Comments on: Igniting the New Intelligence

By: Artisan Bangle

Artisan Bangle — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 08:24:29 +0000

hello!,I love your writing so so much! share we keep up a correspondence more about your post on AOL? I require a specialist in this area to resolve my problem. Maybe that’s you! Looking ahead to peer you.

By: romabit

romabit — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:03:32 +0000

I’m not an IBMer or a programmer, but I would call myself a data superuser, spanning business, government, and the social web.
Since the article asked, I’d like to offer the layman’s perspective. The technology that drives new intelligence is light years beyond what the average end user can understand, and contrary to most reasoning, that gap is only widening. Partly this is due to generational differences…you simply can’t teach all old dogs new tricks, although some are certainly willing to try a trick or two. Pair this with the next generation of developers who have grown up with the technology and user experiences that are driving this change, and you have a very large understanding gap to bridge. The importance of this gap isn’t always evident, but we’ve seen one tech development after another adopted to the point of complete integration into the younger generation’s lifestyle (i.e. cell phones and facebook), and barely acknowledged or chronically misunderstood within older generations. The age old problem is that those making the business decisions do not understand the technology, and those that do understand it are not making the decisions.
I’m a younger worker trying to get a much older team to start using business intelligence software…It is frustrating to keep beating my head against the wall because even the president of my company is clueless about what a server is and thinks “online storage” means “unsecure”. The unfortunate reality is that if they don’t get with the program here, the company will be outpaced by its competitors and losing business within the next few years…our customers simply won’t be able to work with our outdated systems.
I’m all for moving intelligence forward, but lets do it responsibly. You can’t just throw out a new technology that takes the place of 200,000 workers doing data mining and expect them all to just go quietly into the unemployment line. We have to bring people along, not leave them behind, otherwise IBM and everybody else won’t have too many businesses left to buy their products/services.

By: Adam Christensen

Adam Christensen — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:32:14 +0000

Max, you raise some interesting points. I have a question about this comment, “You need to read Gigerenzer, Taleb, Damasio, Minsky and a few others to realize that intelligence is linked to making good decisions on limited information. More information turns everything into noise.”
I think the noise issue is really key. But can’t more sophisticated computing models and algorithms – designed by human intelligence – help manage and filter noise?
What is the assurance that the limited information a decision is based on is the right information? Clearly, a small sample size, if skewed, necessarily overestimates the basis of a decision, right? Curious to hear your perspective.

By: Jack Mason

Jack Mason — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:11:25 +0000

Max:
I agree that there are many challenges to the future of predictive analytics and more intelligent data mining in some of the areas you point to, or that even the most advanced technologies …
(in fact, I am reading Jeff Hawkins fascinating book On Intelligence, which details some of the debate and limitations in AI and intelligent machines. But look at what he’s now working out with his new company Numenta!)
Still I can point to a couple of examples that underscore where breakthroughs in computer science and information technologies are leading to whole new avenues of inquiry, knowledge and useful application of new kinds of insight.
For example, IBM Research just announced a new microscope based on MRI principles that is 1000 times more sensitive than other methods, and will enable scientists to gain new intelligence on the structure of matter.
Here’s the link to the videoclip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAA4FGKCBik
On a different front, IBM and TD Bank Financial Group announced in early 2008 that they were exploring the use of “stream computing” software system, running on a Blue Gene supercomputer with a new kind of software architecture. The goal is to examine thousands of real-time information sources to support financial services companies.
http://insidehpc.com/2008/04/02/td-bank-partners-with-ibm-on-stream-computing/
These aren’t magic bullets, but they are part of larger pattern of progress that I think is leading us in the right direction.
You are right that there are real limits to what machine intelligence can deliver. And cognitive computing is in its infancy.
And you are also right that simply more data and more processing power — which is my great oversimplification of the nature of this new intelligence for a general audience — doesn’t by itself get you to anything like a true new kind of intelligence.
But I disagree with your assessment that nothing has changed in computer science, or that we aren’t actually on the brink of a sea change in what is possible in terms of analytics, business intelligence and simulation & modeling.
Moreover, I am very appreciative of you engaging the dialogue. Our social, human and interactive exchange may be the most important kind of new intelligence we can harness.

By: Max Pucher

Max Pucher — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:07:06 +0000

Jack, I am truly sorry to rain on your parade! What you present is a marketing pitch with little real benefit to show. I am too an ex-IBMer, though I did leave 21 years ago. I did try to sell ‘OfficeVision’ and the paperless office back then, anyone remember? This ‘New Intelligence’ is the same thing. Grid computing is still in its infancy, Quantum computing can perform additions on simple numbers and cognitive computing is an idea and no more. I wrote a post on it some time ago: http://isismjpucher.wordpress.com/2008/11/24/ibm-cognitive-computing-research-versus-papyrus-uta/
The proposition that gathering more data, and crunching more numbers, will produce more knowledge and better decisions is an illusion. The data gathering is inaccurate, the data correlation is an assumption, and even where you find correlation is does not present CAUSATION. The mathematics used are guesswork. Yes, in the area of classical physiscs, where we build machines that perform repeated operations where we can optimize and tune the models to be used, all this is useful, but in the business world where many people take individual decisions all the maths is useless.
I am sure that the Black-Scholes future utility model means something to you and see into what financial maelstrom it has taken us. Our crisis is not just a Black Swan, but by the illusions encoded in the model.
You need to read Gigerenzer, Taleb, Damasio, Minsky and a few others to realize that intelligence is linked to making good decisions on limited information. More information turns everything into noise. And even when you get good information then you will find that the context and the related interpretation of the user is as important as the data themselves. Why does everyone ignore Shannon? Data as such are meaningless.
If there is a way to create cognitive computing, its functionality has to learn from human interaction and human decisions, just like humans learn from others. Cognitive computing on masses of data is NOT human! AI failed because it totally missed the point that all human decisions are emotionally intuitive.
I have designed and patented a ‘learn-from-the-user’ or transductive agent and we implemented it for the Papyrus Platform. It does work astonishingly well and it works best with limited data.
IBM’s ‘Deep Blue’ was only able to beat Kasparov in 1997 after grandmaster Joel Benjamin created the winning strategy. It was not the computer who won.
IBM is still playing the same old game …

By: Silvia Mihailescu

Silvia Mihailescu — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:40:03 +0000

Great post Jack, really made me proud as IBMer! Honestly think that there is much more potential for raising awareness on how we can translate the new intelligence to day-to-day business.
My opinion is that although there are many plans, forecasts and IBM empowers significant research projects, people need to see the new intelligence as something that it’s already happening and something we could benefit from NOW.
Is not like we need to wait for a technology to allow us to improve how we live, work and do business. That may be in a particular case but the most of it is already available. So we just need to reach for it and ask advise from companies like IBM on how we can improve our “old intelligence”
just a fast thought :-)

By: Jack Mason

Jack Mason — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:45:15 +0000

Daniel:
Glad you liked it. And I think you offer some additional context on http://lightlycaffeinated.com/ , namely that this new intelligence is probably going to be a kind of diffuse, distributed artificial intelligence. Not exactly the kind of non-human intelligence we thought AI was going to deliver, but something different.

By: Daniel ostermayer

Daniel ostermayer — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:36:06 +0000

Jack,
I think all of these advances in New Intelligence hinge on AI and cloud computing advances. Hopefully I’ll have time to gather my thoughts on this and write more but your article is fantastic.