Ray Kurzweil Speaks About His Role at Google

Late last year, Google announced that it had teamed up with AI guru Ray Kurzweil to collaborate on AI applications both in search and elsewhere.  Last week, Kurzweil hosted a Google Hangout, and then sat for an interview with Wired Magazine.  Among the highlights was his description of what he is doing for Google:

My mission at Google is to develop natural language understanding with a team and in collaboration with other researchers at Google. Search has moved beyond just finding keywords, but it still doesn’t read all these billions of web pages and book pages for semantic content. If you write a blog post, you’ve got something to say, you’re not just creating words and synonyms. We’d like the computers to actually pick up on that semantic meaning. If that happens, and I believe that it’s feasible, people could ask more complex questions.

Wired Magazine article

Machines 2, Humans 0

Building on its defeat (through Deep Blue) of chess master Gary Kasparov in 1997, IBM's AI team was a big winner last night with Watson storming from behind to win for the third night in a row, and dominating lead total of $77,147 for the week, more than the two humans combined. Ken Jennings finished second with a three-day total of $24,000 and Brad Rutter was third with $21,600.

Watson seemed to be off-its-game early, trailing for much of the first half of the game. But perhaps it was a machine version of "Rope-a-Dope": when "Double Jeopardy" began, Watson answered 18 of the 29 questions, ensuring its win.

Jennings finished the evening with a message as part of his "Final Jeopardy"
written answer:

"I for one welcome our new computer overlords."

Some analysis of how Watson "heard" the answers.

What Watson's victory means: Link

And an interview with IBM engineer: Link

Man-vs-Machine (3)

In Day Two of Man-vs-Machine Jeopardy!, IBM’s Watson dominated much of the show, answering 13 of the first 15 questions correctly and leading with $ $35,734 to $10,400 for all-time money leader Brad Rutter and just $4,800 for Ken Jennings.

In fact, but for its answer on Final Jeopardy (when it answered “Toronto” even though the category was U.S. Cities, and the clue was “Its largest airport was named for a World War II hero; its second largest, for a World War II battle.” With its answer, Watson showed the slightest bit of, um, fallibility.), Alex Trebek may have had to “stop the fight”… as it is, Jennings and Rutter will have a final chance tonight.

As they say, check local listings…

IBM’s Watson team offered this analysis of the Final Jeopardy mistake from last night. Meanwhile, IBM’s General Counsel, Robert C. Weber, offered this view of why Watson matters to the legal profession:

And here’s a PBS Newshour piece on the development of Watson, which also covers some of the history of AI:

Man-vs-Machine

IBM’s Watson was tied for the lead after the first day of “Computer-vs-Human” challenge on this week’s Jeopardy, including long-time champ Ken Jennings (who has won 74 in a row).

One of the questions Watson answered correctly:

Clue: "Iron fitting on the hoof of a horse or a card-dealing box in a casino."
Watson: "What is shoe?"

But in other areas, Watson struggled:

Clue: "From the Latin for end, this is where trains can also originate."
Watson: "What is finis." Confidence level: 97%.
Trebek: "No. Ken?"
"What is terminus," Jennings answered correctly.

It will be interesting to see what the cultural impact of a Watson victory will be, especially in comparison to IBM's Deep Blue vs. Kasparov in 1997.

Watson is not connected to the Internet, and although Alex Trebek (and others) repeat that fact, it appeared that Watson did best when the answers were those that would be found by a search engine:

The questions that it did best at are ones that if you entered into Google or Bing, you can get the same answers. For instance, if you input one of the questions asked in the Jeopardy! tournament into Google, "Bang, bang, his silver hammer came down upon her head" one of the first results is "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" which Watson correctly answered. You get the same results with Bing. It's as if Watson is using the same sort of search algorithms, except not culled from the Internet, but a manually compiled, ginormous database of song lyrics, history, literature and other concrete, indisputable bits of information.

Computer-vs-human Jeopardy continues tonight (2/15/2011) and Wednesday (2/16/2011).

Data Privacy Day

{Cross-posted from ABA ST-AIRC Website]

Related to the American Bar Association's Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Committee's (AIRC) work is Data Privacy, and today (Jan. 28, 2011) is Data Privacy Day.

For more see this link.

For some thoughts from ABA ST-AIRC co-chair Ryan Calo on Data Privacy, see this link.

Wired Mag: Special Report on AI

[Cross-posted from ABA's ST-AIRC Blog]

The January issue of Wired Magazine features a special report on the use of Artificial Intelligence in various fields, from Wall Street to fraud prevention. The bottom line? "Artificial Intelligence is here. But it's nothing like we expected."

'Terminator'-style Military Robots?

Attention given to military robots by the mainstream press attention has increased recently. Drones such as the Predator, a robotic drone (actually semi-autonomous, as it is actually tele-operated) have become an increasing part of the "G**T"(*)

Then just last week, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee disclosed that Predators have been operating out of a base located on Pakistani soil, causing a diplomatic row last week. And shortly after that disclosure, a drone attack killed 30 people in Pakistan, although the intended target (a Taliban leader) was apparently not killed.

On the heels of all of that comes a new report issued by the Office of Naval Research (part of the US Navy) and by three scientists at Cal Poly (Patrick Lin, PhD., George Bekey, PhD., and Keith Abney, M.A.) The study, entitled “Autonomous Military Robots: Risk, Ethics, And Design” appears to be the first of its kind produced by the military on the ethics of military robots, and covers a wide range of topics.

The mainstream press has picked up on the potential for a robot turning (or being turned) against its makers. The Times of London quotes one of the report’s authors, Patrick Lin, as saying “There is a common misconception that robots will do only what we have programmed them to do.”

FoxNews is running (as of this writing) a similar story on the report, entitled "Experts Warn of 'Terminator'-Style Military-Robot Rebellion."

The onus for the ONR Report may be the increasing use of robots by the military, a trend that will only increase in coming years. According to the ONR report, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000 requires that by “2010, one-third of all operational deep-strike aircraft must be unmanned, and by 2015, one-third of all ground combat vehicles must be unmanned.”

The Report also explores the role that the Laws of War (LOW) (generally) and Rules of Engagement (ROE) (specific with respect to a mission or engagement) may play with an autonomous robot. While certain of the LOW/ROE may be challenged by autonomous robots (for example, who bears responsibility for a battlefield decision by a robot), the authors also indicate that unemotional robots may be less likely to commit atrocities.

The entire report is available here.

(*)- The struggle against terrorism that may become 'formerly known as' the "Global War on Terror"

A.I. vs. Philly

Earlier this week the Philadelphia 76ers played their first game against Allen Iverson and his new team, the Denver Nuggets. Although A.I. wasn't awful (30 points on 10-24 shooting, 9 assists and 5 rebounds in 44 minutes), his evening came to a halt with 1:44 when he was ejected. The Nuggets also lost, 108-97.

Before the game, at the morning shootaround, A.I. was critical of the way that his tenure in Philly ended. "When you're losing basketball games, 12 of 14, 18 of 20 basketball games, you should listen to somebody because something obviously isn't working," he said.

Denver had already played its only regular season game in Philly prior to the trade (back in November).

Mile-High A.I.

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When we last left Carmelo Anthony, he had been suspended for 15 games as a result of the fight in Madison Square Garden over the weekend.



This morning, he wakes up with a new teammate (Allen Iverson) and Melo is no longer the "go to" scorer on his team (AI and he both average a little more than 31 points per game; both also take about 24 shots per game, which are the two most in the league.

The Nuggets have clearly gambled that their opportunity to win is now. They needed a jump start to get to the elite level in the West (along with San Antonio, Dallas, and Phoenix, and maybe Utah) and with A.I., they have the chance to get there.

What's most interesting is the dynamic: there was unquestionably going to be an adjustment period for whatever team A.I. was traded to, as he needs to have the ball in his hands. But with Anthony out for the next 15 games, the Nuggets will have to adjust once, to A.I., and then adjust again when Anthony comes back. javascript:void(0)
Publish

The Nuggets are taking a risk: can two superstars co-exist? At altitude? At the very least, the Nuggets add more strength to the West, and the League was already heavily-weighted in that direction.

A comment on the other side of the deal: much-maligned Sixer GM Billy King may have pulled a rabbit out of a hat, by generating cap space (Joe Smith), a serviceable guard with cap space (Andre Miller), and now three first-round picks (their own, Dallas', and Denver's) next year in what is expected to be a deep draft. And by moving A.I., they have 'helped' themselves in the Greg Oden sweepstakes.