeting. IBM developed these tools for the advertising industry to regain consumer trust. Consumers are upset about the amount of spying and selling of their personal data, not to mention the amount of targeted ads that reach them through their phones, computers, tablets, and televisions.
IBM is using AI to help brands and publishers make sense of the amount of data in the digital space to make wise business decisions. The other goal is to regain consumer trust and respect individuals’ privacy as technology becomes more entwined in society.
IBM, AI, and declining revenues: Take the show on the road.
Whitney Grace, October 25, 2020
IBM Watson: Can AI Have Trouble Finding a True Friend?
October 19, 2020
It appears that IBM’s super computer Watson is dealing with loneliness during the global pandemic, because the Daily Mail shares: “Artificial Intelligence Can Detect How Lonely You Are With 94 Percent Accuracy Just By Analyzing Your Speech Patterns.”
Researchers at the UC San Diego School of Medicine studied the speech patterns of older adults when they discussed loneliness. Using AI that included IBM’s Watson, the researchers analyzed how participants spoke including words, phrases, and silence gaps. They discovered that AI algorithms were almost as accurate as self-reports and questionnaires.
The researchers discovered that lonely people usually have long respires when discussing loneliness and express more sadness in their responses. The problem with self-reports and questionnaires (also completed by individuals) are often biased, because of stigma associated with loneliness.
To avoid bias, the researchers used natural language processing specially designed as a quantitative assessment of expressed emotion and sentiment combined with the usual loneliness diagnostic tools. The project did the following:
“Participants were also interviewed during personal conversations, which were taped and manually transcribed. Transcripts were then examined using natural language processing tools, including IBM’s Watson Natural Language Understanding (WNLU) software, to quantify sentiment and expressed emotions. WNLU uses deep learning to extract metadata from keywords, categories, sentiment, emotion and syntax. ‘Natural language patterns and machine learning allow us to systematically examine long interviews from many individuals and explore how subtle speech features like emotions may indicate loneliness,’ said first author Varsha Badal at UCSD. ‘Similar emotion analyses by humans would be open to bias, lack consistency and require extensive training to standardize.’”
The AI predicted with 94% accuracy self-acknowledged loneliness and quantitative loneliness with 76%. In the future, mental health professionals may use AI algorithms with natural language processing to diagnosis and record loneliness. It would be more accurate without the self-bias and could lead to better treatment.
Whitney Grace, October 18, 2020
IBM Watson: Some Old People Like Me Are Lonely and AI Will Not Reveal the Depths of My Despair at Crazy Marketing
October 9, 2020
Forbes, the capitalist tool and the fave read of AOC, reports that smart software can identify old people who are lonely. “Artificial Intelligence Used to Predict Loneliness in Senior Citizens” breaks this heart-stopping news:
the study by researchers from the University of California, IBM and elsewhere could prove vital in helping society assess and address widespread loneliness.
Apparently the experts have never visited a warehouse for elders (aka “nursing home” or “retirement community”). Some old people appear to be lonely. I am qualified to make this observation based on personal experience because I am going to be 77 in a few weeks.
Ask me, “Are you lonely?”
I will reply, “Where’s IBM Watson? That’s the technology I need to figure out if I am going to die of heartbreak while wearing an adult diaper, sitting in a lime gray green room, watching a flickering cathode ray heart monitor.
The write up points out:
For the purposes of the study, the researchers interviewed 80 residents at an independent living sector of a senior housing community in San Diego County. They asked questions intended to gauge various aspects of loneliness, with the answers being transcribed and then analyzed using the IBM Watson NLU (natural language understanding) iv program, which could “quantify sentiment and expressed emotions.”
Some old people are deaf; others are lost in misfiring neuronal noise.
But IBM Watson can figure out that some old people are lonely.
The write up pulls back from pure balderdash by asserting:
But while AI, virtual reality, and other technologies can certainly be used to detect problems, we need to remember that most of our problems aren’t caused by a lack of tech.
Right, pacemakers and electric wheelchairs cannot do it all. Not even the ever cheerful and uplifting Facebook can make some people not lonely. No bowling alone, please.
It’s great that IBM Watson has moved from matching people to stray dogs. Progress. But what about those Covid treatments facilitated by IBM Watson. Remember? Even oldsters like me recall that IBM Watson assertion.
Stephen E Arnold, October 9, 2020
IBM Watson Puts on the Football Gear for Fantasy Contact
October 2, 2020
Fantasy football fans will soon benefit from the power of machine learning just as golf, NASCAR, baseball, and other sports fans have. Neowin explains how “IBM Watson Integrated With ESPN Fantasy Football League To Drive Deeper Engagement With Fans” for an exclusive new feature.
Fantasy football is a game where players assemble an imaginary football team of real players and earn points from the players’ statistical performance and contribution on the field. Fantasy football players enter leagues through various apps, including the ESPN Fantasy Football app. ESPN hired IBM to utilize the Watson supercomputer to create the Trade Assistant. It is a new feature on the ESPN Fantasy Football app that allows users to make better and fairer trades. The new Trade Assistant with IBM Watson analyzes a player’s roster value, cost of losing them, and equity in the trade.
The new feature requires some heavy duty number crunching that only a super computer can conquer:
“At the heart of the feature will be the natural language processing (NLP) capabilities of IBM Watson, which will help the assistant in removing potential bias and uncover new insights from unstructured data from a variety of sources. To do this, IBM Watson will comb through multiple sources including blogs, news articles, and podcasts, to extract insights on player stats and sentiments….The motivation behind this feature is to make the Fantasy Football app more engaging and competitive. “Over the years, we have worked with IBM to uniquely integrate the brand and Watson technology to enhance the fantasy player experience and drive deeper engagement with sports fans,” said Marco Forte, Senior Vice President, Disney Advertising Sales, calling the feature a new height in the relationship between ESPN Fantasy Football and IBM.”
Watson should make playing ESPN Fantasy Football more enjoyable for players, especially those who do not lose a bet with their friends. No onto the bigger argument: is fantasy football and other fantasy sports legalized gambling?
Whitney Grace, October 2, 2020
Mayflower Autonomous Ship Gets a Mate Named Watson
September 24, 2020
Christopher Columbus had to make do with mere humans when he sailed the oceans blue. The Mayflower Autonomous Ship or MAS has IBM Watson on board. The MAS is a maritime autonomous drone. Drones are subject to command and control hacking. Will the MAS be the target of this type of attack with bad actors running the ship into vacationers sailing into Zephyr Sailing’s Pandora at six knots? DarkCyber sincerely hopes that IBM Watson can operate at Jeopardy game show performance levels. We learned from “Mayflower Autonomous Ship Launches”:
MAS features an AI Captain built by ProMare and IBM developers which gives MAS the ability to sense, think and make decisions at sea with no human captain or onboard crew. The new class of marine AI is underpinned by IBM’s latest advanced edge computing systems, automation software, computer vision technology and Red Hat Open Source software.
The MAS operates with no human interventions. The ship includes more than 30 sensors and has a maximum speed of 10 knots. The software includes “IBM Visual Insights computer vision technology, IBM edge systems, IBM Operational Decision Manager automation software, IBM Maximo asset management software, and data from The Weather Company.”
Will the MAS be hacked by bad actors? Will the Level 5 drone operate without creating excitement for those in fishing boards, kayaks, and rentals like the Pandora? Watson, what say you? Also, how did that dog matching gig in Mexico work out? And what’s the next PR play from Big Blue?
Stephen E Arnold, September 24, 2020
IBM, Canned Noise, but No Moan from the Injured Line Judge: IBM Watson, What Is Happening?
September 10, 2020
As it has done since 2015, IBM has shared details about the AI tech it is using to support the US Open tennis championship. This year’s tournament, though, is different from most due to the pandemic. VentureBeat reports, “IBM Will Use AI to Pipe in Simulated Crowd Noise During the U.S. Open.” We think IBM is making the project more complicated than necessary. A sound bed can be accomplished with sound snips on a laptop. Need sound, click a link. IBM’s solution? Bring an F 35, its support team, and a truck filled with spares. Writer Kyle Wiggers reports:
“The first [addition] is AI Sounds, which aims to recreate the ambient noise normally emanating from the stadium. IBM says it leveraged its AI Highlights platform to digest video from last year’s U.S. Open and rank the ‘excitement level’ of various clips, which it compiled into a reel and classified to give each a crowd reaction score. IBM used hundreds of hours of footage to extract crowd sounds, which it plans to make available to ESPN production teams that will serve it dynamically based on play. How natural these AI-generated sounds will be remains a question. Some fans have taken issue with the artificiality of noises produced by platforms like Electronic Arts’ Sounds of the Stands, which simulates crowd sounds using technology borrowed from the publishers’ FIFA game series. The NBA has reportedly considered mixing in audio from NBA 2K during its broadcasts, and the NFL is expected to use artificial fan noise for its live games this year if they’re played in empty stadiums.”
Whether fake crowd noise sounds authentic, do viewers really want to pretend there is a live crowd when there is not? Perhaps; the pandemic is affecting people in strange ways. There has even been a call to bring back canned laughter while it is too risky to gather live studio audiences for sit coms.
The other technology IBM hopes will garner attention at the Open is Watson Discovery, which we’re told will facilitate tennis debates between online viewers by feeding them questions and researching the validity of resulting arguments. The same platform will supply factoids about upcoming matches through the smartphone app. It seems Watson is auditioning for the job of sport commentator.
Ouch! Was that Watson or the line judge? Watson? Watson?
Cynthia Murrell, September 10, 2020
IBM: A New PR Direction without Recipes and TV Game Shows?
August 18, 2020
IBM appears to be shifting its marketing in an interesting way. IBM announced its Power10 chips. Representative of the coverage is Forbes’ Magazine’s “IBM POWER10 Mega Chip For Hybrid Cloud Is Revealed.” The write up is not written by Forbes’ staff. The article is from an outfit called Tirias Research, a member of a contributor group. I am not sure what a contributor group is. The article seems like marketing speak to me, but you judge for yourself. Here’s a snippet:
To handle the ever more complex cloud workloads, the POWER10 improves capacity (socket throughput) and efficiency by about 3x over the POWER9. The energy efficiency gains were critical because IBM increased CPU core count over the POWER9 but kept the socket power roughly the same. All in all, the POWER10 big step forward for the architecture.
Next, I noticed write ups about IBM’s mainframe business. Navigate to “COBOL Still Handles 70% of Global Business Transactions.” The content strikes me as a recycling of IBM-prepared visuals. Here’s an example of the “analysis” and “news” in the article about the next big future:
Several observations:
- It was not that long ago that IBM was touting IBM Watson as capable of matching pets with potential owners. Now IBM is focusing on semiconductors and “workhorse” mainframes
- There are chips using technology more advanced than IBM’s 7 and 14 nanometer chips. Like Intel, IBM makes no reference to manufacturing techniques which may offer more advantages. That’s understandable. But three nanometer fabs are approaching, and IBM appears to be following, not leading.
- The cheerleading for hybrid clouds is different from cheerleading for “the cloud.” Has IBM decided that its future pivots on getting companies to build data centers and hire IBM to maintain them.
The craziness of the state unemployment agencies with COBOL based systems is fresh in my mind. For me, emphasizing the dependence of organizations upon COBOL is interesting. This statement caught my attention:
COBOL still handle [sic] more than 70% of the business transactions that take place in the world today.
Is this a good thing? Are Amazon, Microsoft, and Google embracing mainframes? My hunch is that companies are unable to shift from legacy systems. Inertia, not innovation, may be creating what some people seeking unemployment benefits from COBOL-centric systems perceive as a dysfunctional approach.
Net net: At least IBM is not talking about recipes created by Watson.
Stephen E Arnold, August 18, 2020
Google Channels IBM: Batter Up, Not Tennis, Anyone?
July 23, 2020
The me too approach to innovation is amusing. IBM applied its marketing genius and the possibly less sparkling Watson to tennis. Now the Google has embraced baseball. “Major League Baseball Scores a Home Run with Google Cloud to Improve Fan Experience” reports that:
The oldest major professional sports league in the US, Major League Baseball, is making better use of data with Google Cloud to personalize the fan experience.
How is that fan experience right now, sports fan? Oh, right. There are limited fan experiences. Baseball lovers can watch some games from exotic countries excluded from the US World Series. That’s a filler like the extra ingredients in hot dogs at some minor league teams’ baseball parks.
There’s another foul ball. The big leaguers will use iPads, not Chromebooks in the dugout. What’s up with that, ump?
But the interesting part of the write up is not about baseball. Here’s the passage which snagged my attention:
MLB also has a project underway called Fast Ball, which Gaedtke [baseball big wig] describes as a fundamentally new approach to video for the game of baseball and its fans.
Again, without real life games, a “new approach” may be necessary.
And there’s more:
MLB is also analyzing fan touch points using Google Cloud across all of its operations to help understand how it can better serve fans.
Isn’t a touch point, “take me out to the ball game”?
The Google Cloud is there to create the “new approach” which seems quite similar to the IBM approach: Marketing fault? Looks more like two strikes and no balls.
Stephen E Arnold, July 23, 2020
IBM Donates Projects to the Cause of Responsible AI
July 3, 2020
The first question arising was, “Was the marketing of Watson responsible?” But why rain on a virtue signaling parade? It is almost the 4th of July in IBM land?
The LF AI Foundation was formed to support open source innovation in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning. Now IBM has climbed on board, we learn from “IBM Donates ‘Trusted AI’ Projects to Linux Foundation AI” at ZDNet. In a blog post, the company promises these donations will help ensure AI deployments are fair, secure, and trustworthy. They will also facilitate the creation of such software by the open source community under the direction of the Linux Foundation. Journalist Stephanie Codon writes:
“Specifically, IBM is contributing the AI Fairness 360 Toolkit, the Adversarial Robustness 360 Toolbox and the AI Explainability 360 Toolkit. The AI Fairness 360 Toolkit allows developers and data scientists to detect and mitigate unwanted bias in machine learning models and datasets. Along with other resources, it provides around 70 metrics to test for biases and 11 algorithms to mitigate bias in datasets and models. The Adversarial Robustness 360 Toolbox is an open-source library that helps researchers and developers defend deep neural networks from adversarial attacks. Meanwhile, the AI Explainability 360 Toolkit provides a set of algorithms, code, guides, tutorials, and demos to support the interpretability and explainability of machine learning models. The LFAI’s Technical Advisory Committee voted earlier this month to host and incubate the project, and IBM is currently working with them to formally move them under the foundation. IBM joined the LFAI last year and helped established its Trusted AI Committee, which is working towards defining and implementing principles of trust in AI deployments.”
Plus a foundation can deal with any political or legal issues, perhaps? The article notes that governments are taking a serious interest in AI governance. The EU released a white paper on the topic in February, and 14 countries and the EU are teaming up in the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI). It is about time governing bodies woke up to the effects unchecked AI can have on our communities. Now about the Watson Covid, the avocado festival, and the game show?
Cynthia Murrell, July 3, 2020
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