The Smartest Machine on Earth - SBS ONE 21 Oct 12 20:30 AEDT

[gary]

One of the most impressive recent feats of computer engineering and software design
is IBM's Watson Question Answering (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Question_answering)(QA) computer.

In 2011, Watson competed on the US television quiz show Jeopardy against two
human players, Brad Rutter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Rutter), the biggest all-time money winner and Ken Jennings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Jennings),
the record holder for the most number of consecutive wins (74).

Accessing over 200 million pages of content consuming 4 terabytes, Watson
beat the humans and won a million dollars in prize money, which IBM then donated
to charity (http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/33373.wss).

Though at times making mistakes, nevertheless Watson's speed at answering and
his breadth of knowledge at other times would be characteristic of what many would
regard as genius. Many times, breathtakingly so.

If you have not seen Watson in action, be prepared to be dazzled and charmed.

The documentary is shown on SBS ONE on Sunday 21 Oct 12 20:30 AEDT (NSW, Vic).

For those that can't wait or who miss the program, it is also available on YouTube
in four parts, part one being here -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Gpaf6NaUEw&playnext=1&list=PLzT5jR_whqIGlVPXDMDmz3ejaupEj EBcG&feature=results_video

Also be sure to watch the Jeopardy episodes where Watson competes -
Day 1 starts here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5C7jccoEbU&feature=related

[Omaroo]

Fascinating show, wasn't it Gary :)

[astroron]

[QUOTE=Omaroo;906910]Fascinating show, wasn't it Gary :)[/QUOTE

Enjoyed it imensly

Cheers:thumbsup:

[gary]

Hi Chris, Hi Ron,

Amazing piece of work, isn't it?

I had seen the documentary last year but I watched it again.

It is also worth watching the Jeopardy episodes in their entirety on YouTube if you
get the chance as well.

What is really impressive is how to get a computer to just understand many of
the answer form "clues" in Jeopardy in the first place. Puns and word-play abound.

More recently IBM have begun to expand and commercialize the Watson QA technology
to tackle big data problems such as medical diagnosis and financial market analysis.

For example, here is a press release dated 26 March 2012 where IBM have teamed
with Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center to develop "a new Watson-based
decision support system for cancer research and treatment."

http://www-03.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/pdf/lcUS23400812.pdf

An ex-pat friend who lives and works in Irvine, CA and who is a principal in a
pathology lab that specializes in detection of cancers such as leukemia using
DNA and chromosome analysis tools explained to me on a visit to his lab how
difficult it is to diagnose and therefore treat "non-specific cancers". if you have
a cancer and they know where it is, they can use targeted treatments and the
prognosis can be good. If they can't locate it, then your chances are much poorer.
He explained how they were using data mining and statistical analysis to try
and increase the odds of identifying what would otherwise be non-specific cancers.

One might hope that a Watson-based system could be a new powerful tool
for oncologists to help diagnose cancers by searching for patterns in large
databases made up of prior patient data.

When one thinks ahead to the expansion of high speed Internet, cloud-based
data centers and so on, imagine what it would be like to have Watson-like front
ends to systems such as Google and Wikipedia? Currently we key in search words
and then typically have to pore over a page of text to find the specific fact we
are looking for. Imagine being able to ask the question and a set of possible answers
is delivered ranked by corresponding levels of confidence.

The IBM Watson web site is here -
http://www-03.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/

[AndrewJ]

It truly is amazing how far some of this analysis technology has gone,
but what happens if ( when ) it gets tired of us asking it questions???

Andrew

[ausastronomer]

What a great show and what a brilliant piece of work by the staff at IBM. Where will the technology stop?

I now have to watch those Jeopardy episodes.

Thanks for the heads up Gary.

Cheers,
John B

[gary]

Also available online at SBS On Demand (expires 2 Nov 2012) -
http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/2293065352/Smartest-Machine-On-Earth

Play time 52 minutes.