IBM's Watson supercomputer is really smart. It can solve mathematical problems of impossible complexity. It can forecast the weather on Earth for the next hundred years (or so). It can even beat the world's most seasoned and celebrated Jeopardy! champions, seemingly without even trying. What Watson cannot do, IBM researchers recently learned, is know when it is and is not okay to swear.It's a funny story, really. IBM research scientist Eric Brown told Fortune magazine recently that his team had realized that the key to getting Watson to pass the Turing test was to teach it the appropriate use of slang. (The Turing test is a simple and universal way of measuring a computer's intelligence, by asking a third party to decide which of two parties in a coversation is a computer and which is a human.) So in an attempt to teach Watson slang, the research team uploaded the entirely of the Urban Dictionary to Watson's memory a couple of years ago. They've been dealing with the fallout since.Watson didn't just have trouble figuring out the right time to swear. On a more basic level, the supercomputer couldn't even figure out the difference between profane words and polite words. So, like a five-year-old who overheard his parents arguing once, Watson just started using profane words like regular ones. It's response to one researcher's question? "Bullshit."It's unclear if it was the correct usage of bullshit, but that's not the point. The misunderstanding extended to knowledge that Watson had gleaned from Wikipedia, and eventually, instead of creating a computer that sounded like a human, researchers had programmed Watson into becoming a confused, foul-mouthed nuisance. They eventually decided to wipe the Urban Dictionary from its memory.Silly hijinks aside, the episode does illustrate something really important about the differences between computers and humans. "Computers are now incredibly impressive at what I call 'micro smarts', namely, very specific tasks involving encyclopedic levels of data but with clearly defined rules," as Nigel Shadbolt, professor of artificial intelligence at the University of Southampton, told The Guardian on Friday. "That's why Watson was able to win a quiz show such as Jeopardy! But what they still struggle with is knowing how to behave in a generalised situation." In other words, you can make Watson do your homework for you.But don't even think about taking it to the party after Friday night's football game. He'll only embarass you.Image via Flickr
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