Watson’s pros and cons

Plenty of features that allowed Watson successfully participate in its Jeopardy! performance also help it become extremely suitable for typical jobs that require massive segments of natural language information. Lots of aspects make understanding and discourse concerning natural language problematic. Due to Watson relies on plenty of these points, it gives completely new process to the style computer systems may add benefit to our life. This article explains a method for improving Watson with the ability to automatically detect relevant non-textual information. You may consider these upgrades as providing to Watson “eyes and ears”.

Watson is notably effective in:

  • Proper performing on unstructured content, especially text – However multiple systems allow for the computers to work with natural language data, majority of systems finish with what volumes to little more than the capability to index different phrases. Watson can take synonyms, puns, sarcasm and much more forms of speech. Watson is able to absorb and efficiently work on content starting from technical documentation to blogs and wiki articles.
  • Effective operating with big amounts of reference material – one way computers have successfully resolved difficulties is to use their performance for assistance on dealing with big volumes of data. Exploring a database with millions of records will happen in a flash. For medical doctors it is physically extremely difficult to read and keep in mind all the relevant data being generated daily. The system should have ways to understand which data belongs to each other among billions of records. Watson provides such technology which is helpful for this aims.
  • Learning potential – world is changing. To keep relevancy of developing troubles and increasing information bases, solution should be dynamically fit and study. Watson’s skills to learn and modify via basic user communication retains technology relevant and constantly enhancing.
  • Human interaction – During the history of computer machines users have had to accommodate to interact with the system on its conditions. Though that solution is good for individuals that are ready and want to learn different idiosyncrasies for every new solution. With the development of Watson human-computer interaction is shifting to the level where the system is able to effectively and, in common, interact chatting with human users on their conditions. This human way of conversing is now a normal practice. The ability to automatically structure and require follow-up questions in natural language is an effective technique for user interaction.

Even after its Jeopardy! success Watson received lots of improvements. The size and power of the footprint have been significantly decreased together its functionality are reguraly increasing. But while Watson is optimized to work with natural language, content, context, and interaction, it is not able to deal with sensory input. Watson has no sensory interface to function as eyes and ears. It will just reply on a context which has been defined in textual form.

The “meaningful ask”

To communicate with Watson sensory information should be translated into an understandable form such as text. For instance, suitable picture can be a medical X-ray image. A human radiologist will understand this image by using a contextual explanation.

The technology to have the computer automatically create this explanation is in truly initial phases. But for lots of other types of sensory handle – such as sound recognition that a sound from a specific breed of dolphin or that heart beat waveform tells about particular form of tachycardia. We can automatically transform obtainable data into a text description.

Dr. Alex Philp of GCS researching represents this translation procedure as transforming sensory information into a meaningful ask. Due to the reason Watson can’t recognize sound, it is not able to listen to it directly and explain to you the meaning of the sound. But in case when sound is processed and converted into descriptive phrase included in query or as a context to question, Watson could reply properly. This process of translation generates the meaningful ask.

Human-in-the-loop

While computer systems are consistently getting more clever and smart, people perform an essential role through application developing and deployment. Contrary to lots of back-office or machine-to-machine programs, the majority of Watson-based products are tailored for human interaction.

In the process of creation, professionals work with Watson to determine which sets of information needs including in its data body so to tweak the direction in which information is applied. Watson continue to rely on a long-term training stage where human specialists regularly communicate with it by improving desired reasoning routes, de-emphasizing the unwanted ones, and determining resources which need to be included to body.

When a method is installed for usage, humans interact with it via interface received from application. An effective factor of Watson is its potential to have an open, constant dialog with user. Watson can remember where it stays in dialog and constantly monitor the full set of conversation relevant context. This behaviour allows to prevent the need to continuously re-enter similar data, and it enhances the precision of answers. In the case explained in this article the obtainable sensory data gets to be component of interaction. For example, if a physician interacts with Watson for a certain patient, the sensory system automatically involves into the context, related materials to patient history and present status. Examples of medical telemetry could include specifically sensed information like heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, blood-oxygen saturation, brain wave patterns etc. Additionally the real-time analytics of the stream-processing method could produce artificial telemetry by detecting conceivably faintly discernible patterns or correlations.

Take into account advantages of improving Watson therefore it could get straight sensory input and data from electronic medical systems. This feature will eradicate require for the medical professional to specifically explain lots elements of the patient status so to concentrate on other activities which couldn’t be automated with present technologies. Preferably, a doctor could ask the question: “What is the reason of the slow respiration for the patient in bed 32?” and receive all the needed contextual data. Watson will reply with a selection of potential reasons and levels of accuracy.

In the far future, computers may have advantageous intelligence than people. Someone could debate that from that point, they are getting more humans than we are. However, the best strategy is by using computers for that they are ideal at, like lurking throughout large volumes of data to provide objective results, and to keep opinion regarding those results in hands of people. This method is practical for 2 factors: computers are not enough precise to invariably believe them, and our life experience, mixed of the route our brain is wired, deliver another level of understanding and judgement. Thinking of humans and machines is differ but complementary. Collectively they are an effective mixture. Including sensory input to Watson improves this combination with delivering extra data to shared context.

Noticing and gaining knowledge from results

Contrary to Jeopardy! game where every question and reply were self-contained, majority of solutions created for Watson nowadays are aimed at a ensuing activity, for example advice of medical care or an item to buy. In certain circumstances the inclusion of sensory input to Watson may allow to instantly monitor and study from results of its suggestions.