Inflection Point: An event that changes the way we think and act. -Andy Grove
Watson winning Jeopardy is an inflection point. I think the comparable event is the release of the Mosaic browser. At that time, we could read email, subscribe to mailing lists, connect to the modem and read uunet archives. Even though there were not many sites to visit and O'Reilly published all of the useful sites in a single book, we could see the possibilities and feel the excitement at that time. It took several years to realize those possibilities though.
Presently we routinely dial into help desks and cellphones to talk to the computers. Google voice search really works. And we now have Watson, a clear inflection point that shows off the advances in Computers understanding Humans. Will there be pitfalls out of this advance, of course! But not if you believe this guy....
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Quoting from this article:
If science fiction author and physician Michael Crichton were still alive, he might be crafting his latest take on technology run amok using the Watson project as inspirational fodder.
Not to worry, Durlach explained. With so many years of training and practice, doctors may be the ultimate information judges -- ever using it but never yielding to it.
"You know physicians," he said. "They see themselves as the chief decision makers. The very tradition they come from would suggest a very, very low probability that they would take the computer's decision over their own."
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Yeah Right!
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