The story of Watson, and a brave new world

When the history of this new millennium is written, there will at least be a chapter on one of the most fascinating intelligences of this century, Watson. Except that the intelligence is artificial. Watson is the project undertaken by computer giant IBM, and aimed at making AI more ubiquitous. Named after Thomas Watson Sr., who built IBM into the pioneer in computing, Watson is making rapid strides in cognitive computing, the bit where computers start thinking, and making decisions like human beings. Think was Thomas Watson’s catch phrase. “The trouble with every one of us is that we don’t think enough. We don’t get paid for working with our feet — we get paid for working with our heads,” Watson had said. He also added, “All the problems of the world could be settled easily, if men were only willing to think.” On the very act of thinking, he refused to elaborate, saying that everyone will figure out what Think meant, when they saw the word, and, that there was no one route to thinking. This seems to be the philosophy with which Watson, the Artificial Intelligence system has been designed. 

Watson made a splash when it was introduced two years ago by beating contestants on the game show Jeopardy. It was for long considered one of the most difficult game shows. The clues were in the form of cryptic code and the players made associations to get the correct answer. Unlike more academic quizzes, here the contestant had to be aware of popular culture, and nuances of language. A typical question on Jeopardy would be “I keep stacks of invoices in bins labelled A.R. for accounts receivable and A.P, for this”. What was interesting was that a machine picked up natural language and its nuances to be able to beat contestants. This primarily worked because those who designed the system, did not just programme it with instructions, but also taught it to learn, much as a child learns. A child, and many AI systems, learn by association. That is possibly the reason we are able to pick out nuances in tunes, or the difference between dogs, or can figure accents of people.

However, artificial intelligence and cognitive computing are more than the ability to beat humans at chess, or in game shows. It is about how massive computing power that can help issues that plague humanity. Among the many uses of AI, is in healthcare, where machines cannot just go through every single medical case, that is similar, in extremely short duration, but can also look at genome sequences, and predict different treatments for different people, based on the sequence. Until now, medicine has only been able to provide a one size fits all.  If someone has diabetes, or lung cancer, then the process of treatment is like another person suffering these.

However, with this level of processing, and cognitive power, AI is changing complex medical care as well. Big Data analysts, biologists, computer scientists, AI specialists are all working together to create treatments that would make not just make ailments like diabetes, or illnesses like cancer, a thing of the past, but also ensure that each person got the treatment fine-tuned to their body. And, how accurate is this? Recently, Watson analysed around a thousand files of cancer patients. It had to go through the files, and come up with a course of treatment. In 99 per cent of the files, its recommendation was the same as the human doctor; however, it additionally was able to diagnose 30 per cent more cases that human doctors had missed out.

What does this mean for us? It means that we are going to live longer, with fewer avenues of employment open to us. There seems to be nothing that we, as a species, can do, that machines can’t do better. All this glorious technology is not science fiction, it is not a distant future, it is here and now. And, the starting point is to have a conversation about artificial intelligence that goes beyond the two polar points of view, one which states that it is going to be liberating humans from mundane tasks and allowing them to reach true potential. And the other, which says that human beings will have nothing to do, and will become slaves to the system; and ask how prepared are we, for this future; and what do we need to do to be prepared. Think.

The author works at the intersection of digital content, technology and audiences. She is also a writer, teacher, and film-maker.