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I almost want to up vote the article on principle. I try to go to various "machine learning" and "AI" meetups around my city. The most frustrating, but releva

I almost want to up vote the article on principle. I try to go to various "machine learning" and "AI" meetups around my city. The most frustrating, but relevant, lesson I've learnt is to just stay away from everything IBM/Watson. I can summarise every single bloody presentation they give because it's the following: "Now, when we say cognitive computing, we don't mean any of that sci-fi and AI stuff, now here's a marketer and marketing materials that will explicitly imply that we're talking about that sci-fi and AI stuff for the next 59 minutes. There will be no technical information."

laxatives 10y ago
No first hand experience, but I've everything I've heard seems consistent with what you said. Several engineers I've spoken to at companies using Watson/IBM had very few positive things to say and suggested that any usage was primarily for marketing reasons.
Spooky23 10y ago
It's a brand, not a technology. IBM will pitch it for everything from help desks to curing cancer.
mathattack 10y ago
It's the latest product being pitched by a massively efficient sales force deeply ingrained in companies who are no longer purchasing big iron. Does anyone really think the next Big Idea will come from a bunch of stiff suits in Armonk, New York? They are great comercializers, consultants and support engineers. They haven't been technical innovators for many decades.
unabst 10y ago
> we don't mean any of that sci-fi and AI stuff No one does. Even with AlphaGo the hype was insane, but was mostly caused by people confusing weak AI with strong AI with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Any material that intentionally plays on this confusion is arguably false advertising and fraudulent. The truth is, it's still impossible for anyone to talk about strong AI, because we have hardly been able to define what it even is. We just know we have it, and it's still unlike anything anyone is working on that has made it to the public. The people who write the papers absolutely know this. It's a common goal, but we have yet to engineer anything that remotely resembles strong AI. For the most part, we're either still busy figuring out small but hard problems, or hacking resemblance and avoiding the important problems altogether.
- Trill-I-Am 10y ago
  To what extent does this suggest to you that when we first develop strong AI, we won't know it?
  - Atwood 10y ago
    Excellent point. It seems to me that there is a very good chance that by judging it by our own ab/de/inductive metrics we could miss its blossoming. Your own two cents?
  - unabst 10y ago
    Engineering requires understanding. If we're randomly mixing potions then we may get a result without any understanding, but there's a name for that, and it's called magic. Strong AI will most certainly appear magical, but any technology with this level of sophistication will require focused, intentional, intelligent effort. The person who accomplishes it will know exactly what they were doing. This mystical emergence of intelligence is also somewhat metaphysical and unscientific. There are no ghosts in shells, and intelligence doesn't just rise from bare metal. If we were to ask if someone could invent bitcoin and not know it, it'd be a joke. Yet, with AI, there are those who still intuitively argue for some form of emergence. But across the board, these claims are made with little or no understanding of what underlies physical intelligence.
    - unabst 10y ago
      If anyone has evidence of a scientific counterargument, please share. The bean sprout AI myth needs busting.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- PeterisP 10y ago
  I wouldn't even say that it's a common goal. If I'm trying to solve problem X and writing a paper about a new, better AI/ML approach to do it - this is most likely not even in the direction of strong AI. In fact, the new and improved solution is quite likely to be more specialized to the problem and thus even further from a general AI. If I could magically build a strong general AI then it most likely wouldn't be an improved or even a good solution to the problem I'm looking at - it would be a horribly inefficient overkill, something comparable to using a human brain to perform arithmetic calculations - it can do it, but less accurately and more wastefully than a simple calculator.
johanneskanybal 10y ago
You must go to very very dull meetups :( Lots of fun cool things happening and the hype has a good side to it as well in generating interest in the field but the buzz word and the click-bait marketing is out of control agreed.
Simorgh 10y ago
I too was frustrated by a recent IBM presentation at my uni - there was no technical content. However I don't think an AI winter is coming, as the author's asserts (towards the end). Applied AI research is driven by orgs like DeepMind and OpenAI, as well as academics. This powerful symbiosis of industry and academia will, in my opinion, continue to yield technological breakthroughs in the coming years and decades.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  I think we'll continue to see interesting insights and advances, but there's real reason for concern about the public response to AI hype. We seem to be oscillating wildly between three poles: Hawking's "AI will doom us all", IBM's "strong, friendly AI is right around the corner", and the skeptic's "strong AI is a pipe dream, or centuries away!" All three of those voices interfere with the possibility of sharing a useful, accurate view of what AI is and what it can be. As bad as science news and public knowledge of science generally are, the situation is much worse on strong AI, and I think it's right to lay some of the blame for that with IBM and similar hype artists.
raverbashing 10y ago
That's 100% typical IBM. Overpromise, underdeliver and sell their crap for an expensive amount But it seems now they can't make sales in golf courses anymore and are trying to appeal to the technical staff for sales (but there might be one or two manager on these meetups that buys their BS)

laxatives 10y ago

No first hand experience, but I've everything I've heard seems consistent with what you said. Several engineers I've spoken to at companies using Watson/IBM had very few positive things to say and suggested that any usage was primarily for marketing reasons.

Spooky23 10y ago

It's a brand, not a technology. IBM will pitch it for everything from help desks to curing cancer.

mathattack 10y ago

It's the latest product being pitched by a massively efficient sales force deeply ingrained in companies who are no longer purchasing big iron. Does anyone really think the next Big Idea will come from a bunch of stiff suits in Armonk, New York? They are great comercializers, consultants and support engineers. They haven't been technical innovators for many decades.

unabst 10y ago

> we don't mean any of that sci-fi and AI stuff No one does. Even with AlphaGo the hype was insane, but was mostly caused by people confusing weak AI with strong AI with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Any material that intentionally plays on this confusion is arguably false advertising and fraudulent. The truth is, it's still impossible for anyone to talk about strong AI, because we have hardly been able to define what it even is. We just know we have it, and it's still unlike anything anyone is working on that has made it to the public. The people who write the papers absolutely know this. It's a common goal, but we have yet to engineer anything that remotely resembles strong AI. For the most part, we're either still busy figuring out small but hard problems, or hacking resemblance and avoiding the important problems altogether.

Trill-I-Am 10y ago
To what extent does this suggest to you that when we first develop strong AI, we won't know it?
- Atwood 10y ago
  Excellent point. It seems to me that there is a very good chance that by judging it by our own ab/de/inductive metrics we could miss its blossoming. Your own two cents?
- unabst 10y ago
  Engineering requires understanding. If we're randomly mixing potions then we may get a result without any understanding, but there's a name for that, and it's called magic. Strong AI will most certainly appear magical, but any technology with this level of sophistication will require focused, intentional, intelligent effort. The person who accomplishes it will know exactly what they were doing. This mystical emergence of intelligence is also somewhat metaphysical and unscientific. There are no ghosts in shells, and intelligence doesn't just rise from bare metal. If we were to ask if someone could invent bitcoin and not know it, it'd be a joke. Yet, with AI, there are those who still intuitively argue for some form of emergence. But across the board, these claims are made with little or no understanding of what underlies physical intelligence.
  - unabst 10y ago
    If anyone has evidence of a scientific counterargument, please share. The bean sprout AI myth needs busting.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
PeterisP 10y ago
I wouldn't even say that it's a common goal. If I'm trying to solve problem X and writing a paper about a new, better AI/ML approach to do it - this is most likely not even in the direction of strong AI. In fact, the new and improved solution is quite likely to be more specialized to the problem and thus even further from a general AI. If I could magically build a strong general AI then it most likely wouldn't be an improved or even a good solution to the problem I'm looking at - it would be a horribly inefficient overkill, something comparable to using a human brain to perform arithmetic calculations - it can do it, but less accurately and more wastefully than a simple calculator.

johanneskanybal 10y ago

You must go to very very dull meetups :( Lots of fun cool things happening and the hype has a good side to it as well in generating interest in the field but the buzz word and the click-bait marketing is out of control agreed.

Simorgh 10y ago

I too was frustrated by a recent IBM presentation at my uni - there was no technical content. However I don't think an AI winter is coming, as the author's asserts (towards the end). Applied AI research is driven by orgs like DeepMind and OpenAI, as well as academics. This powerful symbiosis of industry and academia will, in my opinion, continue to yield technological breakthroughs in the coming years and decades.

Bartweiss 10y ago
I think we'll continue to see interesting insights and advances, but there's real reason for concern about the public response to AI hype. We seem to be oscillating wildly between three poles: Hawking's "AI will doom us all", IBM's "strong, friendly AI is right around the corner", and the skeptic's "strong AI is a pipe dream, or centuries away!" All three of those voices interfere with the possibility of sharing a useful, accurate view of what AI is and what it can be. As bad as science news and public knowledge of science generally are, the situation is much worse on strong AI, and I think it's right to lay some of the blame for that with IBM and similar hype artists.

raverbashing 10y ago

That's 100% typical IBM. Overpromise, underdeliver and sell their crap for an expensive amount But it seems now they can't make sales in golf courses anymore and are trying to appeal to the technical staff for sales (but there might be one or two manager on these meetups that buys their BS)