Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

'Jeopardy' to pit humans against IBM machine
Associated Press ^ | 12-13-10 | DAVID BAUDER

Posted on 12/13/2010 9:36:29 PM PST by Justaham

The game show "Jeopardy" will pit man versus machine this winter in a competition that will show how successful scientists are in creating a computer that can mimic human intelligence.

Two of the venerable game show's most successful champions — Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter — will play two games against "Watson," a computer program developed by IBM's artificial intelligence team. The matches will be spread over three days that will air Feb. 14-16, the game show said on Tuesday.

The competition is reminiscent of when IBM developed a chess-playing computer to compete against chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.

The "Jeopardy" answer-and-question format is a different kind of challenge. It often requires contestants to deal with subtleties, puns and riddles and come up with answers fast.

"Watson" is named for IBM founder Thomas J. Watson. It will look nothing like the computer "maid" on "The Jetsons." Rather, IBM said its on-screen appearance will be represented by a round avatar.

The computer has already been tested in some 50 games against past "Jeopardy" champions. But neither IBM nor "Jeopardy" representatives would say what "Watson's" record was.

The winner gets a $1 million prize. IBM said it would donate its winnings to charity, while Jennings and Rutter said they would give half of their prize money away.

Jennings had the game show's longest winning streak, taking 74 games in a row during the 2004-2005 season. Rutter has won more money than any other "Jeopardy" player, nearly $3.3 million during his original appearance and three subsequent tournaments.

IBM is hoping the technology it exhibits will have some practical uses eventually, for instance helping doctors diagnose illnesses or solving customer problems at technical support centers.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...


TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS:
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-49 next last
To: The Cajun
In the Jeopardy format, puter will kick their ass.

Nah, the computer will know everything, but will fail to give the answers in the form of a question.
21 posted on 12/13/2010 11:05:55 PM PST by fr_freak
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: Moose Burger

Exactly. The ability of the computer to comprehend and actualize responses from natural language. That is the main missing factor (there are others, but this one is the most obvious). For one to be able to have a ‘conversation’ with a computer, and not be able to tell the difference. I would be quite interested to watch this matchup, in particular if the questions that are asked are asked in the normal Jeopary manner. That will be quite the test. Someone asked if it is just someone googling responses, but that would be too slow against someone like Jennings (taking out the part of a human googling queries); and in the same breadth, even though a computer could do it much faster, it would have to understand natural language. Not set commands or key inputs ...normal natural language. The moment a computer can do that, and do that in a manner that is indistinguishable from an actual human being, is a point in time when computing will have taken an interesting (and quantum) jump. This, if it works, is quite a huge event.


22 posted on 12/13/2010 11:06:49 PM PST by spetznaz (Nuclear-tipped Ballistic Missiles: The Ultimate Phallic Symbol)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies]

To: fr_freak
It's will give the answer as “What is shop at Target for King Edward the 1st.”
23 posted on 12/13/2010 11:09:40 PM PST by Hillarys Gate Cult
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 21 | View Replies]

To: fr_freak
Nah, the computer will know everything, but will fail to give the answers in the form of a question.

Think I even could write a program that throws a "What is" before every answer ;^)

24 posted on 12/13/2010 11:13:41 PM PST by The Cajun
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 21 | View Replies]

To: Justaham
The competition is reminiscent of when IBM developed a chess-playing computer to compete against chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.

The Kasparov "victory" was a farce. IBM had multiple chess grand masters and computer programmers reprogramming the machine between matches, possibly even between moves. It proved that a wildly smart team could beat one man. It was a shameful hollow victory.

Kasparov remains one of the greatest chess players of all time.

25 posted on 12/13/2010 11:13:50 PM PST by Jack Black ( Whatever is left of American patriotism is now identical with counter-revolution.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: The Cajun
Think I even could write a program that throws a "What is" before every answer ;^)

Sure, anybody could, by itself, but after writing thousands of lines of code to cover every contingency, I could see these guys looking at each other and saying "It feels like we forgot something." Then, on game day, they fire it up and pass bricks the first time the computer replies "The answer is: onomonopeia." Or, maybe they just misplaced a semi-colon. Same difference.
26 posted on 12/13/2010 11:17:56 PM PST by fr_freak
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 24 | View Replies]

To: Jack Black

Taking bets now on if the computer returns any results of porn or Nigerian scams.


27 posted on 12/13/2010 11:20:06 PM PST by Hillarys Gate Cult
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 25 | View Replies]

To: Moose Burger

David Bronstein was the real computer chess nut. He played every program he could, from dedicated machines like Big Blue to at least one game with Mac Chess.

Your garden-variety chess program wouldn’t stand a chance against a real opponent. None of the ones I’ve used ever understood anything except simple material gain.


28 posted on 12/13/2010 11:22:04 PM PST by Strk321
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 20 | View Replies]

To: Justaham

What is "I love you, I hate you."

-PJ

29 posted on 12/13/2010 11:23:08 PM PST by Political Junkie Too ("Comprehensive" reform bills only end up as incomprehensible messes.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Justaham

I wonder if they can program the computer for the Before & After category. (i.e. “Who is Judge Judy Bloom”)


30 posted on 12/13/2010 11:26:37 PM PST by aynrandfreak (Being a Democrat means never having to say you're sorry)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: fr_freak
Or, maybe they just misplaced a semi-colon.

Know for a fact that VMS didn't like little things like that ;^)

31 posted on 12/13/2010 11:33:48 PM PST by The Cajun
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 26 | View Replies]

To: Justaham

Kind of like the $64,000 question.


32 posted on 12/13/2010 11:39:50 PM PST by freekitty (Give me back my conservative vote; then find me a real conservative to vote for)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Tucker39
I remember reading that experienced people using an abacus can constantly beat those using a calculator when calculating currency exchange rates.
33 posted on 12/13/2010 11:40:58 PM PST by Hillarys Gate Cult
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 19 | View Replies]

To: Justaham

IBM would not try this if they expected to be humiliated. Still, unless the question format is altered to give an advantage to the computer, I bet on the humans.


34 posted on 12/13/2010 11:42:59 PM PST by TChad
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: spetznaz

“Exactly. The ability of the computer to comprehend and actualize responses from natural language. That is the main missing factor (there are others, but this one is the most obvious). For one to be able to have a ‘conversation’ with a computer, and not be able to tell the difference. I would be quite interested to watch this matchup, in particular if the questions that are asked are asked in the normal Jeopary manner. That will be quite the test. Someone asked if it is just someone googling responses, but that would be too slow against someone like Jennings (taking out the part of a human googling queries); and in the same breadth, even though a computer could do it much faster, it would have to understand natural language. Not set commands or key inputs ...normal natural language. The moment a computer can do that, and do that in a manner that is indistinguishable from an actual human being, is a point in time when computing will have taken an interesting (and quantum) jump. This, if it works, is quite a huge event.”

This is a LOT harder than folks on this thread are giving credit for. However, I don’t think it is quite as revolutionary as that. The only thing that makes it feasible is the very rigid format of jeopardy. There is a subject and an answer. So key meaning parsings have been done for the computer already. That’s a long way from being able to have a conversation about an imaginary blue pony friend named Pony with a five year old while driving.

Text mining applications have only a decent success rate in extracting a subject from text and then a sense whether the text is positive or negative about the subject. They miss a lot.

If you are interested in this, one interesting and ambitious effort related to this is CYC from MIT. It has been in development for a decade and attempts to encode common sense for a computer. Link follows:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyc


35 posted on 12/14/2010 12:10:32 AM PST by ModelBreaker
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | View Replies]

To: spetznaz
"The moment a computer can do that, and do that in a manner that is indistinguishable from an actual human being, is a point in time when computing will have taken an interesting (and quantum) jump. This, if it works, is quite a huge event."

When this becomes reality many people on the left-hand side of the IQ bell curve will become more or less useless from the point of view of the economy. I think we are already observing that the productivity gains of the last few decades resulting in growing chronic unemployment.

36 posted on 12/14/2010 12:14:34 AM PST by Aikonaa
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | View Replies]

To: Justaham
Actually, I'd like an agreement from both sides, ie: The Jeopardy team is to make no special changes to it's format or questions and the IBM side isn't allowed to have any contact with the machine at all once the game begins.

Yeah, call me a cynic. ;)

37 posted on 12/14/2010 12:53:58 AM PST by HeartlandOfAmerica (Obama and the Dem Congress will spend $5 trillion every year of his presidency until they break US!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: shibumi
The enemies of free markets, open societies, free worship, public expression of faith and ultimately free thinking itself have always had a vested interest in reducing the perception of human intelligence to synapses, relays bit and bytes.

And how's that been working out for them? I recently re-watched the original Tron, on TV. I saw the movie in '82, and liked it, but watching it now had me wondering what I had seen in it. Not only was the technical jargon not used accurately - which, of course, I didn't know when I was a kid - but also the plot was about ten years behind the times. It's as if Disney were preparing 1982's kids for the 1975 version of Rollerball.

It might sound like I'm slagging on Disney, but I'm really not. I'm sure the folks there consulted the best experts...

Will humans be reduced to machines? More likely that AI machines will develop certain human characterisitics, like a dislike of being shoved around.

38 posted on 12/14/2010 3:24:31 AM PST by danielmryan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: Ditto
I'm thinking search terms and connection speed.

That's kinda what I mean: How fast can you access the search engine and produce the results. My guess is that they already have an engine that parses the question into keywords and query on the basis of the least-common words (to minimize the return results) and then parse those results into an answer.

39 posted on 12/14/2010 5:10:45 AM PST by econjack (Some people are as dumb as soup.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

To: Strk321
I dunno, but Deep Blue sure made a fool out of Kasparov. He used to be interested in computer chess, but not after that.

As another poster pointed out, IBM may not have been entirely on the up-and-up in the second match. Also, when Kasparov demanded a rematch, IBM refused and destroyed the computer.

40 posted on 12/14/2010 5:28:17 AM PST by Publius Valerius
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-49 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson