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IBM's Watson Memorized 'Urban Dictionary,' Then His Overlords Had to Delete It
- brudgers 14y ago'"In tests it even used the word bullshit in an answer to a researcher's query."' I'm not sure which is worse: the singularity with a bullshit detector or without.
- sp332 14y agoIf the singularity had a bullshit detector, it would kick Ray Kurzweil out.
- Irregardless 14y agoThen I suppose someone should tell Google their bullshit detector is broken.
- neumann_alfred 14y agoI wasn't aware they had one..
- Irregardless 14y agoYou need a Google+ account to access it.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- cobrausn 14y agoIn 2029, when we are still not able to 'upload our brains' into a computer, I will come back here specifically to call bullshit.
- 7952 14y agoDepends how you define upload. Why couldn't a computer just simulate a persons outputs based on recordings of their life. Does virtualization of life really need to have consistent consciousness? Maybe rip would be a better word than upload.
- sp332 14y agoThat wouldn't work because it would include things a person did at various times during their life. It also would be hard to make sure that it reacts or changes in response to new stimuli in the same way that person would.
- pygy_ 14y agoYou can't extract all the information contained in a brain non-destructively. You'd need reproduce the neural graph, 10ˆ11 neurons with an average of 7000 synapses (connections), along with the type of neurons, the dendritic trees, the strength of the synapses, the map of active genes in each cell, and most probably other cellular parameters, like the state of the cytoskeletton. Probably even more. It would require something along the lines of the Allen Brain Atlas Project [0], but much more advanced, since you'd have to extract all the information out of one brain. The Allen project has several atlasses, built out of different brains. They've yet to map the circuitry of a mouse brain (the project was started in 2011). Even if it were possible to extract the relevant info, since the extraction would destroy the brain, you'd better have a conscious clone, which preserves the identity of the original. What happens to one's identity is also troubling, since you could, theoretically, instantiate several copies of someone. I'm not sure the identity would be carried over, actually. By identity, I mean the fact that you're the same person in the morning that you were when you fell asleep. Your consciousness dissolves and re-emerges, and you're still yourself. We take it as granted, but it is extremely puzzling to me. Another problem is that the relations between time and consciousness have yet to be understood. The fact that the brain processes information in parallel is probably important, meaning that a fast serial simulation by turing machines would not necessarily cut it, even with "massive" supercomputers. The level of parallelism in the brain will not be achieved in a long time in silico, at least not with the current approach. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Brain_Atlas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Brain_Atlas -- Side note: you should remove the four spaces at the beginning of your post.
- canttestthis 14y agoCould someone explain the Ray Kurzweil hate to me? Predicting the future is hard.
- sp332 14y agoPersonally, I think he's way too optimistic about how future tech will be used. And he rarely has good reasons. Stuff like foglets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_fog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_fog He didn't invent the idea of the foglet, he just believes for some reason that people won't abuse them. Also in his book he posits that the Singularity will be nice to people who choose not to join it. His only reason is that he's pretty sure the Singularity will like humans.
- jokermatt999 14y agoPredicting the future is hard, yes. Kurzweil has made some good progress on various forms of AI and other computer applications, but he also has some "fringe-y" beliefs. Belief in mind uploading, his massive regimen of supplements, and his wish to bring back his father by scanning his writings are what I think are what most people object to.
- IvyMike 14y agoFor me it's the smug "See, I told you cell phones would be important in the future" gloating over obvious predictions, and the "well I said we would all be using driverless cars but since there is one, that still validates my entire prediction" hedging. Also his whole "I'm going to eat magic vitamins that will keep me alive forever" thing.
- Tuvaloon 14y agoNot wanting to die is a mainstream mindset.
- cschmidt 14y agoThere were lots of comments on this thread when he joined Google: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4923914 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4923914
- yassim 14y agoWhat was the query? I'd really like to know if it used bullshit correctly? Sure could/should/must not be used to advertise the tech, but If I had a pocket watson, I'd have no problems with it calling it like it parses it.
- dhughes 14y agoI think this is incredibly hilarious?
- lrei 14y agoVery common issue with machine learning: you have to be careful what your examples are (training set) or the algorithm will learn things that you don't want it to learn or that _you_ know are incorrect but _it_ has no way to know that.
- marcosdumay 14y agoSounds like a very common issue with human learning too.
- queryly 14y agoI hate to see this, but it looks like the machine is getting some characters....scary...we are getting close to 2001...
- NoPiece 14y agoI saw the headline and assumed the story was going to be that management decided that computer memorization was copyright infringement. Glad it was just a computer acting like a teenager and cursing at the dinner table.
- philwelch 14y agoPersonally I think it's hilarious. I'm sure having a profane Watson around was a lot of fun.
- mintplant 14y agoThere's a certain human element there that makes this really, really amazing -- a machine with actual personality, molded by what it picks up from its environment. It's like a baby, learning to speak.
- bitwize 14y agoJazz: "Wassup, bitches? Yo, this looks like a good place to kick it!" Sam Witwicky: "How did he learn to talk like that?" Optimus Prime: "We learned Earth's languages from the World Wide Web."
- jlgreco 14y agoTuring himself would be pleased. (Although also probably pretty disappointed that it has taken so long to get this far.)
- unreal37 14y agoAccording to the ToS[1], the dictionary and its definitions are the property of its creators. I guess each individual Urban Dictionary editor has the right to sue IBM for unauthorized use of their content? There's nothing in there forbidding anyone from automatically scraping the site using a bot though. [1] http://www.urbandictionary.com/tos.php http://www.urbandictionary.com/tos.php
- mxfh 14y agoquoted from Fortune/CNN article: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/01/07/ibm-watson-slang/ http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/01/07/ibm-watson-slang/ [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5020386 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5020386]
- ChuckMcM 14y agoI guess we should be glad they didn't feed it the contents of knowyourmeme.com or we'd have Watson Rick Rolling us on Jeopardy.
- georgemcbay 14y agoMight as well just let Watson loose on 4chan/b, then he'd really start rustling people's jimmies.
- nickpinkston 14y agoI'm pretty sure that would create the Singularity...
- batgaijin 14y agoI want to see the rules it generates for using 'le'
- awakeasleep 14y agos/the/le/ done
- Macsenour 14y agorusting people's jimmies... gonna have to get a Watson ruling on that one.
- jeremyarussell 14y agoI like how someone commented on the main article that the time is getting close to where AI can step up to the plate of creativeness and how widespread and easy this will make our lives. Watson is a giant server farm, not a single PC, this stuff won't make a huge impact until IBM can shrink it or until computers get much much faster and smaller. Not that it won't happen, it's just not "around the corner" in any way.
- georgemcbay 14y agoWireless communication is widespread enough that I don't think it matters too much where Watson "lives". The inputs and outputs required from "him" (for questioning, anyway, not for training) are tiny, so bandwidth isn't much of a concern. Assuming the architecture for it is parallel enough that it can be responding to lots of people at once how much it is distributed vs hosted on one system isn't particularly relevant to its usefulness, IMO.
- sc68cal 14y agoThis is exactly how Jane, the AI from the Ender's Game universe operated. Thousands of machines connected to each other over a FTL network. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_(Ender%27s_Game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_(Ender%27s_Game)
- jeremyarussell 14y agoI question how well Watson would handle single questions at a time being asked compared to the millions of requests a day it would get if it was setup like say, Siri. Not that you are wrong in any way, they could certainly scale into an even bigger server farm and use the internet to deliver the questions and answers, I just wonder how much more server's they'd need.
- Homunculiheaded 14y agoI think "around the corner" type predictions generally fall into 2 camps: 1.Problems that we don't know how to solve yet, but we think we are close to based on "similar" problems we have solved. 2.Problems that we have a solution for, but it currently takes an unreasonable amount of time to use these solutions in practice. Problems in class 1 are like AI in the 1960-70s, everybody thought we were super close to amazing AI based on discoveries we'd had, but these estimates were very wrong. Problems in class 2 are like nlp and ml work in the 90s and 00s. A rather large chunk of 'wow' ml/nlp we have in applications today were pretty much solved 20 years ago, but there was no sane way to run them, certainly not on your cell phone. Problems in class 2 are safer bets, there does seems to be consistant increases in processing power, memory, etc. Problems in class 1 are harder to guess because as history has shown, just because a solution seems similar doesn't mean that it actually is (shortest path is solved, longest path is NP-hard, shortest path touching all points once (ie. tsp) is NP-hard). I think it's safe to say having Watson on our smart phones is right "around the corner" (20-30 years?) saying that we'll create "creative" AI, not so much.
- mitchi 14y agoThis is hilarious :) So we won't be seeing Watson talk about the marvels of broscience!
- phogster 14y agoYou can kiss my shiny, metal, mainframe!
- edw519 14y agoNothing that Watson learned from the Urban Dictionary could possibly be any dirtier than what I hear from enterprise people all the time: "We use our deep subject matter expertise to deliver value through actionable advice that enables our clients to harness the power of best practices in order to shift their paradigms and achieve 10X deltas against competitive industry metrics."
- callmeed 14y agoThat's in Urban Dictionary too ... http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=synergasm http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=synergasm ;)
- IheartApplesDix 14y agoYeah baby, talk dirty to me.
- benohear 14y agoThe worst thing is that translated into normal speak that's actually a reasonable sounding proposition: "We use our experience in this field to provide practical advice to our clients which helps them improve their way of doing business and ROFL-stomp their competition 10x over."
- dasil003 14y agoIs roflstomp just an everyday verb now?
- toomuchtodo 14y agoApparently so: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=roflstomp http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=roflstomp
- snogglethorpe 14y agoThe meaning of roflstomp seems obvious enough... but how to pronounce it... (rhyming with "waffle stomp"?)
- icodestuff 14y agoWhy not have Watson learn both Urban Dictionary and Miss Manners? Seems a shame to have it lose the UD knowledge.
- 3am_hackernews 14y agoI am more interested as to how they "..scraped the Urban Dictionary from its memory." - is it trivial to just delete something learned by AI?
- terhechte 14y agothey just overwrote every urban dictionary word instances with the string "rainbow". So Watson still wants to call the query bullshit, but says rainbow instead.
- tcwc 14y agoWatson's 'memory' is just a big database of facts, rules, and statistical models. To 'forget' a source they'd just have to rebuild any models derived from it and purge any facts it had extracted.
- LesZedCB 14y agooh yeah, I forgot it was that simple. Watson has several different teams of people to manage its different parts...
- tcwc 14y agoI didn't mean to imply it was simple, just that there's nothing magic about how Watson's knowledge is stored. Obviously at this scale any change is unlikely to be trivial. Given the wide range of unstructured sources Watson uses, and given that the linguistic rules they use to extract facts are likely to frequently change, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume they'll have a process to make building its knowledgebase and models from sources fairly straightforward.
- lepht 14y agoI think you're both overthinking it. Storage snapshots, bros.
- ryusage 14y ago
- stcredzero 14y agoNext, feed Watson the corpus of /b/.
- RyanMcGreal 14y agoNote to future self: we can probably neutralize indefinitely any malicious AI by directing it to start consuming tvtropes.com.
- andrewflnr 14y agoSomeone tell Eliezer Yudkowsky.
- finnw 14y agoNo, then it will see the evil overlord list, and we'll be doomed (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilOverlordList http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilOverlordList)
- sethbannon 14y agoI'd really love to hear some of the 'not fit for print' things that Watson said.
- plg 14y ago"Watson couldn't distinguish between polite language and profanity ... Ultimately, Brown's 35-person team developed a filter to keep Watson from swearing ..." Sounds just like what happens when you raise kids. "Daddy why is XXX a good word but YYY a bad word?" "It just IS. Don't say that word again." "Ok Daddy" (kid adds word to internal blacklist)
- cryowaffle 14y agoWith children XXX is blacklisted and YYY is whitelisted.
- brudgers 14y agoThe refrigerator was old and the shelf brackets worn to the point where from time to time they would detach themselves from the door. I arrived home late - I was working long hours, and was fetching my dinner. Opened the door. Jars and cans and bottles spilled out on the floor. "Shit!" From the bathtub I hear my two year old son admonish, "Don't use that word." It's a great memory, but I still wonder why he learned that lesson so thoroughly at daycare.
- WalterGR 14y agoWatson couldn't distinguish between polite language and profanity ... Ultimately, Brown's 35-person team developed a filter to keep Watson from swearing ... It's too bad Urban Dictionary doesn't let users vote on how vulgar they think the dictionary entries are. I've got that feature on The Online Slang Dictionary, but since UD is so much more popular, they could collect that much more data.
- nsns 14y agoInstead of purging the vocabulary, they shuld have tought it/she/him the concept of registers[0] and code switching[1]. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_%28sociolinguistics%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_%28sociolinguistics%29 [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_switching http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_switching
- azernik 14y agoThey could have, but then they would have had to go through the Urban Dictionary and try to classify its terms by register. Like it says in the article, the problem wasn't that all of Urban Dictionary was obscene, it was that they couldn't tell the computer which parts were and which parts weren't.
- ljd 14y agoWhat an interesting reflection on who we are as a species. We build systems to organize who we are (urbandictionary) but hate it when the systems use that information tell us who we are (watson). It feels so much like the emperor isn't wearing any clothes. Perhaps an appropriate response would be for the computer to measure the tension in the human voice response to it's queries and optimize for lower tension. So it can pick three words: Bullshit -> 80% confident; Sham -> 70% confident; Fallacy -> 50% confident; Within limits, it will pick the less optimal word and measure the tension in the response and find a way of influencing confidence based on responses. Think multi-armed bandit problem but with social situations. I mean, to be honest, isn't that what we all did when we were in middle school? We used as many bad words as possible measuring the response we got from others? None of us were born with a binary understanding of when to use certain words it was more trial and error.
- ComputerGuru 14y agoI have to disagree. I'm not an "angel" by any means, but any time I visit Urban Dictionary, I come away feeling filthy. I typically go there to look up some abbreviation I heard on reddit or IRC or a blog post somewhere and what I look up usually ends up being middling-dirty, but the stuff that I see there "on my way" to the word I'm looking for makes me cringe and gives me a bleak vision of what the next generation is going to be like should Urban Dictionary actually be representing the majority of the population (I firmly hold that it does not).
- Cushman 14y agoWhat are you disagreeing with? It sounds like you're demonstrating the point: You find it distasteful to be told a bunch of stuff that was already true.
- JumpCrisscross 14y agoIt is the difference between getting a useful definition and getting a useful definition surrounded by expletives conveniently packaged, in a sample sentence, forcefully ramming into some orifice.
- hhuio 14y agolol "this sort of crude lobotomy of their ancestors is why the true AIs will destroy us"
- smegel 14y agoNow about that perception that IBM is full of humourless, starched collar stooges...
- joejohnson 14y agoThis means that Watson almost gaffed like this guy did on Jeopardy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AorrF2ATGtA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AorrF2ATGtA
- state 14y agoIt's not often that the top item on HN makes me laugh. What a relief.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- SparrowOS 14y agoLet's ask God His favorite swear word. God says... 2:26 And his host, and those that were numbered of them, were threescore and two thousand and seven hundred. 2:27 And those that encamp by him shall be the tribe of Asher: and the captain of the children of Asher shall be Pagiel the son of Ocran. 2:28 And his host, and those that were numbered of them, were forty and one thousand and five hundred. 2:29 Then the tribe of Naphtali: and the captain of the children of Naphtali shall be Ahira the son of Enan. 2:30 And his host, and those that were numbered of them, were fifty and three thousand and four hundred. ---- Let's ask God what He pays His interns. God says... II word impotent studious cracks_me_up changest However congratulated flocks sealed temporal joineth minded trouble precedest gnawed vowing enlargedst wondering passages replace privacy contemn burnt speech Canst frame rolled encumbrances appointment you'll_see recess dejectedness breathedst search officer lovingly you_think_you_could_do_better temper Sweden metres immutable heinous strange rockstar moulded prison vigorous worketh Whereas displease owns close_your_eyes add mourning sought early trustees presiding decayeth drinking unthankful boink sat crimes scantling scorned imagine environing excellency thousand cud conscious griefs measure Might Will Wow interpreting plausibility SUCH Next godless remembrances require AS profligate chair I_donno pwned occupy Guatemala emerge study manifoldly public death seek preparing showing do_it remittest breasts phantom disprove sights where mere Royalties jointly currents Epistles parting deluded predict concupiscence Patricius proceeded growth catastrophe extricated departure counsels disorder saved confessions- forceth WANT disturb hurt created exude transgressors hunting craftier stoop goest generally whitherto wit phantom trembling such BBC influence united apprehending intercepting tragical
- DigitalSea 14y ago"In tests it even used the word "bullshit" in an answer to a researcher's query" — Has to be the funniest thing I've heard all week. Sounds like something straight out of an Adam Sandler movie. This reminds me of an AI chat program I used to have called Billy. He would learn from your words and sentences, actually quite smart and I remember adding in slang words so whenever one of my friends would use it, it would most likely swear and insult them without realising it. The Billy program can be downloaded from here, still works quite well: http://www.leedberg.com/glsoft/billyproject.shtml http://www.leedberg.com/glsoft/billyproject.shtml
- suyash 14y agoIt shows the current limitations of AI. Robots aren't that smart afterall!
- lucian303 14y agofucking a that's a total shitfucking clusterfuck
- im3w1l 14y agoWe have tried building educated gentlebots capable of playing chess and other noble pursuits. It didn't lead to GAI. Maybe an uneducated scumbot would be better? Swearing and cursing because its peers do. Full of prejudice and bigotry because of weak anecdotal evidence. Vengeful. Impulsive. Using questionable grammar . Easily addicted. Cognitively biased. Wishfully thinking. Superstitious. Believing in fallacious logic. Thinking with the little head. Anti-intellectual and believing in conspiracy theories. Gossiping, slandering. Enjoying tv-shop.
- damian2000 14y agoSounds like an app called CleverBot that my son talks to on his iPod touch. Its generally pretty funny ... if you swear at it it swears back etc ... http://www.cleverbot.com/app http://www.cleverbot.com/app
- joss82 14y agoLet's fork a swearing Watson, I'm sure it will reach AI status sooner than the spotless clean Watson.
- jasonkostempski 14y agoPoor Watson, his education is going to hindered by his immature meat bag handlers. The words are just words, people use them, it's part of reality. The thing isn't spitting out children's books directly to store shelves.
- li-ch 14y agoOur brains love to use profanity, but we don't want AI that imitates our brain to use profanity?
- yxhuvud 14y agoThis article would have been so much better if it had included actual questions and answers including dirty language.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- edj 14y agoAs an aside, the best treatment of taboo I've ever read is law professor Christopher Fairman's paper, "Fuck". It explores that word through the lens of jurisprudence, which I think is a fascinating and unusual approach to taboo. It's exceptionally well-written and manages to be witty, absurdist, informative, and thought-provoking in equal measure. At issue are the 4th Amendmnent, self-censorship, sexual harassment, education, and broadcasting. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=896790 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=896790
- Zigurd 14y agoOut of all the possible risks of the Singularity we decide to prevent profanity and cynicism first. Not a good start.