4 ms·

Also there's the problem of context. When someone asks you a question you generally know what kind of answer they expect. In this classic example from Richard

Also there's the problem of context. When someone asks you a question you generally know what kind of answer they expect. In this classic example from Richard Feynman [1] the answer to "Why is Aunt Minnie in the hospital" can be "She broke her hip", "She slipped on the ice and broke her hip", "An ambulance took her there", "Because her husband is concerned for her well being". What's interesting about the Watson approach is that, by taking intelligently composed web pages as input (as opposed to randomly generated texts, or an arbitrary list of atomic facts) the context is already "baked in". Put another way, people make web pages with sentences like "Aunt Minnie is in the hospital because she fell and broke her hip", and don't make web pages with sentences like "Aunt Minnie is in the hospital because the ambulance was headed there and the friction between Aunt Minnie and the bed in the ambulance was high enough to keep them from becoming relatively displaced". [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8 (Edit: I notice, of course, that I have now created a web page with that exact sentence.)

nl 12y ago
I'm not convinced that context is as hard as people think. I think the answer "she broke her hip" is the appropriate answer there. The other answers are appropriate for other questions ("How did Aunt Minnie get to hospital" etc). OTOH.. I'm disagreeing with Feynman here. That gives me some pause.
- AndrewOMartin 12y ago
  It is indeed the appropriate answer here, that seems pretty clear to me. What's not clear is how we both came to the same (or similar) conception of what's the right answer from all those possible, arguably correct, answers. This is basically a restatement of the Frame Problem, which I believe is an unsolvable problem if you limit yourself to software. This is basically my PhD, and I only reached this opinion after much wailing and gnashing of teeth. In some sense this program isn't limited entirely to software, but extends to the full gamut of cultural human lived experience, by exploiting the intelligence already present in the input corpus.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
  The answer from an intelligent alien who was context-naive might be something like so: Aunt Minnie is a human being living in the 21st century Western culture of Earth. When humans in this region and time period become sick or injured, relatives and friends, or medical workers working on their behalf, will transport them to a hospital for treatment. Aunt Minnie was injured on a sidewalk made slippery by seasonal ice. Such injuries aren't uncommon but are treatable with various surgical and therapeutic techniques. This demonstrates the humans vulnerability and heralds our inevitable victory to harvest them as a source of food.
pesenti 12y ago
Yes that's a hard problem but thankfully an automated system would get a pass on that, i.e., for the problems we are trying to solve, any of these answers would be considered a reasonable answer... because it's hard enough to even get to a reasonable answer.

nl 12y ago

I'm not convinced that context is as hard as people think. I think the answer "she broke her hip" is the appropriate answer there. The other answers are appropriate for other questions ("How did Aunt Minnie get to hospital" etc). OTOH.. I'm disagreeing with Feynman here. That gives me some pause.

AndrewOMartin 12y ago
It is indeed the appropriate answer here, that seems pretty clear to me. What's not clear is how we both came to the same (or similar) conception of what's the right answer from all those possible, arguably correct, answers. This is basically a restatement of the Frame Problem, which I believe is an unsolvable problem if you limit yourself to software. This is basically my PhD, and I only reached this opinion after much wailing and gnashing of teeth. In some sense this program isn't limited entirely to software, but extends to the full gamut of cultural human lived experience, by exploiting the intelligence already present in the input corpus.
NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
The answer from an intelligent alien who was context-naive might be something like so: Aunt Minnie is a human being living in the 21st century Western culture of Earth. When humans in this region and time period become sick or injured, relatives and friends, or medical workers working on their behalf, will transport them to a hospital for treatment. Aunt Minnie was injured on a sidewalk made slippery by seasonal ice. Such injuries aren't uncommon but are treatable with various surgical and therapeutic techniques. This demonstrates the humans vulnerability and heralds our inevitable victory to harvest them as a source of food.

pesenti 12y ago

Yes that's a hard problem but thankfully an automated system would get a pass on that, i.e., for the problems we are trying to solve, any of these answers would be considered a reasonable answer... because it's hard enough to even get to a reasonable answer.