John - (01)
On 2011-02-20, at 8:01 AM, John F. Sowa wrote: (02)
> And by the way, I'd like to make some comments about those
> absurd "human-like" comments by journalists. The one Leo
> cited was truly ridiculous:
>
> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9210319/
> Brain_behind_IBM_s_Watson_not_unlike_a_human_s?
> source=CTWNLE_nlt_pm_2011-02-18 (03)
I've been having a hard time holding my lunch down with some of the
stuff that's being written about Watson. What's a ruder word than
"fawning?" Definition: "seek favor by groveling" is pretty rude. (04)
Might you, John, offer some historical perspective of how we've been
through this before over the past 60 years. (05)
[What I describe here is likely to have some details missing or
unintentionally embellished.] (06)
As I dimly remember, there was an IBM demonstration in the Madison
Ave. office in maybe 1954 which "translated" Russian into English.
There was evidently a LOT of HUZZAHs!!! about how with just a little
more effort/money/technology and the machine translation problem
would be solved. (07)
The background context of the time was the brunt of the Cold War...
so it was received wisdom that if we had this machine translation
magic, we'd have a serious leg up on those imagined fleets of
intercontinental bombers. I remember picking up in high school
stories about how "hydraulic ram" in Russian was translated into
"water goat" in English. (08)
IBM & Georgetown University subsequently teamed up to move the ball
forward. (09)
In due course of time, the ALPAC report (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
ALPAC) was issued & AI descended into the "AI winter." (010)
At the time I came across this history in August 2006, I'd just
attended a MT conference in Cambridge, MA. One of the things that
really struck me was that dear ol' Babblefish (the commercial remains
of the Georgetown Project) was the giant in the industry at US$20M in
revenues... after 50 years! (011)
___________________
David Eddy
deddy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (012)
781-455-0949 (013)
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