It's elementary, my dear WATTSON

[Sir Fratley]

This is history in the making. WATTSON, an AI system created by IBM, is competing with two of the top Jeopardy champions over a 3 day span. Today, WATTSON showed it's stuff by tying for 1st place, only getting a few questions wrong. This advanced AI has been tested and retested to modify its decision making algorithms for years, and now is being openly tested before the public against the best.

 

[Meds]

Oh yes, Watson. I caught this on the news yesterday.
"Computers that learn, understand, and even surprise us? Hmm, what could go wrong with that?"

To me this is a stomach-churning nightmare.. The beginning of the end. So they've put into the computer more information than they themselves can recall, gave it the ability to learn itself, and it has no possibility for memory loss. Very scary indeed.

This is a good example made from the movie Tron: Legacy I saw just a couple months ago.. where the programmer Flynn makes a program clone of himself and tells it to create the "perfect" world.. The clone, with superior knowledge, doesn't see perfect the same way as him and becomes a tyrant.

I hope the programmers don't end up giving Watson this much power. They said he couldn't be connected to the internet during Jeopardy, so that must mean that they do in fact connect him otherwise.

 

[Abstract Debauchery]

Personally, I found it damned amazing. Sure, it could very well be the start of Skynet. However, a computer that can learn, learn for it's mistakes, and can be taught, etc, fascinates that living shit out of me. I also don't think anyone has to worry about it taking over. The idea is far-fetched and absurd.

However, let's say on the off chance that it did take over... As Ken Jenning's wrote, "I for one, welcome our new computer overlords".