As a one-day Jeopardy champion, I have some insight on this issue.
For me and a good many other contestants, the most challenging part of the contest is not knowing the right answer. It’s ringing in at the right time.
You have to buzz in after Alex talks speaking and be the first one to do so after the little light up behind him goes off. If you buzz in before the light goes off, your button is locked out for half a second, which is an eternity under the circumstances.
Obviously a computer is always going to beat human reflexes at this game. I don’t know how they arranged the “buzz in” for Watson, but it has at least the potential to give the computer a huge advantage that has nothing at all to do with knowing the right answer.
Make that: “You have to buzz in after Alex finishes speaking...”
Actually, if they want to be “fair,” they should have a human do the buzzing in for Watson.
“Obviously a computer is always going to beat human reflexes at this game. I don’t know how they arranged the “buzz in” for Watson, but it has at least the potential to give the computer a huge advantage that has nothing at all to do with knowing the right answer.”
They should have set it up so the computer received the text question the instant the host stopped speaking. I have no idea how it actually worked, but that would have evened things up a lot.
The other thing, which apparently isn’t quite “there yet” would be to have the “computer” (actually thousands of CPUs) process the host’s voice. That would be even more fair.
Actually I’m surprised they didn’t try voice recognition, the current systems are quite good.
With Watson getting all three Daily Doubles so easily, I think that it's "interfacing" with the computer controlling the big board to get the secrets (or else it has 25 years of Jeopardy games memorized and knows the statistical distribution of DD locations).
You have impressed me to no end!
FR has all the best people.
Thank you! I always wondered about that...the lock out thing and when you are “allowed” to buzz in.
That aside, people here who are pooh poohing the computer don’t understand the complexity or “reasoning” that the computer must perform. Some of the clues are simple facts that can easily been searched out by the computer. Others require a more cognitive process.
One thing they have not done yet is something like the before and after category...things where you have to combine two totally different concepts and conjoin them in a way that would never take place outside of a game like Jeopardy. I suspect the computer would totally fail those...but hope they try it tonight so we can see.
I was on Jeopardy once, but was a loser. I think you’re right about the ringing in. Folks at home can’t see the neon ring around the board, but you can’t press your button until the ring turns off (after Alex completes the question). That’s why you see contestants furiously pressing their buttons, because they are “locked out”. A computer could theoretically ring in almost instantaneously.