Posted on 02/15/2011 7:52:19 PM PST by Kaslin
(CNN) -- The computers haven't proven to be our trivia overlords just yet.
Give them at least until Wednesday.
An IBM supercomputer named Watson finished one round of the TV show "Jeopardy!" on Monday night tied with one of his human competitors and $3,000 ahead of the other.
The man vs. computer face-off won't be complete, however, until the final rounds of the extended trivia game show are aired on Tuesday and Wednesday.
IBM trumpets Watson, which has been in development for years and has the processing power of 2,800 "powerful computers," as a major advancement in machines' efforts to understand human language. The computer receives clues through digital texts and then buzzes in against the two other "Jeopardy!" contestants like any other player would. It juggles dozens of lines of reasoning at once and tries to arrive at a smart answer
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Let’s hit the streets to put Watson in the White House
I’m not impressed! It takes a room full of supercooled supercomputers to do the same as one person. Not very cost effective if you ask me.
I wasn’t impressed at all when in Final Jeopardy the category was “US Cities” and Watson’s answer was “Toronto.”
How well would Watson do in Peking? He'd have an army of his Levono children out there working on his behalf. True social networking.
Someone should ask Watson who the hell Obama really is.
there were several easy questions that the humans knew and I could see them trying to push the button but Watson answered first. I suppose watson answers at the speed of light while humans have to push a button that is far slower and puts them at a disadvantage.
Wait till the categorey is “Women” and the clue is something like “number of ways a guy can screw up”. That’s one of those divide by zero thingies that always blow computers to smithereens.
Yes, the obligatory Skynet reference...
Yes, it missed that question, but it won by more than $25,000 over each of its opponents. Watson is absolutely crushing the two best players ever. It is no contest so far.
Watson kicked the humans’ butts today.
It even got in some mild humor.
I am thinking SkyNet...
Knowing the answers to the questions is only half the battle. What is really important is pushing the button at the right time, which brings me to my question. Does Watson activate the button mechanically, like his human counterparts?
What is 6 times 9?
>>Does it have the rudimentary capability of understanding the spoken question or is the question inputted separately?<<
From what I understand, it understands the category as well as the question.
It is a quibble whether it reads the question or hears it from Trebek.
‘’there were several easy questions that the humans knew and I could see them trying to push the button but Watson answered first. I suppose watson answers at the speed of light while humans have to push a button that is far slower and puts them at a disadvantage.”
If you watched some of the background presentation on how Watson was prepared, it showed that the computer had been rigged with an electro-mechanical “plunger” that Watson had to push to “ring in”, just as his human competitors had to do.
The whole demonstration was very impressive.
One can only imagine the befuddlement of both competitors.
This is “John Henry” all over again — only this time, the steam drill is winnin’!
Yes. As they explained it last night... Watson pursues multiple lines of “reasoning” when working on a question. This generates multiple possibly answers that get refined and possibly re-enforced by further analysis. When Watson’s confidence in a particular answer exceeds a threshold value, it buzzes in. It uses a solenoid to activate a pushbutton switch tied to the regular Jeopardy gear.
Someone should ask Watson who the hell Obama really is.
Watson: “EVIL, EVIL, EVIL,........”.
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