[Funny] Urban Dictionary gives Watson a potty mouth

[figmentPez]

Here's the story:
IBM's Watson Gets A 'Swear Filter' After Learning The Urban Dictionary

Summary: Researchers at IBM let Watson, their learning supercomputer, read Urban Dictionary in hopes that it would be able to understand idioms, figures of speech and other slang better. What ended up happening is Watson started swearing in otherwise polite conversation and couldn't tell the difference between foul language and what's socially acceptable. (Similar results came from having access to Wikipedia.) Researchers removed Urban Dictionary from Watson, and added a language filter.
The results aren't that surprising, but I had to wonder what would have happened if Watson had been reading Tumblr instead. I figure Watson would:

• Start writing fan-fic about Kasparov / Deep Blue as his OTP; and maybe some Kasparov / Deep Blue / Turing OT3 action as well.
• Reblog a lot of animated gifs showing tech unboxing and 3D renders of vaporware products
• Start making social justice posts about how computers have feels too.
• Lots and lots of cat pictures

 

[Calleja]

That thing is eerily awesome, though. The future is like HERE. I mean, put a Watson inside an ASIMO and we're pretty much living in Asimov Land.

 

[Bowielee]

Watson is a pretty amazing difference engine, but still a gussied up search engine like Siri. All watson can do is recognize questions and search for answers.

 

[Bubble181]

I'm sure you could easily add tags to specific words/phrases/types of answers to differntiate between styles and contexts. "Forsooth, my Lord, thy servant yadayada" is different from "yo dude, I'm here" is different from "hey dickface, stop screaming for me you piece of shit", though they all could be answers in very similar situations. It'll have to leanr somehow, but obviously it won't learn just by reading the words themselves.