Rain Man, Watson and the Cloud: What Constitutes Consciousness and Being?

Raymond (played by Dustin Hoffman): “I have to get my boxers at K-Mart.”

Charlie (His brother played by Tom Cruise): [pulls over and gets out of the car] “I’m going crazy! Get out of my mind! WHAT A DIFFERENCE WHERE YOU SHOP UNDERWEAR ?! WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE ?! UNDERWEAR IS UNDERWEAR! IT’S UNDERWEAR WHERE YOU SHOP IT!

Raymond (An autistic megaavant): “K-Mart”.

Charlie: (Questioning his brother’s reality and his own ulterior motives.) “You know what I think, Ray? I think this autism sucks! Because you can’t tell me. that you are not somewhere! “

Raymond: “Boxer briefs. K-Mart.”

This quote is from the 1988 movie “Rain Man” starring Tom Cruise as “Charlie” and Dustin Hoffman as the “affected” brother “Raymond”. It won 4 Oscars, Best Picture, Best Original Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Complete Picture for those who describe themselves as “normal.” He managed to raise awareness about autism and sage syndrome in a humanistic way that has since gone on for the past 25 years. But for now, putting all of that aside, including revealing the incredible life of Kim Peek for whom Rain Man is portrayed, let’s move on to the work IBM is doing on exceptional artificial intelligence.

Advanced supercomputers

IBM’s “Watson” supercomputer is best known as the worthy, but computational, opponent on televisions. Jeopardy 2011 against 74-time winner Ken Jennings and former winner Brad Rutter. Watson won the “man versus machine” challenge and donated the $ 1 million prize to charity.

While Watson was developed specifically for gaming Danger, a game that presents an answer looking for a queryMeanwhile, he had access to 200 million pages of “structured and unstructured” content on the Internet that consumed four terabytes of disk storage, including the full text of Wikipedia. But the machine was not connected to the Internet. during the game. Watson won on his own merits without bias or outside intervention. Remarkable!

A new home

Since then, IBM announced on January 11, 2014 that it was investing $ 1 billion to give Watson a home in downtown New York from its former location in Armonk, New York, and a complete marketing makeover. Appears to boast rights over a partner Danger pros is not enough for this supercomputer.

Additionally, the company has reprogrammed Watson from a standalone system to a cloud-based service and increased the schedule to address other vital applications. Its massive data processing capabilities are offered to industries ranging from healthcare, currently consulting on lung cancer treatments at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, to data-intensive services for investment banking firms.

Because it is important

What makes Watson important in the ‘info-continuum lineage’ is his ability

• Learn,
• Adjust,
• Apply and
• Increase the demands that are demanded of you.

Watson is the furthest step in the advancement of artificial intelligence out there. And to date, it is beneficial. Beating Ken Jennings for $ 1 million can be a big prize for you and me, but when Watson is asked, “Which is the best genomic specific treatment for this cancer patient ?, the answer is beyond monetary value for those receiving care and families affected by the insight.

For computer geeks: Watson is still incredibly a linear-type device in today’s computer programming arena. And yet we are on the threshold of quantum and 3D computational breakthroughs! Watson is just a hint of the future that awaits us.

Is Watson aware?

The questions one must ultimately ask are where does human consciousness begin and where does artificial intelligence end? Or vice versa? Where is the border, the border line, the synapse? Where and how is it derived? What is the difference between the super intelligent machine, the conscious being, the wise one and the crazy one? Or … are our precious people just an extension of someone’s imagination or something? A Matrix movie set.

And when is common sense too common?

For more information, go here! …

This format limits the length of the articles and perhaps the attention span it deserves. If this is a topic of interest, as for me, there is an ongoing discussion about consciousness, the Cloud, artificial intelligence, sages, and our role as humans in this vast universe. For additional videos and links on Savant syndrome and the life of Kim Peek (November 11, 1951 – December 19, 2009), among others, please search YouTube. It is very inspiring and worth “O here”.

Meanwhile, I head to K-Mart for some boxer shorts.