Video teaser: IBM computer bests Jeopardy opponents

[charlie]

Ahead of next month's historic match, IBM has posted a short demo of its computer going head to head with Jeopardy's all-time champs. This will be one contestant who'll never forget to "phrase the answer in a form of a question."

Video at the link:

So, in February IBM's Watson will be in an official Jeopardy tournament-style competition with titans of trivia Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. That competition will be taped starting tomorrow, but hopefully we'll get to know if a computer really can take down the greatest Jeopardy players of all time in "real time" as the show airs. It will be a historic event on par with Deep Blue vs. Garry Kasparov, and we'll absolutely be glued to our seats. Today IBM and Jeopardy offered a quick teaser of that match, with the three contestants knocking out three categories at lightning speed. Not a single question was answered wrongly, and at the end of the match Watson, who answers questions with a cold computer voice, telegraphing his certainty with simple color changes on his "avatar," was ahead with $4,400, Ken had $3,400, and Brad had $1,200...

http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/13/ibms-watson-supercomputer-destroys-all-humans-in-jeopardy-pract

[Blue_Tires]

1. a computer can recall facts faster than the best humans?

not impressed...

[JoePhilly]

3. Then you have never watched Jeopardy.

The wording of the questions on Jeopardy always include idioms, and very wild connections.

The questions are not as simple as ... "Who said X". If they did, you would be correct. But that is not how Jeopardy questions work.

They are designed to force one to make connections that cross broad boundaries.

For a computer do answer such questions, is actually amazing.

[BlueCheese]

4. The hard part for the computer...

... is understanding what fact is being asked for, especially when it's presented in the somewhat unusual Jeopardy format. Once that's determined, it's relatively easy to retrieve the answer, though one still needs to organize the information for easy retrieval. (This is why it's not always easy to get info out of a search engine. All the data is there, but it's hard to find the query that will bring the right piece up.)

For humans, of course, it's different. We're good at processing language and figuring out what we're being asked for--too often we just don't know the answer (or question, in the case of Jeopardy).

[Shagbark Hickory]

2. IBM?

Didn't that used to be a computer?

[merh]

5. I just answered the first question faster than Watson did

I rock!




























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