Building Watson - Case Study Example

It would be advisable to further the research in order to achieve the benefits in that future. Although able to process information much faster, innately, than a human being it would be perceived to have an advantage, and yet it gave a completely inaccurate answer to a question posed, which means that there is still something lacking in the decision making skills as to when to answer. If a human being is not certain of an answer they would likely decline to offer an answer; however, Watson opted to answer and the answer delivered with low artificial intellectual certainty was absolutely wrong.

Ultimately, Watson sets precedent and encourages the further study and investment in the research and development of these technologies. The unpredictability and sense of choice that human beings possess is still something that cannot be achieved synthetically (Shih, 2012). Computers possess none of the emotional motivations of humanity, at least not in this case or technology level, these influences create the ethical, logical, and moral uses of our knowledge and thought. There is a dynamic nature to human thought, organic thought, which has yet to be captured within the programming of artificial intelligence and computer technologies. . on is a sophisticated computer and computers are beneficial for their ability to compute, calculate, retrieve, and analyze data at incredible speeds, far faster than a human brain (Shih, 2012).

A trivia challenge of, both, common knowledge and specialized knowledge should be an ideal task for a computer to do decidedly well, ideally, better than any human opponent. However, there are a number of personality and psychological traits possessed by human beings that are completely irrelevant to computer intelligence, including compulsive liars to truth tellers and fair players and misdirecting ones. These traits are just a few, of what are easily, thousands of possible emotional, mental, and behavioral responses attributable to human beings; none of which are shared by artificial intelligence (Shih, 2012).

Given these parameters, can a computer win a match of not only knowledge but, also, of strategy and skilled game play? Although, throughout the course of the game, Watson did quite well at answering many questions correctly, however when it gave one particular inaccurate answer that was not just wrong, it was unbelievably wrong. When asked to name the U.S. state had their largest airport named after a WWII hero and their largest city named after a WWII battle, Watson answered, “Toronto” (Shih, 2012).

Toronto is not a U.S. city, in the United States at all, and has absolutely nothing to do with the questions involving WWII namesakes; the degree of wrong was surprising to designers and proved that greater study will need to be done to determine why it chose an answer so obviously incorrect and then choosing to share that answer with any “programming” common sense that allowed to think that the answer could be correct would be extremely important. Watson was