{"469201":{"#nid":"469201","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Georgia Tech trains Watson AI to \u0027chat,\u0027 spark more creativity in humans","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EGeorgia Institute of Technology researchers are exploring and pushing the boundaries of artificial intelligence (AI) by partnering with one\u0026nbsp;of AI\u2019s most\u0026nbsp;notable citizens \u2014\u0026nbsp;IBM\u2019s Watson \u2014 to\u0026nbsp;advance how computers could help humans creatively solve problems in a wide variety of professions.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cSearching Google still requires a lot of search,\u201d says Ashok Goel, professor at Georgia Tech\u2019s School of Interactive Computing. \u201cImagine if you could ask Google a complicated question and it immediately responded with your answer \u2014 not just a list of links to manually open. That\u2019s what we did with Watson.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWatson was trained by student teams in a class at Georgia Tech using 1,200 question-answer pairs (200 for each of six teams), which allowed them to \u201cchat\u201d with Watson and seek out inspiration for big design challenges in areas such as engineering, architecture, systems, and computing. The teams worked with the AI to learn about solutions that could be replicated from the natural world \u2014\u0026nbsp;something known as biologically inspired design \u2014\u0026nbsp;after first feeding Watson several hundred\u0026nbsp;biology articles\u0026nbsp;from\u0026nbsp;\u003Cem\u003EBiologue\u003C\/em\u003E, an interactive biology repository. Teams then posed questions to Watson about the research it had learned.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EQuestions included, \u201cHow do you make a better desalination process for consuming sea water?\u201d Animals, it turns out, have a variety of answers for this, such as how seagulls filter out seawater salt through special glands. Another question asked, \u201cHow can manufacturers develop better solar cells for long-term space travel?\u201d One answer: Replicate how plants in harsh climates use high-temperature fibrous insulation material to regulate temperature. IBM\u2019s Watson quickly culled answers for students from the \u003Cem\u003EBiologue\u003C\/em\u003E articles in a fraction of a second.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWatson effectively acted as an intelligent sounding board to steer students through what would otherwise be a daunting task of parsing a wide volume of research that may fall outside their expertise. This approach to using Watson could assist professionals in a variety of fields by allowing them to ask questions and receive answers as quickly as in natural conversation to help with problem solving.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGeorgia Tech discovered that Watson\u2019s ability to retrieve natural language information would allow a novice to quickly \u201ctrain up\u201d about complex topics and better determine whether their idea or hypothesis is worth pursuing.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe students call their technique \u201cGT-Watson Plus,\u201d a moniker that implies the system\u2019s advanced capabilities. In addition to the ability to \u201cchat\u201d on a topic, this version of Watson prompts users with alternate ways to ask questions for better results. Those results are packaged in an intuitive presentation \u2014 visualized as a \u201ctreetop\u201d where each answer is a \u201cleaf\u201d that varies in size based on its weighted importance.\u0026nbsp;This allows the average person to navigate results more easily on a given topic.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cResearchers are provided a quickly digestible visual map of the concepts relevant to the query and the degree to which they are relevant,\u201d says Goel, who taught the course. \u201cWe were able to add more semantic and contextual meaning to Watson to give some notion of a conversation with the AI.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGoel plans to investigate other areas with Watson such as online learning and healthcare.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003EThe work will be presented at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) 2015 Fall Symposium on Cognitive Assistance in Government, Nov. 12-14, in Arlington, Va.\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EGeorgia Institute of Technology researchers are exploring and pushing the boundaries of artificial intelligence (AI) by partnering with one of AI\u2019s most notable citizens \u2014 IBM\u2019s Watson \u2014 to advance how computers could help humans creatively solve problems in a wide variety of professions.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Georgia Institute of Technology researchers are exploring and pushing the boundaries of artificial intelligence (AI) by partnering with one of AI\u2019s most notable citizens \u2014 IBM\u2019s Watson \u2014 to advance how computers help humans creatively solve problems."}],"uid":"27592","created_gmt":"2015-11-12 11:12:35","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:19:58","author":"Joshua Preston","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2015-11-12T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2015-11-12T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"469491":{"id":"469491","type":"image","title":"Watson Screenshot","body":null,"created":"1449257160","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 19:26:00","changed":"1475895218","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:53:38","alt":"Watson Screenshot","file":{"fid":"203860","name":"screen_shot_of_watson.png","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/screen_shot_of_watson_0.png","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/screen_shot_of_watson_0.png","mime":"image\/png","size":615157,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/screen_shot_of_watson_0.png?itok=-GtnAEJf"}},"469221":{"id":"469221","type":"image","title":"Ashok Goel","body":null,"created":"1449257160","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 19:26:00","changed":"1475895218","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:53:38","alt":"Ashok Goel","file":{"fid":"203850","name":"ashok_goel_teaching2_cr.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/ashok_goel_teaching2_cr_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/ashok_goel_teaching2_cr_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":458686,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/ashok_goel_teaching2_cr_0.jpg?itok=RAhIi58f"}},"469251":{"id":"469251","type":"image","title":"GT-Watson Plus Concept Results","body":null,"created":"1449257160","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 19:26:00","changed":"1475895218","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:53:38","alt":"GT-Watson Plus Concept Results","file":{"fid":"203851","name":"watson_graphic_-_treemap_for_biology_concepts.png","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/watson_graphic_-_treemap_for_biology_concepts_0.png","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/watson_graphic_-_treemap_for_biology_concepts_0.png","mime":"image\/png","size":135654,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/watson_graphic_-_treemap_for_biology_concepts_0.png?itok=D4tcb4Jt"}}},"media_ids":["469491","469221","469251"],"groups":[{"id":"1299","name":"GVU Center"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[{"id":"2835","name":"ai"},{"id":"2556","name":"artificial intelligence"},{"id":"112431","name":"ashok goel"},{"id":"147691","name":"IBM Watson"},{"id":"12208","name":"watson"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39431","name":"Data Engineering and Science"},{"id":"39501","name":"People and Technology"}],"news_room_topics":[{"id":"71881","name":"Science and Technology"}],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:jpreston@cc.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EJoshua Preston\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EResearch Communications Officer\u003Cbr \/\u003EGVU Center and College of Computing\u003Cbr \/\u003E 678.231.0787\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["jpreston@cc.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}