They couldn't wash out his mouth with soap,so...
IBM's Watson Gets A 'Swear Filter' After Learning The Urban Dictionary
January 10 2013 3:36 PM
Watson, the name for IBM's supercomputer best known for crushing '"Jeopardy!" contestants at their own game, briefly went from "smart" to "smart @ss" with the help of the Urban Dictionary.
Brown believed Watson could be more human if it could learn these kinds of language complexities, so in 2011, shortly after Watson's reign as "Jeopardy!"champ, Brown taught Watson the Urban Dictionary.
Watson unfortunately learned all of the Urban Dictionary's bad habits, including throwing in overly -crass language at random points in its responses; in answering one question, Watson even reportedly used the word "b...s..." within an answer to one researcher's question. Brown told Forbes that Watson picked up similarly bad habits from reading Wikipedia.
In the end, Brown and his team were forced to remove the Urban Dictionary from Watson's vocabulary, and additionally developed a smart filter to keep Watson from swearing in the future.
For now, Watson will keep doing what it's great at: Helping hospitals diagnose sick patients based on their records and symptoms, and beating the s...t out of game show participants.
Edited by Rogerdodger, 19 January 2013 - 02:20 PM.
