"This computer could beat you at Jeopardy"

[Chrs]

What is Watson? [/Obvious joke]

So! IBM's supercomputer Watson competed over the last three days at Jeopardy versus two of the best contestants (Americans probably understand this better than I; I've only had to work it out from watching it) - and...

Spoiler:
He won. $77,147 against $24,000 against $21,600.

It's definetly worth watching.
Day 1, Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PSPvHcLnN0 - and you can find the rest on youtube. It was over three days to squeeze the extra hype over it.

It's interesting from a computer geek's perspective (At least, to me) - the questions are given in natural language including slang, idioms, etc - the fact it could process it so well is remarkable.

[mossrose]

Yes, but what will it do with the money?

[Chrs]

Yes, but what will it do with the money?

The first prize of $1 million went to IBM who donated it half-and-half to two charities. The other two contestants donated 50% of their $300k and $200k prizes to charity.

[/Deliberately missing the joke and taking it literally ]

[mossrose]

[Hamster]

Couldn't they just program the computer to contain a million facts and then answer when one of the questions matches?

[themuzicman]

Yeah, it's basically a sophisticated google search.

[Chrs]

Couldn't they just program the computer to contain a million facts and then answer when one of the questions matches?

The main problem is the fact that the questions (or rather, answers) are given in natural language. The computer shows a huge advance in natural language processing and also decision making (It's way of linking words and facts together)

[Hamster]

Did Alex Trebek retire....?

[Manwë Súlimo]

He resisted the Borg and was assimilated. His mind is now part of of the hive-mind of Watson.

[Manwë Súlimo]

The main problem is the fact that the questions (or rather, answers) are given in natural language. The computer shows a huge advance in natural language processing and also decision making (It's way of linking words and facts together)

I'm not sure if he understood speech or was digitally fed the questions in computer-speak so that he could understand it.

And it's really creepy referring to this thing as a "he" who can "understand".

[Carrikature]

I really enjoyed Ken's (one of the contestants) add-in to the Final Jeapordy answer. He wrote "What is Stoker (I for one welcome our new computer overlords)."


It does receive the input electronically, but the computer still has to understand what the question is asking as well as ascertain the answer. It is a large correlation program (like a search engine yes), but it requires understanding of natural language. That's not something easily done. People aren't always even capable of that...

[Chrs]

I'm not sure if he understood speech or was digitally fed the questions in computer-speak so that he could understand it.

And it's really creepy referring to this thing as a "he" who can "understand".

Creepy is what I do.

It was fed in in plain text. Voice-to-text could've been added, but they decided against it.

[Carrikature]

I would probably have preferred to see voice-to-text, but I know that would have taken a lot of hours with Trebek to make it work correctly.

[Chrs]

I would probably have preferred to see voice-to-text, but I know that would have taken a lot of hours with Trebek to make it work correctly.

Also, voice-to-text isn't new nor interesting - I think that's the main reason for it. It wasn't their primary concern.

[Pilgrim]

I would probably have preferred to see voice-to-text, but I know that would have taken a lot of hours with Trebek to make it work correctly.

If it had voice to text it might have been able to avoid the embarrasing repitition of a wrong answer already given by a human contestant. Plus, though cool, it took 30 humans and a room larger than my church office for it to work. If Ken and Brad had brains that big in another room, well. Plus, it's not self correcting. If it gets a wrong answer then those 30 other humans have to go back to the work room and correct the information and process for it. So, in essence, what we had was 30 humans plus a super computer working against a single human in competition. Hardly impressive. What got me was the final Jeopardy question about US Cities. "This city has two major airports named for a world war 2 battle and world war 2 hero." Watson came up with "Toronto." Hello braniac, U.S. CITY. Alright you 30 programmers and engineers, how to solve the problem of a computer that doesn't know the difference between the U.S. and Canada?