SocraticGadfly: Stanley Fish gets Watson right

February 22, 2011

Stanley Fish gets Watson right

It's not often that I agree with the philosopher of playing around with language, but on IBM's Jeopardy-winning computer, he's right. There's nothing really new to it, as Watson's creators note with their care in language in discussing what Watson can do.

I've listed emotions, or lack thereof, as one way in which Watson isn't really intelligent.

Another, riffing on Fish, is that it doesn't have sensory inputs under its own control. Now, if a Japanese personal servant robot ever gets its cameras or other sensory imputs jacked up 1,000-fold AND gets a personal feedback and reflectiveness for them AND has Watson's seeming control of language AND develops something like emotions, then we'll talk.

No comments: