Thank you for a very enjoyable game

WATSON, MEET HAL

AND EVERYONE,

MEET THE REAL WATSON

Remember the movie 2001 – A Space Odyssey? Some highly regarded movie authorities consider it among the greatest movies of all time, if not of its era. (It was released in 1968.)

It certainly changed the way many movie goers thought about science fiction films, space exploration in general and the way humans and computers relate.

One of its featured “stars” was the computer HAL – a nearly sentient computer who turns out to be the malevolent antagonist in the movie. He understands (or misunderstands) his programming in a way that causes him to turn against the flesh-and-blood humans he’s been designed to assist.

See it if you haven’t.

Then consider this:

2001 – A Space Odyssey is a late-60’s movie with a story line that certainly did not come anywhere near the reality of 2001. Actually the reality of 2001 – or 2011 – does not equal the future the movie and the human geniuses behind it -- Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke -- envisioned. While the man vs. machine aspect of the production drives much of the movie forward, the reality of mankind in space is currently stuck in near-earth orbit.

I, for one, would like to see earthlings get back on the humans-in-space, extra-terrestrial exploration track.

But that’s not my point today.

This is: It’s a decade beyond 2001 and we’re currently wowed at an IBM supercomputer that can compete with a high degree of success at the TV game show Jeopardy.

Named “Watson” in tribute to Thomas John Watson, Sr. who laid the groundwork for IBM becoming one of the original computing powerhouses, the game-playing machine is powered by 10 racks of IBM Power 750 servers, running Linux. It uses 15 terabytes of RAM and 2,880 processor cores.

And in the game of Jeopardy, this configuration proved to be a formidable power.

• It equaled its human competition in the first round.
• It held the humans to 5 correct answers in the second round.
• And yesterday it trounced the humans, “winning” 3 times more than its nearest rival, Ken Jennings.

Still --

This Watson’s no HAL.

And as amazing as the fictional HAL was intended to be—

Even HAL was no flesh-and-blood Thomas J. Watson. Impressive though it was, we’re still a long, long way from a machine mind that equals the real deal.

Why?

The real Thomas J. Watson Sr. made it crystal clear when he spelled out the IBM philosophy in a motto consisting of one word:

THINK

Watson Sr. concluded, “All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think. The trouble is that men very often resort to all sorts of devices in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work.”

Obviously, as evidenced by the remarkable achievements of the Jeopardy-playing Watson, THINK remains a part of IBM's corporate culture.

That’s what the IBM people who conceived of and created Watson have been busy doing since 2005 (about the same time Jennings, the record 74-time winner, was making his Jeopardy mark.)

But “think” is not what Watson does. At the end of the day, all Watson does is compute. And it’s taken many years and millions of dollars for that platoon of IBM technologists to bring about what they have.

Not that it’s not worthwhile. Don’t get me wrong. I’m impressed with the accomplishment and agree that it’s an extremely useful and important step in the technological advancement of humans.

But that’s just the point:

Watson is a human accomplishment. People -- thinking people -- made this happen. And it’s likely that only people will drive this sort of advance for a long time to come.

• People with hopes, and dreams and fears.
• People with feelings and emotions and all the illogic that confounds their daily comings and goings.
• People who can be courteous, considerate, generous – or not.
• People who laugh and cry and fall in and out of love, whatever that is.
• People who fight and struggle for what they think is right, even against insurmountable odds.
• People who ponder the unknowable and have the ability to know when they need to seek more information to gain more complete knowledge and understanding.
• People who are stubborn and certain, even when they ought not be and who are uncertain and reluctant when it behooves them to press onward.

People like you and like me. Imperfect people. Not machines. People who are perfectly imperfect.

Watson can learn, it’s true. But it’s machine learning. Calculate probabilities. Compare and contrast. Adjust when new input is received.

But taken on its own, learning isn’t thinking. And it doesn’t necessarily lead to understanding, a most necessary human component of the process.

A predecessor of Watson was Deep Blue, a chess playing machine. Deep Blue learned the rules of the game well enough and could calculate the many-but-limited outcomes of chess moves quickly enough to routinely triumph over human masters of the game.

And as the plot develops in 2001 – A Space Odyssey, the highly advanced HAL plays chess with an astronaut, Dr. Frank Poole, who he’ll later allow to die.

The scene goes like this:

Dr. Frank Poole: [as he studies the chessboard] “Let's see, King... anyway, Queen takes Pawn. Okay?”
HAL: “Bishop takes Knight's Pawn.” 

Poole: “Huh, lousy move. Um, Rook to King 1.”

HAL: “I'm sorry, Frank, I think you missed it. Queen to Bishop 3, Bishop takes Queen, Knight takes Bishop. Mate.” 

Poole: “Huh. Yeah, it looks like you're right. I resign.” HAL: “Thank you for a very enjoyable game.”

Poole: “Yeah. Thank you.”

In this victory, and in many of his interactions with humans, HAL shows a politeness and expresses emotions he has been programmed to use but clearly does not fully comprehend. (He quite often prefaces hurtful acts or accounts of his behavior with “I’m sorry ….”)

So, please –

THINK about all this: No doubt Thomas J Watson Sr. would have been proud of the namesake Watson’s game playing accomplishments. But he would be prouder still of the humans who made it happen in a way that captured the public attention. And he would be proudest of those who would do the hard work of applying this tech to solving the problems of the world.

Thank you for a very enjoyable game.

P.S.  True or False? In 2001 – A Space Odyssey, was the name HAL based on a one-letter shift from the name IBM?

False:  Both Arthur Clarke and 2001 director Stanley Kubrick denied it, although IBM did provide technical advice to the movie makers and product placements can be spotted in the movie.

Clarke has written: “HAL stands for Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer. However, about once a week some character spots the fact that HAL is one letter ahead of IBM, and promptly assumes that Stanley and I were taking a crack at the estimable institution ... As it happened, IBM had given us a good deal of help, so we were quite embarrassed by this, and would have changed the name had we spotted the coincidence.”