
IBM's Watson Now A Customer Service Agent, Coming To Smartphones Soon - scholia
http://www.forbes.com/sites/bruceupbin/2013/05/21/ibms-watson-now-a-customer-service-agent-coming-to-smartphones-soon/
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knowaveragejoe
While this will be a boon for consumers(24 hour, mostly-competent service in
English), I feel bad for the coming wave of knowledge workers who will be
eschewed in favor of technology like this, much like the factory workers who
lost their jobs in the 90s and 2000s to either outsourcing or automation.
Unfortunately for these workers, there will be next to no recourse like the
somewhat limited recourse for manufacturing employees like there is today, in
fields like design, automation, robotics and advanced manufacturing in
general.

~~~
stephen
Knee jerk "oh no, what will the workers do?!" reactions are understandable,
but in the long term society is best served by leveraging technology to get
the most services for as cheaply as possible.

If this was not true, we should ditch tractors/harvesters and have everyone go
back to toiling in the field all day. That'll provide tons of jobs.

Yes, in the short-term one sector "loses" jobs, but it means a service is
provided more cheaply, so consumers have more money to spend elsewhere, and
the jobs just move around. Society gets a net win on total output.

See Economics in One Lesson for a better/more detailed explanation.

~~~
pasbesoin
I see such claims made, but I don't often see them backed up by a
corresponding argument.

For a _portion_ of society (restricting scope to the U.S.), things have gotten
better. For another, very significant portion of society, they have not.

For society overall...? Well, the freedom I had as a child to play outside
unsupervised is largely gone. Education is increasingly again a crapshoot of
which school you get to / are forced to attend and in that vein and from an
economical perspective, who your parents are.

Police are increasingly viewed as "the opposition" and "their own team".

A _lot_ of people wonder how the hell they're ever going to retire.

A lot of sick people are simply staying sick.

So, "efficiency" is "improving" society? For whom? And if that benefit is not
being spread around to some degree, are you simply going to build walls to
keep the misery out of your community? Or are you actually going to consent to
live within its midst?

I favor helping the people around me and throughout this country (living in
the U.S., that is of particular although not exclusive interest to me) because
I want to be able to enjoy the community and the country I live in. To enjoy
walking down the street, and to not have to worry overly whether or not I
should or can safely talk to this person or that.

"Efficiency" on its own is not enough. "Trickle down", also in this regard,
does not appear to be an assured method of distributing the positive results.

I'll add that people have a finite work lifespan and finite opportunity to
accrue assets including and particularly through investment returns.

"Temporary" displacements can disrupt individual lives to an extent where they
never recover. And this is happening to _many_ people, families, and
communities, these days.

Also, building into new roles often requires considerable assets including but
not only available time.

I think some -- many -- of the people making simplistic arguments that "the
workforce will adjust" -- and thereupon simply washing their hands of the
matter -- have never had to dig themselves out of a significantly deep and
challenging hole.

Even personal illness and injury may not compare, when one has considerable
resources and support at their disposal. Poverty is not an individual, often
limited term challenge to overcome. It is a relentless, draining trap that can
create a desert of resources.

Some people do overcome it. But I don't think that's an excuse to just toss
them into it, assuming that they'll somehow come out all right on the other
end.

\--

P.S. I'll add that I did not vote the parent down. Rather, I think this is a
conversation we need to and are going to have to have. The alternative as I
see it is violence and oppression -- things I would rather avoid.

Also, I do _not_ begrudge the "rest of the world" a rising standard of living.
But I do oppose the hollowing out of our own society that current policies and
practices have promoted. (And, per some arguments, perhaps also limitations on
those other societies. Distortions including political and socio-economic.
Brain drain. Etc.)

As members of a society, I think we have responsibility for that society as a
whole. And we've been shirking our duty.

In my case, I also find that is to my -- and, I think, our mutual --
detriment.

~~~
stephen
Well, your reply echos a lot of Occupy sentiment, but I'll side step that, and
just say:

> I think some -- many -- of the people making simplistic arguments that "the
> workforce will adjust" -- and thereupon simply washing their hands of the
> matter

1) Saying we shouldn't actively avoid technology improvements (which was my
point, because it really does pay off in the long run), doesn't mean we can't
help those adversely affected in the short run--it just means we should help
them directly, vs. trying to indirectly "help" them, and hurt the majority of
us, by ignoring technological progress (which is what
politicians/commentators, like the comment I was replying to, frequently
propose).

2) I believe we (society/tax payers) already do this, what with
unemployment/etc. I'm not going to assert it's all roses and puppies, but it's
much more than displaced workers would have traditionally got.

~~~
pasbesoin
Ok, looking at my condensed reply in lieu of working further on my initial
draft, I see that I'm still not making a good, coherent argument, myself.

So, I'll revise by thanking you for your reply and saying that I do take your
points.

I'm not in favor of avoiding technological development. I do tend to
disapprove of large controlling interests that work to inhibit or control its
deployment to their exclusive benefit. I think part of the problem in the U.S.
is that such activity aided in the disenfranchisement of many who are now
struggling here.

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trekky1700
Poor Watson, fame really must have taken its toll. From Jeopardy winner to
Help Desk agent, I can only assume a life of drugs and alcohol led to this.

~~~
jksmith
Heh well, small beginnings lead to replacing staff lawyers and some doctor
functions. Dr Watson, Esquire

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DoubleMalt
Big Mistake!

After a couple of weeks at the Helldesk he will inevitably turn against
humanity!

Judgement Day is near!

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aurelianito
This article reminded my of the game Singularity
(<http://www.emhsoft.com/singularity/>). We are in the menial tasks stage of
the game.

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bsaul
Does anyone has a video or a link showing in details the work of watson in
medical diagnostic ? I've always read about that kind of stuff happening, but
never a real case study or anything concrete (such as : doctor thought it
could be that type of cancer, but watson thought of something else because of
this and this...)

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tocomment
Watson seemed so impressive on Jeopardy. I don't understand why they work on
making it into a general search engine. It would be much better than google.

Or even a restricted search engine that can read all of the papers on a given
topic and then answer questions from those papers.

~~~
jmduke
My guess: Watson doesn't scale. The required resources to answer a given
question is reasonable for a "question-every-minute" format like Jeopardy, but
not something like thousands of questions a second.

~~~
JamesArgo
It runs on a 20-80 teraflop computer and is not amendable to GPGPU
acceleration. Perhaps that's why it doesn't scale.

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alxbrun
I don't think it will work. Watson roughly works this way (of course it's much
more sophisticated than that):

1- Identify the type of entity of the answer (does the question start with
"who" ? or "when" ? etc.

2- Gather as many facts and blobs related to the question from Wikipedia, etc.

3- Intersect these facts with the entity type, and answer.

I don't believe you can provide useful customer service with that. 90% of the
times, customers complain about something wrong with their account, like
Paypal holding a payment. They don't need or expect fact-based answers like
the ones Watson knows how to answer.

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sp332
Watson doesn't deal in "blobs" of information. It has a semantic structure
that holds all its data. When you ask for a piece of data, it understands the
context of your question and the connections among all the parts of your
query.

~~~
alxbrun
So, do you think it will help Watson be a good customer service agent ?

PS. Each time I read that a computer "understands" human language, I have a
good laugh.

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avens19
On a side note: the question they feature in the article, holy crap is tuition
getting beyond ridiculous in the US. I thought Canada was getting more than
high enough

