Rain Man, Watson and The Cloud – What Constitute Consciousness and Being?

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

Charlie (His brother played by Tom Cruise):
[pulls over and gets out of the car] “I’m freaking out! Out of my mind! WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE WHERE YOU BUY UNDERWEAR?! WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?! UNDERWEAR IS UNDERWEAR! IT’S UNDERWEAR WHEREVER YOU BUY IT! IN CINCINNATI OR WHERE!”

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

Charlie: (Questioning the reality of his brother and his own ulterior motives.) “You know what I think, Ray? I think this autism is a bunch of shit! Because you can’t tell me that you’re not there somewhere!”

Raymond: “Boxer shorts. 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 Screenplay, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Full Length Movie for those who describe themselves as “normal”. He managed to raise awareness about autism and savant syndrome in a humanistic way that has been carried out for the last 25 years. But for now, leaving all that aside, including the reveal of Kim Peek’s incredible life for whom Rain Man is portrayed, let’s move on to the work IBM is doing on exceptional AI.

advanced supercomputers

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

While Watson was developed specifically to play Dangera game featuring an answer looking for a query, meanwhile, had access to 200 million pages of ‘structured and unstructured’ Internet content 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 predilection 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 previous location in Armonk, NY and a complete marketing makeover. He seems to have bragging rights about a partner. Danger pros is not enough for this great computer.

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

Because it is important

What makes Watson important in the ‘information continuum lineage’ is its ability to

• To learn,
• Adjust,
• apply and
• Increase the demands required of it.

Watson is the furthest step in the advance towards artificial intelligence that exists. And to date, it is beneficial. Beating Ken Jennings by a million dollars may be a major prize for you and me, but when Watson is asked, “Which is the best genome specific treatment for this cancer patient?, the answer lies beyond the monetary value for those being cared for and the families affected by intuition.

For computer geeks: Incredibly, Watson is still a linear type device in the realm of computer programming today. And yet, we are on the threshold of 3D and quantum computational advances! 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 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 sentient being, the sage, and the madman? Or… are our beloved characters just an extension of someone’s or something’s imagination? A scene from the movie Matrix.

And when is common sense too common?

For further discussion, go here!…

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

In the meantime, I head to K-Mart for some boxer shorts.