This post is part of a series about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its potential role in science communication. In this second post (part 2), I describe Watson, a computer that was trained to assist in the making of a movie trailer.
In the previous post (part 1), I explained that IBM’s computer system, Watson, was used to help a Hollywood film studio make a trailer for the movie, Morgan. But what is Watson? According to the IBM website, Watson is “a technology platform that uses natural language processing and machine learning to reveal insights from large amounts of unstructured data”. Translating that into everyday language: Watson is a computer that can answer tricky questions like the ones posed on the gameshow Jeopardy!. In 2011, Watson beat two reigning champions, providing answers to Jeopardy! clues—example: even a broken one of these on your wall is right twice a day; correct reply: what is a clock?—and winning $1,000,000 (which was donated to two charities).
Actually, Watson is a cluster of computers (90 servers and 2880 processor cores) running something called DeepQA software. Despite its performance on Jeopardy!, Watson does not “think” like a human and arrives at an answer to a question differently. Tons of information from various sources have been input, providing Watson with an enormous information base to analyze. For the game show, Watson used more than 100 algorithms to come up with a set of reasonable answers to a question. It then ranked those answers and searched its information database for any evidence in support of each answer. The answer with the most evidence was given the highest confidence. When the confidence was not high enough during the Jeopardy! game, though, Watson did not risk losing money by offering an answer.
Despite fears that AI will eliminate jobs or go rogue and destroy humankind, as depicted in the Terminator series, the system is viewed by developers as a way to augment human intelligence and to reduce the time spent on tasks involving large amounts of information. IBM prefers the term Augmented Intelligence (systems that enhance and scale human intelligence) to Artificial Intelligence (systems that replicate human intelligence). There are many ways in which AI can augment information-intensive fields such as medicine, telecommunications, weather forecasting, and financial services. Since the Jeopardy! match, Watson has been used to create cognitive apps and computing tools for businesses and healthcare professionals.
It’s not difficult, then, to imagine AI systems aiding scientific research and especially the communication of those findings in a more efficient way. More and more people are getting their information, particularly about science, in the form of video, but many science professionals have little time or incentive to devote to learning and using new communication tools. A system that can reduce the time involved in making a video and simultaneously enhance the quality could greatly improve communication of science and its importance to society. The first cognitive movie trailer, aided by the computer, Watson, is a “proof of concept” in this regard.
For more information about Watson and preparation for the Jeopardy! gameshow, see this article: Ferrucci, D. et al. 2010. Building Watson: An overview of the DeepQA process. Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence pp. 59-79.
This post is part of a series about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its potential role in science communication. In the next post (part 3), I’ll describe how Watson helped create a movie trailer.