Elementary Watson: Jeopardy
Computer Lacks Critical Thinking
When Watson the super computer designed to win at Jeopardy
stood his ground in competition against two Jeopardy champions, Watson’s
creators cheered. Not Dr. Farnsberry Fracklehadder of the Meyerson, Bewlowiski and
Pesky Institute. Fracklehadder watched the landmark contest and commented from his office at
the MBP Institute in Brussels.
“Watson is potentially a marvelous instrument of propaganda that would make Joseph Goebbels envious. Watson is the hero of what Alvin Toffler called The Third Wave…..the age of information, but whose information? Watson collates and assesses, then regurgitates the official history as it has been scrutinized, sanitized and politicized by the ruling power elites….those capable of creating Watson...in a word...or more precisely three words....International Business Machines. Watson is the perfect company man. He appears human in intelligence, but there is a chip missing. I call it the 'chimp chip'. As we all now know from Edwin Black's book War Against The Weak, IBM has a poor record of avoiding over-identification with the power brokers' agendas, their compartmentalization and their frequent over-reach. Watson will not stand up to a person and group and say, 'oh so you are doing a lousy job of managing what you have so your solution is to control more and more? Watson cannot differentiate between conflicted and delicately reasoned narratives. Watson can compute probabilities and count the votes cast in a popularity contest of competing ideas, but he is a long, long way from discovering whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone or was part of a conspiracy. If you asked Watson who bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941 he can tell you that it was the Japanese, but he cannot give you a complex answer as to why the Japanese felt threatened or why after years of British and American domination of the Chinese, the Japanese turned on their oriental brethren with the Rape of Nan King,” said Fracklehadder. "He cannot tell you why IBM did not question the use of computers in the cataloguing and racial cleansing policies of the Third Reich," said Fracklehadder.
by Winsip Custer CPW News Services
When Watson the super computer designed to win at Jeopardy
stood his ground in competition against two Jeopardy champions, Watson’s
creators cheered. Not Dr. Farnsberry Fracklehadder of the Meyerson, Bewlowiski and
Pesky Institute. Fracklehadder watched the landmark contest and commented from his office at
the MBP Institute in Brussels.“Watson is potentially a marvelous instrument of propaganda that would make Joseph Goebbels envious. Watson is the hero of what Alvin Toffler called The Third Wave…..the age of information, but whose information? Watson collates and assesses, then regurgitates the official history as it has been scrutinized, sanitized and politicized by the ruling power elites….those capable of creating Watson...in a word...or more precisely three words....International Business Machines. Watson is the perfect company man. He appears human in intelligence, but there is a chip missing. I call it the 'chimp chip'. As we all now know from Edwin Black's book War Against The Weak, IBM has a poor record of avoiding over-identification with the power brokers' agendas, their compartmentalization and their frequent over-reach. Watson will not stand up to a person and group and say, 'oh so you are doing a lousy job of managing what you have so your solution is to control more and more? Watson cannot differentiate between conflicted and delicately reasoned narratives. Watson can compute probabilities and count the votes cast in a popularity contest of competing ideas, but he is a long, long way from discovering whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone or was part of a conspiracy. If you asked Watson who bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941 he can tell you that it was the Japanese, but he cannot give you a complex answer as to why the Japanese felt threatened or why after years of British and American domination of the Chinese, the Japanese turned on their oriental brethren with the Rape of Nan King,” said Fracklehadder. "He cannot tell you why IBM did not question the use of computers in the cataloguing and racial cleansing policies of the Third Reich," said Fracklehadder.
Dr. Fracklehadder believes that the Fourth Wave is the
Homeostatic Age.
“If information is power and that power is used to make things like
boxes that extrude new plastic products that will end up floating as waste in
the Pacific or Atlantic, then the Information Age is the end of all ages. If we are surfers and we see the world as home to the biggest and most brutal of all gathering waves, all we have to do is continue on our present path. That new big wave is going to be a doozie!"
"Homeostasis is a term often used negatively
by mind scientists and addiction counselors, but it can also be a positive way of defining a Homeostasis Age
in which people will limit population growth and check unbridled impulses....balancing ambition with careful and reasoned living. Unfortunately, as the work of Sigmund Freud showed on an individual level and Max Wertheimer showed on a collective level, people are more easily motivated by raw emotion and imagery than reason," said Dr. Facklehadder.
"In the Homeostatic Age we could ration consumption and reach for an ecological balance that prolongs all life on planet earth. There are already plenty of planets with unimaginable storms of unspeakable power and destruction unfit for human life. Prolonging life here will require a new level of maturity that, frankly, human beings may not be capable of achieving and Watson is, frankly, too elementary to understand this reality. Watson cannot even understand that if humanity dies so does he. Unless Watson, as some experts are beginning to believe, evolves into a SUPER super-computer complete with the 'Good Hal Effect'....a computer that reasons that its own life is tied to the survival of humanity...which it is....we and Watson are doomed. Experts on the 'Good Hal Effect' use the name to describe the reverse of Arthur C. Clarke's computer in his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey. They claim that a 'Good Hal Effect' was proven when at Y2K the machines did not bring earth's computer dependent electrical grid and interconnected circuits to a screeching halt. But for now, Watson is, for all his wonderful possibilities and promise, a big toy and in the end someone will be wiping his little bottom with Armour All in hopes that he will fetch a bigger return in someone’s estate sale.”
"In the Homeostatic Age we could ration consumption and reach for an ecological balance that prolongs all life on planet earth. There are already plenty of planets with unimaginable storms of unspeakable power and destruction unfit for human life. Prolonging life here will require a new level of maturity that, frankly, human beings may not be capable of achieving and Watson is, frankly, too elementary to understand this reality. Watson cannot even understand that if humanity dies so does he. Unless Watson, as some experts are beginning to believe, evolves into a SUPER super-computer complete with the 'Good Hal Effect'....a computer that reasons that its own life is tied to the survival of humanity...which it is....we and Watson are doomed. Experts on the 'Good Hal Effect' use the name to describe the reverse of Arthur C. Clarke's computer in his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey. They claim that a 'Good Hal Effect' was proven when at Y2K the machines did not bring earth's computer dependent electrical grid and interconnected circuits to a screeching halt. But for now, Watson is, for all his wonderful possibilities and promise, a big toy and in the end someone will be wiping his little bottom with Armour All in hopes that he will fetch a bigger return in someone’s estate sale.”
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