Hi Jim, Jim, Markus, Yvonne, Larry, and Steve,
Thanks for this helpful information and knowledgeable perspective on IBM Watson, Bluemix and machine learning, and the time frame in which they are developing, Jim S.
Long-ish email ahead ...
Creative Commons' licensed (CC) WUaS is like CC Wikipedia (in 288 languages presently) with CC MIT OCW (in 9 languages presently) as you may know. For an overview of WUaS's 12 main areas of focus, planned for large languages and most countries in their main languages, and over centuries, see - http://worlduniversityandschool.org .
Jim H (and Markus), in terms of a technical lead on WUaS's wiki side, and in planning for developing with artificial intelligence and machine learning as well as with the semantic web, WUaS is planning to develop in Wikidata / Wikibase / qLabel / MediaWiki / and probably Semantic Wiki, accessing Wikicommons in the process, and adding Linked Open Data anticipating machine learning developments ahead. See for example -
http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2014/08/california-tiger-salamander-wuas-in.html. In this blog post are also three main developers' Wikidata / Wikitech and Semantic Wiki email list addresses, which both of you may already be receiving. Their new CC inter-lingual Wikidata/Wikibase database for 288 Wikipedia languages is what WUaS would like to develop in first, and hopefully in the near future, moving from WUaS's current Wikia wiki with about 687 wiki pages/schools in English only
so far. (See, too -
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.wikidata/4264).
If either of you, Jim H. or Jim S., are following the current Wikidata email list Templates' conversation, Wikidata will probably integrate Templates in the next near while. WUaS would like to develop around this SUBJECT TEMPLATE -
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/SUBJECT_TEMPLATE (which is central to all the WUaS pages so far) - and then into many of 7,106 Languages' wiki WUaSes via -
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/LANGUAGE_TEMPLATE - and 242 + Nation States' WUaSes via - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/NATION_STATE_TEMPLATE - each a wiki school or university. And then with a Museums' Template, etc. and connecting this with virtual worlds, as they become further interactive, 3D and movie realistic.
Markus Kroetzch, founder also of Semantic Wiki, and the other two initial core Wikidata developers (Daniel Kinzler and Denny Vredicic, as well as Lydia Pintscher) at Wikidata.de are potentially important contacts for much of this, and especially with Wikidata's volunteer communities in 288 languages, although a WUaS technical lead would hopefully begin gradually to build WUaS in Wikidata without them, - and I don't have the knowledge for this.
Jim H, in terms of a technical lead on WUaS's MIT OCW side (e.g. http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/audio-video-courses/ and http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/translated-courses/ and http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm), and especially eventually adding Linked Open Data anticipating machine learning and A.I., I have been in communication with Yvonne Ng at MIT OCW, who offered WUaS the possibility and licensing agreement to develop in the Indonesian language, since one of WUaS's board members is a lecturer at the University of Jakarta, but WUaS didn't have the resources to follow through on this at the time.
I'm including Yvonne in this email as part of developing this conversation. Yvonne, in what ways might it be possible to add Linked Open Data at this stage to MIT OCW to anticipate machine learning? And in what ways would it be possible for WUaS to collaborate further with each of the Universities which seem to have translated MIT OCW into their languages (http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/translated-courses/), and grow this list of Universities into thousands of languages (perhaps in conjunction with Wikipedia's language communities for volunteers), as WUaS builds accrediting wiki CC MIT OCW-centric schools and universities - and for online university and high school degrees in large languages - and eventually with A.I. and machine learning and in conjunction with Wikidata/Wikibase?
Jim H, WUaS plans to send the initial state of California BPPE accreditation documentation in in January 2015, if we can raise the $5000 in fees, and accredit on MIT OCW Audio / Video courses (http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/audio-video-courses/) in English first, with students applying this autumn 2015, as if applying to MIT itself, and then matriculating online in autumn 2016. For all of this WUaS is in search of a technical lead, as well.
By way of introduction:
Jim Spohrer, is IBM Global University Director, and went to MIT in Physics as an undergraduate, and has a Ph.D. from Yale University in a Computer Science related field. https://twitter.com/JimSpohrer
Jim Hendler went to Yale as an undergraduate and has a Brown University Ph.D. in a Computer Science related field. Jim is a Professor of computer science at Rennsalaer Polytechnic.
https://twitter.com/jahendler
Markus Krötzsch has a Ph.D. from the University of Cologne in Applied Informatics and Formal Description Methods. His "research interest is the intelligent automatic processing of information, ranging from the foundations of formal knowledge representation to application areas like the Semantic Web. He is the lead developer of the successful Semantic Web application platform Semantic MediaWiki, co-developer of the highly efficient OWL EL reasoner ELK, co-editor of the W3C OWL 2
specification, and co-author of the textbook Foundations of Semantic Web Technologies." He currently leads a group at the University of Dresden. https://www.linkedin.com/in/kroetzsch
Larry Viehland is CC MIT OCW-centric wiki World University and School's Chair of the Board, and went to MIT in Chemistry (as did his wife Kim) as an undergraduate, and has a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin. Larry is Professor of Chemistry and Physics at Chatham University and outgoing chair of its Science department.
Yvonne Ng is External Outreach and Annual Giving Manager at MIT OCW.
Steve Carson is former External Relations Director at MIT OCW, and with whom I've met twice in person in Cambridge, MA in the past few years. He is also former president of the OCW Consortium.
Scott MacLeod is founder and president of CC MIT OCW-centric wiki WUaS, and is an anthropologist - http://scottmacleod.com/ and https://twitter.com/WorldUnivandSch
Much of the above can be found here at the
"WUaS Information Technologies and Data Plan" wiki page -
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/WUaS_Information_Technologies_and_Data_Plan
Further considerations in developing WUaS as a Big Data A.I. project
include:
WUaS's Bookstore / computer store planned for all 7, 106 languages and
242 countries and with AI -
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Bookstore_/_Computer_Store_%28New_%26_Used%29_at_WUaS.
"You at WUaS" (including for academic registration, transcripts and matriculation, as well as a social networking site for the music school, too) - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/You_at_World_University.
"World University Music School" in All-languages / All-instruments (each a wiki subject page to begin) -
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University_Music_School.
A virtual world earth as classroom (including as build-able ethnographic field site for anthropological comparison, for example) at World University and School as these become interactive with avatars, 3D and movie realistic, and for brain and linguistic research eventually ... See the main "Research" wiki area at WUaS -
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Research.
Jim H., would you be available possibly please as technical lead to help guide all of these developments from Wikia hopefully to Wikidata / Wikibase and including the Semantic Web - and while anticipating developments in A.I., machine learning in all 7,106 languages (and countries)?
Could the Carnegie Library philanthropy across the United States be a model for organizing some of these universities around the world in terms of languages, where Andrew Carnegie gave the initial monies, and local governments took on the financial responsibility after this? Could MIT OCW-centric wiki WUaS provide the beginning universities in large and languages in all 242 countries and the "MIT"s in each of those languages and countries help to develop the MIT OCW in those
languages, and the governments, and education budget lines, in each of those countries contribute financially for WUaS accrediting MIT OCW-centric degrees? I hope so.
Happy New Year!
Best regards,
Scott
On 1/2/15 5:07 AM, Jim Spohrer wrote:
Hi Scott, Watson is still pretty weak when it comes to languages.
This will change, but think multiple year horizon for several
languages, and you are talking thousands of languages - so plan
accordingly. Machine learning will help, but it will still take
time. There are multiple subtleties.
However, on the bright side, free access to Watson Services on
Bluemix does include a language identification API, so Watson is
often able to detect a block of text is in some language, even
though it cannot further process it at this time without first
converting it to English.
Perhaps university partners will develop capabilities for
multi-language text understanding and in general media
understanding (videos with audio, etc.) - however, again multiple
year horizon is what I expect. Your ambitious project may be
about 5 years early from an AI helping perspective IMHO.
==== Access to Watson on Bluemix
--> Join the CSIG LinkedIn discussions for more updates, pointers,
and to see what others are doing
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/Cognitive-Systems-Institute-6729452
For asking about teaching Watson Cognitive Computing Courses on
Bluemix - requests that here:
http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/academic.html
Try IBM Watson Analytics on your data
http://gizmodo.com/anyone-can-now-use-ibms-watson-to-crunch-data-for-free-1667753086
http://www.ibm.com/analytics/watson-analytics/
Try IBM Watson Services on Bluemix
https://ace.ng.bluemix.net/#/solutions/solution=watson
Learn about the Cognitive Systems Institute Group (CSIG) community,
challenges, awards and information resources here:
http://cognitive-science.info Tweet with hashtag #Cognitive2.0 to
send items to the website
Our goal is cognitive assistants for all occupations in smarter
service systems: http://www.onetonline.org/
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2014/nsf14610/nsf14610.htm
http://www.slideshare.net/spohrer/cognitive-20140912-v3
FYI: U Tronto Students Prototype a Watson Paralegal Cognitive
Assistant
http://metronews.ca/news/toronto/1230021/watson-challenge-winners-at-u-of-t-want-to-create-a-great-canadian-company/
In 2014, ten universities taught with Watson, in 2015 nearly 100
will teach with Watson Student projects are building a prototype
and business plan for a company that is part of the Watson
Ecosystem
Some gaps and challenges here:
http://cognitive-science.info/research-challenges/
For more information contact your regional IBM university
programs/academic Initiatives lead: http://www.ibm.com/university
Best Wishes For New Year 2015! -Jim
Dr. James ("Jim") C. Spohrer Director, IBM University Programs (IBM
UP) and Cognitive Systems Institute IBM Research - Almaden, 650
Harry Road, San Jose, CA 95120 USA spohrer@us.ibm.com 408-927-1928
(o) 408-829-3112 (c) Innovation Champion @JimSpohrer
slideshare.net/spohrer linkedin.com/in/spohrer
From: Scott MacLeod To:
hendler@cs.rpi.edu, Jim Spohrer/Almaden/IBM@IBMUS, Scott MacLeod
Date: 01/01/2015 08:00 PM
Subject: WUaS technical lead questions and the semantic web,
artificial intelligence and IBM Watson
Dear Jim and Jim,
Happy New Year! I'm writing to follow up on my email to you from
December 24th (from worlduniversityandschool@gmail.com).
Jim H, thanks again for answering my follow up questions during
your A.I. IBM Watson presentation in mid-December.
I again noticed on your Twitter page -
https://twitter.com/jahendler - that you might be available to be
the technical lead for C.C. WUaS, as we move to the new
inter-lingual Wikidata / Wikibase / Wikipedia database and develop
with the semantic web, artificial intelligence and IBM Watson.
Would you please consider joining the WUaS team for this?
Jim S, as IBM Director of Global Univeristy, in what ways might
IBM Watson join in this process in these early WUaS development
stages, planned for all 7,106+ languages and 242+ countries, as
WUaS seeks to become the MIT / Harvard of the Internet?
Thank you both!
Best wishes, Scott
I am traveling through early January with intermittent email at
best. I will reply if I can, but if important, ping me again early
in the new year. cheers Jim Hendler
On Dec 24, 2014 2:43 PM, "Scott MacLeod"
wrote:
Dear Jim and Jim,
Thanks to you both very much for an edifying talk on IBM Watson,
A.I. and machine learning talk last week.
I blogged about this a little bit afterward here -
http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2014/12/pau-bronco-just-heard-fascinating.html
.
Jim S, I'm also finding your recent Le Méridien Cambridge-MIT-NSF
talks here - http://web.mit.edu/mitssrc/nsf/presentations.html -
helpful, and which I continue to add to MIT OCW-centric wiki World
University and School (planned for all 7,106 + languages and 242 +
countries).
Jim H, thanks for answering my follow up questions last Thursday,
and I noticed on your Twitter stream -
https://twitter.com/jahendler - that you might be available to be
the technical lead for C.C. WUaS, as we move to the new
inter-lingual Wikidata / Wikibase / Wikipedia database and develop
with the semantic web, artificial intelligence and IBM Watson.
Would you please consider joining the WUaS team for this?
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Best regards, Scott
https://twitter.com/WorldUnivandSch
--
- Scott MacLeod - Founder & President
-
http://worlduniversityandschool.org- 415 480 4577
- PO Box 442, (86 Ridgecrest Road), Canyon, CA 94516
- World University and School - like Wikipedia with MIT OpenCourseWare
(not endorsed by MIT OCW) - incorporated as a nonprofit university and
school in California, and is a U.S. 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt educational
organization, both effective April 2010.
*
...
