The reputations of Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter are in ... danger.
IBM's 'Watson' supercomputer has been preparing for its stint on Jeopardy for a long time. In April of 2009, the company revealed its plans to build a question answering (QA) computing system – codenamed Watson – that could understand complex questions and answer with enough precision and speed to compete on the TV show Jeopardy!. IBM said that after two years of development, they planned to put Watson to the test by pitting it against human contestants on the hit show. Well, it’s been two years.
Last week, Watson headed to upstate New York to go head-to-head with Jeopardy legends Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Though filming for next month’s episode doesn’t actually start until today, Thursday saw Watson and the IBM crowd give us a sneak peek of what we can expect from the QA computing system’s time on Jeopardy!.
Engadget reports that Watson didn’t answer a single question incorrectly and by the end of the game was ahead with $4,400 (Ken had $3,400, and Brad had $1,200). This is a stark contrast to how Watson was portrayed in a video clip shot last year. Posted to IBM’s YouTube, the clip views like a blooper reel and shows Watson getting a ton of questions wrong.
You'll have to wait until next month to see Watson in action for real, but until then, check out the AP’s report, which shows Watson's practice from round yesterday.
Also embedded is the clip IBM released last year, which portrays a much less intimidating Watson.
*Watson flashed in*
Alex: Watson
Watson: What is Tom's Hardware Guide
Alex: Correct
I also have a feeling that the show was sort of geared to make it possible for it to answer. As a computer would be incapable of asking certain types of questions for example a question trying to predict a feeling. While certainly not a question worthy a Jeopardy a question like this "If Jake broke up with Jill what are likely emotions Jill would feel?" would likely make Watson stumped yet its so easy for a person to come up with every possibility.
Instead Watson is simply a Encyclopedia that tries to calculate what is the most likely meaning of the question through a search function. So a question like "What is the name of Dorthy's dog in the wizard of Oz?"
would be easily answered by picking up on key words in the sentence and the order that the words appear and picking the most likely answer.
Loll, interesting my friend. have super computers process all the data from districts look at all the economy , social, environmental impacts and pass the best laws based on whats best for the country. Obviously its scary having computers make decisions for us but interesting concept
Like, if your question would be:
"The best computer at Jeopardy!"
Would it answer: "What is Watson?" or "WHO is Watson?"
And your rant on emotions "If Jake broke up with Jill what are likely emotions Jill would feel?" You do realize that if it can understand the meaning of the speach it would understand this meant they were dating and thus would be able to deduce there are 48 posible emotions to choose from and like us it could swag the most likey and like humans it would probably get it wrong.
f watson and Chuck Norris played Jeopardy together, Chuck would win.