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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 18-Jun-2010
18-Jun-10 News -- IBM's Watson computer will be a Jeopardy contestant

Web Log - June, 2010

18-Jun-10 News -- IBM's Watson computer will be a Jeopardy contestant

EU officials are worried that European countries could become military dictatorships

IBM's Watson computer is a giant step towards the Singularity

This fall, the syndicated TV show Jeopardy! will host an amazing event: A program in which one of the players will be a computer, an IBM supercomputer called "Watson." The other players will be former Jeopardy winners, according to an article to appear in Sunday's NY Times.

For those not familiar with this TV show, the rules are as follows: The contestants are given a "clue" in the form of the answer to a question. The first contestant to press a buzzer gives a response in the form of a question.

There will be no restrictions on the clues, according to the article. Some examples:

“Toured the Burj in this U.A.E. city. They say it’s the tallest tower in the world; looked over the ledge and lost my lunch.” (What is Dubai?)
“This action flick starring Roy Scheider in a high-tech police helicopter was also briefly a TV series” (What is ‘Blue Thunder’?)

“The greyhound originated more than 5,000 years ago in this African country, where it was used to hunt gazelles” (What is Egypt?)

“Classic candy bar that’s a female Supreme Court justice” (What is Baby Ruth Ginsburg?)

“In Poland, pick up some kalafjor if you crave this broccoli relative.” (What is cauliflower?)

The computer will play by the same rules as the humans, slightly adapted:

The clue is transmitted to the computer at the same time that it's displayed to the humans.

Neither the computer nor the humans can "press" the buzzer until the moderator has finished reading the clue, providing about 6-7 seconds of time to think about it.

After pressing the buzzer, the computer or human has five seconds to come up with the correct question.

The article goes into quite a bit of detail about the how the computer arrives at its response -- it's a fascinating description, so read the entire article.

Here I just want to focus on how the computer "learns" in advance of the actual game show. During the three years of Watson's development, the computer was fed tens of millions of documents, including "books, reference material, any sort of dictionary, thesauri, folksonomies, taxonomies, encyclopedias, any kind of reference material you can imagine getting your hands on or licensing. Novels, bibles, plays."

The computer didn't just store this material. It first did "natural language processing" on the material. This is an artificial intelligence technique that interprets an ordinary English language sentence correctly. Then, it did statistical analyses on the material and created a database of concepts and connections. For example, it would determine that the name "Sherlock Holmes" appeared frequently in the same sentence as phrases like "deerstalker hat" and "Professor Moriarty" and "opium," but never appeared in the same sentence with, say, "Super Bowl." Using this kind of database, Watson can examine the words in a clue, look up connections in its database, and hopefully come up with the correct response in the few seconds alloted.

This is the kind of "brute force" algorithm that I was talking about in the article that I posted two days ago. The method for creating this database has been known by researchers for many years, but it's only recently that a computer has been powerful enough to actually implement it. That's what I mean when I say that super-intelligent computers are only waiting for sufficiently powerful computers, and those will be available before long.

Five years ago, I posted my own algorithmic architecture for intelligent computing (IC). (See Chapter 7 - The Singularity in the book Generational Dynamics for Historians.)

The IC learning algorithm that I designed involves creating "knowledge bits" (KBs) that can be combined like jigsaw puzzle pieces to form larger KBs. This algorithm will allow computers to become as intelligent and creative as human beings, and the only reason that these brute force algorithms don't work today is because computers aren't yet powerful enough. With Moore's Law, my own estimate (for the Singularity) is that computers will be powerful enough by 2030.

One of the major stumbling blocks in the way to implement my IC algorithm (or any IC algorithm) is how the computer will learn, acquire "knowledge." I have always assumed that, at some point, it would be possible for the computer to start accessing all of the documents on the internet, and learn from them, but I thought that this capability would not be achieved until the 2015-2020 time frame.

The capabilities demonstrated by IBM's Watson computer push that time frame ahead by several years, and calls into question whether my 2030 estimate for the Singularity is too far out.

For a computer, unlike a human, learning is a cumulative thing. For example, if I want to learn about the history of the Roman Empire, I can read numerous books on the subject and in a few weeks or months or years, I'll know a great deal about the history of the Roman Empire. Then, if YOU want to learn about the history of the Roman Empire, then you have to go through the same process of reading numerous books.

But that's not true for computers. Once one computer has learned about the history of the Roman Empire, that knowledge can be transferred to any other computer simply by copying its database. The second computer can then build on that knowledge with other subjects, and pass that information on.

So if we're now close to the point where the learning process can begin, then it's reasonable to assume that computers will surpass human beings in knowledge by the end of this decade. Then if something like the "knowledge bit (KB)" algorithm that I described is implemented, then computers will be able to set goals and implement them. So the Singularity may be reached by the mid-2020s.

Tony Blair: 'We will not allow' Iran to acquire nuclear weapons

I was listening to an interview with former British PM Tony Blair, now heading up a Mideast peace effort, on BBC World News America, and he said something that startled me (my transcription):

Question: "Are you confident that the Israelis will continue to stay on the sidelines militarily with these new sanctions that are in place?"

Blair: "The prospect of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon is, you know, pretty much a red line for them, but I would say, frankly, that it should be a red line for all of us.

I do not think it's sensible for any of us - in Europe, never mind in Israel or America or indeed in the Arab world -- it is not sensible AT ALL for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons capability, and it's important that they realize that we will not allow that to happen."

Notice that he evaded the question of whether the Israelis will continue to stay on the sidelines militarily.

And what does he mean by: "we will not allow that to happen"?

Whenever a political leader makes a statement of this sort, it always catches my attention because it's a kind of commitment that implies that either (1) the political leader will have to embarass himself by backing down, or (2) there will be a military attack, or even war.

Meanwhile, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Thursday that Europe could face hundreds of Iranian missiles, according to Reuters.

European Commission President Barroso: Democracy in Europe could 'collapse'

One of Europe's top officials, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, fears that if Greece, Spain and Portugal continue going into debt WITHOUT carrying out the planned austerity packages, then these countries could disappears as "we know them as democracies," according to EU Observer.

Another high level European official is John Monks, general secretary of the European Trades Union Congress (ETUC). According to Monks, if Greece, Spain and Portugal DO carry out the austerity packages, then these countries will end up with a "militarist dictatorship."

So you have two high-level officials predicting the end of democracy, but for opposite reasons: carrying out or NOT carrying out austerity measures to reduce debt.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this actually makes a lot of sense. Putting the two predictions together, a return to military dictatorships in these countries is already unstoppable, whether austerity packages are implemented or not. This is exactly the kind of conclusion that's common in Generational Dynamics, since the major events we discuss were triggered by events that occurred decades ago, and were carried forward by generational changes.

The article quotes John Monks as follows, warning what will happen if the austerity packages are imposed:

"This is extremely dangerous. This is 1931, we're heading back to the 1930s, with the Great Depression and we ended up with militarist dictatorship. I'm not saying we're there yet, but it's potentially very serious, not just economically, but politically as well.

I had a discussion with Barroso last Friday about what can be done for Greece, Spain, Portugal and the rest and his message was blunt: 'Look, if they do not carry out these austerity packages, these countries could virtually disappear in the way that we know them as democracies. They've got no choice, this is it'.

He's very, very worried. He shocked us with an apocalyptic vision of democracies in Europe collapsing because of the state of indebtedness."

The article lists planned austerity cuts in different countries:

        Greece	    €24 billion
        Britain	    € 7.51 billion
        France	    €45 billion
        Netherlands €45 billion
        Ireland	    € 4 billion
        Portugal    € 2 billion

Sharp cutbacks are also planned for Hungary, Romania, Estonia and Latvia.

A further analysis of these two quotations appears in an article in the Daily Mail.

According to the article, Greece, Spain and Portugal were controlled by military dictatorships that ended in the 1974-78 time frame, at which time they transitioned to democracies.

Now, I haven't researched and analyzed all these transitions, but they all appear to be Awakening era climaxes. That is, all of these countries fought World War II as a crisis war, and so the 1960s-70s was an Awakening era that climaxed with a transition to democracy. It's worth noting that these transitions occurred in the same time frame as American President Richard Nixon's resignation.

Now these countries are all deep into generational Crisis eras, all suffering from enormous debt, given the choice of either defaulting on the debt or drastically cutting spending -- and either of these choices will impoverish the nation.

At that point you may well see a repeat of what happened when Europe's banks all collapsed in the 1931-32, giving rise to both communist dictatorships and Nazi dictatorships.

What both Monks and Barroso are predicting is that Europe is on exactly the same path. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, there's a good chance that they're exactly right.

Additional links

Israel has announced an easing of the Gaza Strip blockade, although the details have yet to be worked out. Washington Post

Spain appears to be near a banking crisis, and credit default swap (CDS) prices on Spanish debt are soaring, indicating that investors believe that Spain might default. But Spanish and EU officials are adamant that nothing like that is true. Independent

In Thailand, a growing number of the "red shirt" protestors are being jailed. This is an ominous sign for Thailand, because it exacerbates the rage across the fault line between the wealthy fair-skinned Thai-Chinese elite and the indigenous dark-skinned laborers. Asia Sentinel

The United Nations is warning that food prices will rise by 40% over the next decade. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this is happening because the population is growing faster than the food supply. Guardian

The US Justice Department says that authorities have arrested 485 people since March in a major crackdown on mortgage fraud. Bloomberg

We have Viagra for men, and now German researchers are ready to bring to market a pill that can restore a depressed female sex drive. NY Times

David Pogue: Verizon Wireless is adopting sneaky ways to charge more for wireless services. NY Times

Obama's oil speech is being panned by liberals. Huffington Post. The major political realignment that I've been talking about is continuing. It will tear apart both the Republican and Democratic parties.

Republican strategist Karl Rove: The bad news about ObamaCare keeps piling up. WSJ

The birth of a bomb: A history of Iran's nuclear program. Spiegel

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 18-Jun-10 News -- IBM's Watson computer will be a Jeopardy contestant thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.) (18-Jun-2010) Permanent Link
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