Irving Wladawsky-Berger

Machine and Human Intelligence

A recent OpEd in the New York Times caught my attention - The First Church of Robotics by Jaron Lanier, a self-described “computer scientist, composer, visual artist, and author,” who did pioneering research in Virtual Reality in the 1980s.  I have met Lanier, and a few years ago participated in a panel on Virtual Worlds which he moderated.  In his excellent OpEd, he writes:

“The news of the day often includes an item about some development in artificial intelligence: a machine that smiles, a program that can predict human tastes in mates or music, a robot that teaches foreign languages to children.  This constant stream of stories suggests that machines are becoming smart and autonomous, a new form of life, and that we should think of them as fellow creatures instead of as tools.”

“. . . What bothers me most about this trend, however, is that by allowing artificial intelligence to reshape our concept of personhood, we are leaving ourselves open to the flipside: we think of people more and more as computers, just as we think of computers as people. . . When we think of computers as inert, passive tools instead of people, we are rewarded with a clearer, less ideological view of what is going on - with the machines and with ourselves.”

Jason Lanier’s OpEd inspired me to reflect on the successes and failures of artificial intelligence (AI) over the past several decades, as well as on some of the essential differences between machine and human intelligence.

The term artificial intelligence is often used in quite different ways.  At one end, is the more applied kind of AI, which is essentially the application of advanced engineering to machines and systems in particularly clever ways that are inspired by and remind us of human intelligence.  At the other end is what is sometimes called strong AI, which aims to develop machines that match or exceed human intelligence and cognitive abilities like reasoning, planning, learning, vision and natural language understanding.

Open Innovation Re-visited

Recently, some colleagues were talking about the upcoming LinuxCon 2010 in Boston - “The Linux Foundation's annual technical conference that provides and unmatched collaboration and education space for all matters Linux.”  Hearing about this conference brought me back to 1999, when we started a number of studies that culminated in the announcement of the new IBM Linux initiative in January of 2000.

By the summer of 1999, Linux was picking up steam in the marketplace, especially in areas where IBM was very involved, including Internet infrastructure and supercomputing.  At the time, a number of research institutions and leading edge companies were already using clusters of Intel processors running Linux as a way of building relatively inexpensive, and increasingly powerful supercomputers, as well as highly scalable web servers, distributed file and print servers, network firewalls, and other Internet infrastructure applications.

We commissioned a couple of studies, one focused on the use of Linux in supercomputing, and the other on Linux as a high-volume platform for Internet applications.  Both studies strongly recommended that IBM embrace Linux across its product lines, that IBM should work closely with the open Linux community as a partner in its development, and that we should establish an organization to coordinate Linux activities across the company.

I was given responsibility for our new Linux strategy and organization.  A few weeks after we announced the initiative in January of 2000, I gave a keynote presentation at the Linux World conference in New York City.  I used this opportunity to explain IBM’s decision to embrace Linux across all its products and services.  Around the same time, I also discussed IBM's Linux strategy in an interview with Charlie Rose - A Conversation about Linux.

e-Media and e-Journalism in the Internet Age

I have been thinking a lot about the Shirley Sherrod case, not so much for what we can learn about the current state of race relations or political discourse in the US, both of which have been extensively discussed by people much savvier than me on the subjects, but for what the case teaches us about the transformation of the media industry in the Internet Age. 

The facts of the case are well known.  On July 19, Andrew Breitbart posted a 2½ minute edited video of a near 45 minute speech that Shirley Sherrod had given in March of 2010 at an NAACP event.  The edited video segment posted by Breitbart to make Sherrod and the NAACP appear racist would not by itself have been too newsworthy.  After all, we know that the blogosphere and the Internet in general are full of rumors and innuendos, as are cable channels and talk radio.  In any event, Breitbart was not a trusted source for news.  He is perhaps best known as an ideologically conservative activist, and had previously been involved in the ACORN controversy, also involving selectively edited videos.

It is also no surprise that Bill O’Reilly on the Fox News Channel called for Sherrod’s resignation shortly after the edited video was posted.  Bill O’Reilly and Fox News in general have a strong ideological bent that colors everything they say.

Reflections on Innovation, Productivity and Job Creation

A couple of weeks ago I attended a workshop on Information Technology and Economics sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).  The two-day workshop consisted mostly of presentations and discussions by renowned economists of their latest work.  I was invited to participate in the workshop as part of an industry panel on “IT and Economics on the Internet”.

I have become quite interested in economic issues in my post-retirement life of the past few years, as I have had more time to think about and learn new disciplines.  This interest is a natural outgrowth of my work on highly complex systems, especially the kinds of people-oriented complex systems with which economists generally deal.

So, I was very happy to be surrounded by economists for two days, and in particular to have a chance to talk with experts in the field about some of the problems I have been thinking about, especially during the nice dinner we had in the evening of the first day of the workshop.

For example, over the past year I have given a number of seminars on Technology and Innovation in the Service Economy.  I am getting ready to teach a graduate course on the subject at MIT this Fall, where we will explore technology’s impact on industries ranging from finance to healthcare.  I have also been thinking a lot about the impact of these innovations on the productivity of the service sector of the economy in general, and in particular, on the kinds of jobs that we can expect to be created over the next decades to replace those jobs that might decline or disappear as a result of such productivity improvements.

Mainframes and Clouds

On July 22, I attended IBM’s announcement of its new generation of mainframes, the zEnterprise System in New York City.  As you would expect with any product announcement, this new mainframe is significantly better and faster than its predecessors.  The new z196 platform has better and faster processors, more processors per box and offers significantly greater energy efficiency.

But, what I found most compelling about the announcement, is its role in the continuing re-invention and evolution of the mainframe, which was first announced as S/360 in 1964.  With this announcement, IBM is positioning the mainframe as an architecture for integrating and managing heterogeneous systems in the data center, not just platforms based on the z processor architecture, the descendant of the original S/360.

IBM’s engineers have deconstructed the mainframe architecture into two major parts:  the processor architecture, including its instruction set, which is mostly implemented in the hardware of the machine; and the management architecture, including virtualization, which is mostly implemented in firmware and software although it is often supported with some hardware assists.  The major new part of this announcement is that the mainframe management architecture is now being supported not just on systems based on the z processor architecture, but also on systems with totally different processor architectures. 

IBM is now extending the benefits of its mainframe management architecture, including high efficiency, scalability, security and reliability, to other platforms in the data center, starting with Intel-based Linux systems and Power-based Unix systems.  This means that you can now integrate heterogeneous systems in the data center and manage them using the mainframe management architecture, which most everyone agrees is the most advanced in the industry.  This is important because the ability to operate highly efficient, reliable, safe data centers with different platforms and workloads is an absolutely critical requirement in the age of cloud computing.