Really, I’m proposing doing something that has to be much easier than the problem people seem to get fixated on, i.e. the general purpose question answering machine, which was a staple of science fiction decades ago (leading to the parody Q: “What is the meaning of life? A: 42). Besides which the goal of one crisp answer seems aimed at a childish mentality—except in the (rarer than we may think) cases when there really is one crisp answer.
After all, I wrote “What occurred to me though, is that computer science could do something quite useful intermediate between “general purpose question answerer” and the old database paradigm of terms ANDed or ORed together.”
Between two people, either there would be some implicit understanding (like We’re talking about pre-USSR because that’s the subject of the seminar we’re in) or the question-ee might have to say “What are the parameters of the Russia you’re talking about?”
Then again the semi-smart search engine I’d like to see could just decline to resolve ambiguities, and return all articles treating any reasonable interpretation of the phrase, and make it the user’s job to add qualifying phrases as needed.
I am dreaming up a Simpson’s episode in which a computer can convince a panel of experts that it is Bart Simpson, and the ensuing debate as to whether that was “passing the Turing Test”.
the semi-smart search engine I’d like to see could just decline to resolve ambiguities
Why? That seems really unhelpful. I’d much prefer the engine to answer like a human expert, who habitually start with “That depends on what you mean by...” I imagine it could assess its confidence in its choices for interpretation, discard any with less than (say) 10% probability, and if more than one remains, give them to me in an ordered list, to click on the one I mean. Kind of like a wikipedia disambiguation page. (If more than one term need clarification, do both one the same page.) I’m confident this would solve the issue you describe, at least in cases where the confidence assessment isn’t very wrong, and it sounds to me very valuable. Because when you say:
the goal of one crisp answer seems aimed at a childish mentality
...you aren’t describing children, you are describing most people.
I wrote “the goal of one crisp answer seems aimed at a childish mentality—except in the (rarer than we may think) cases when there really is one crisp answer.”
which chaosmage unfortunately truncated.
Anyway, more often than not, I at any rate, want food for thought, not “the answer”.
An earlier e.g. from my initial article: <> to which I’d want to add articletype:diy, an expert might indeed provide one crisp answer, somewhat like the “feeling lucky” answer from Google, but I’d feel I was missing something. I’d like to see every relevant answer with some attempt at ranking them. I might prefer a youtube, or I might prefer text, diagrams, and the occasional photo. I might watch a youtube then print out the text version to take out to the garage. Some articles might reference tools that I never heard of, and doubt I could lay my hands on, while others provided ways to do it without those tools. I might watch the youtube with the special tool and the youtube without, and conclude the latter takes more dexterity than I have and that I’d better find a way to borrow that tool.
To the extent people want just an answer, or worse, “the answer” rather than “food for thought” it may be at least in part due to the cultural environment saying “We have the answer!” “Answers at 6:00″, and so on. Then again, in some situations I’d just want to know the answer, or the most popular match.
Really, I’m proposing doing something that has to be much easier than the problem people seem to get fixated on, i.e. the general purpose question answering machine, which was a staple of science fiction decades ago (leading to the parody Q: “What is the meaning of life? A: 42). Besides which the goal of one crisp answer seems aimed at a childish mentality—except in the (rarer than we may think) cases when there really is one crisp answer.
After all, I wrote “What occurred to me though, is that computer science could do something quite useful intermediate between “general purpose question answerer” and the old database paradigm of terms ANDed or ORed together.”
Between two people, either there would be some implicit understanding (like We’re talking about pre-USSR because that’s the subject of the seminar we’re in) or the question-ee might have to say “What are the parameters of the Russia you’re talking about?”
Then again the semi-smart search engine I’d like to see could just decline to resolve ambiguities, and return all articles treating any reasonable interpretation of the phrase, and make it the user’s job to add qualifying phrases as needed.
I am dreaming up a Simpson’s episode in which a computer can convince a panel of experts that it is Bart Simpson, and the ensuing debate as to whether that was “passing the Turing Test”.
Why? That seems really unhelpful. I’d much prefer the engine to answer like a human expert, who habitually start with “That depends on what you mean by...” I imagine it could assess its confidence in its choices for interpretation, discard any with less than (say) 10% probability, and if more than one remains, give them to me in an ordered list, to click on the one I mean. Kind of like a wikipedia disambiguation page. (If more than one term need clarification, do both one the same page.) I’m confident this would solve the issue you describe, at least in cases where the confidence assessment isn’t very wrong, and it sounds to me very valuable. Because when you say:
...you aren’t describing children, you are describing most people.
I wrote “the goal of one crisp answer seems aimed at a childish mentality—except in the (rarer than we may think) cases when there really is one crisp answer.”
which chaosmage unfortunately truncated.
Anyway, more often than not, I at any rate, want food for thought, not “the answer”.
An earlier e.g. from my initial article: <> to which I’d want to add articletype:diy, an expert might indeed provide one crisp answer, somewhat like the “feeling lucky” answer from Google, but I’d feel I was missing something. I’d like to see every relevant answer with some attempt at ranking them. I might prefer a youtube, or I might prefer text, diagrams, and the occasional photo. I might watch a youtube then print out the text version to take out to the garage. Some articles might reference tools that I never heard of, and doubt I could lay my hands on, while others provided ways to do it without those tools. I might watch the youtube with the special tool and the youtube without, and conclude the latter takes more dexterity than I have and that I’d better find a way to borrow that tool.
To the extent people want just an answer, or worse, “the answer” rather than “food for thought” it may be at least in part due to the cultural environment saying “We have the answer!” “Answers at 6:00″, and so on. Then again, in some situations I’d just want to know the answer, or the most popular match.