Watson IBM's Watson: Achieving True Term Paper

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It seems clear that Watson does not recognize itself as an individual or independent consciousness: it does not have spontaneous thoughts or draw original conclusions, but rather responds only to direct stimulus in the form of questions posed. There is no creative spark embedded in Watson's programming that allows for the self-reflection that Watson is "thinking," and thus the computer -- sophisticated as it is and despite its skill in information retrieval -- cannot be said to have the same existence of mind as defined by Descartes. It is simply incapable of the creative self-knowledge that defines consciousness.

Other problems present themselves when it is attempted to assert that Watson is actually an artificial intelligence on par with or exceeding human intelligences, largely because of the language being employed in this analogy. Hume famously deals with analogies and the extent to which they can be used in determining reality and truth in his Dialogue on Natural Religion, in which the analogy between the universe and human-designed machines (used in an attempt to assert that the universe must have a designer, i.e. God) is shown to be false due to the significant level of difference that exists between the two compared items. As Hume has one of the three philosophers engaged in the dialogue say, "So far from admitting, continued Philo, that the operations of a part can afford us any just conclusion concerning the origin of the whole, I will not allow any one part to form a rule for another part" (148). That is, man-made machines are only part of the universe as a whole, and are also significantly different from the universe in scope and operation, therefore the fact that the former are designed cannot be used to support the conclusion that the latter is as well.

This same precise line of reasoning applies to a consideration of Watson's intelligence as potentially comparable to human intelligence. As already noted, Watson does not have the capability for creative thought -- it cannot pose questions or make spontaneous reflections -- and thus is significantly different from human intelligence.

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It also functions in a purely quantitative manner, recognizing words as concrete phonemes/written symbols and developing probabilities for certain answers based on association with other words. These differences make an analogy between Watson's and humans' intelligence untenable.

Twentieth-century philosopher Daniel Dennett provides another explanation that in some ways synthesizes both Human and Descartes' theories of the mind in relation to an entity such as Watson. In Intentional Systems, Dennett asserts early on that, "a particular thing is only an intelligent system only in relation to the strategies of someone who is trying to explain and predict its behavior" (267). That is, intentionality must be determined by a concerted, purposeful, and creative effort to explain a particular function. Descartes' musings represent the most foundational example of this in the human mind's attempt to explain and predict its own behavior, thus leading to the conclusion that the mind exists because it has true intentionality; Dennett's statement also more fully informs the problem of analogy raised by Hume by quite concretely describing the problem in discussions of Watson as intelligent -- the term is only being applied to the computer as an explanation of its intentionality, when in fact whatever "intelligence" Watson possesses does not exist independently of such explanation and examination. In other words, an individual human's intelligence matters in and of itself to that human, whereas the same cannot be said of Watson, whose intelligence only matters when it is being examined. An analogy of the two is thus impossible in any meaningful sense.

Conclusion

Watson represents a remarkable achievement in computer science and logic. The success of this machine in answering questions does not reflect the creation of a true artificial intelligence, however. When self-recognition and creativity can be imbued in a computer, a slew of new philosophical questions will doubtless emerge, but they will continue to find discourse and dialogue in the minds and conclusions of the….....

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