Thursday, February 17, 2011

IBM Jepardy Challenge: Finale Summary



Ken Jennings was thirsty for blood (silicon?) tonight. After struggling to buzz in faster than Watson during in the first match, Jennings was noticeably quicker in this match, buzzing in first and thinking about the correct response after. As a result, he finished with over 18,200 going into Final Jeopardy, just a few thousand dollars behind Watson's 23,440. Rutter meanwhile, was mostly invisible during this round much like Jennings was last round. But he still managed to rack up 5,600.

As for Watson, it may not have been quite as dominant as last round, but seemed less confused by questions this time around, only providing nonsensical answers a couple of times. But Watson proved it was the best contestant out there. If they played 10 rounds of Jeopardy, I'd be surprised if Watson lost any more than one time.

And you know what was disappointing? The interview segment of the show. Always a source of entertainment for conversations which are nothing short of AWKWARD, Watson never got his time to shine. Alex asked Jennings and Rutter about the charities they were donating half their winnings to, but not Watson. Instead of carrying out an exchange with Alex or rattling off a pre-determined message in is creepily lifeless voice, know what we got? Some WASP-y IBM stiff who was easily 100 (maybe even 101) times less interesting than Watson.

 But whatever. Unlike last night, there was actually a bit of intrigue going into Double Jeopardy. Jennings earned enough in this round that if he put his entire total for the night on the line and guessed correct, he could possibly eek out a victory against Watson. The category was 19th century authors and the clue was this:
Jennings correctly answered Bram Stoker. But his wager?


What Does This Mean?

Watson's victory is a pretty significant moment for machines. But don't get too carried away and start questioning the meaning of life while searching for a leather-clad savior to deliver us from our impending doom. I mean, the thing thinks Toronto is a U.S. city for God's sake.

That said, Watson is proof that we're closer than ever to having machines which interact with us as effortlessly and intuitively as humans do. Its voice recognition skills aren't there yet, and it's roughly the size of 1.5 Steve Ballmers (pretty big!), but we shouldn't be discouraged. Think about the computers that were around 60 years ago—or even 30 years ago—that took up entire rooms and what they were capable of. Now, most of our smartphones are more powerful (or nearly more powerful) than that.

So in many of our lifetimes, it's likely that we'll get to experience machines more powerful than Watson, which will fit into our hands, or be integrated into our homes, cars, hospitals, androids, etc. We talk. It listens and replies. It might even be smarter than us, as IBM suggests.

This, people, is an exciting possibility.

[Source: Gizmodo]

23 comments:

  1. Nice to see some wordy blogs around...
    please check my blog out!

    ReplyDelete
  2. What really impressed me was the language processing, particularly the wordplay. That's something I've never seen before.

    Turing Test is going to shatter any day now...

    ReplyDelete
  3. It would be awesome if it actually did something usefull for communities, still, it's pretty impressive

    ReplyDelete
  4. I was astonished to see this. I really cant describe how I feel about this. I think its an amazing achievment and was very cool to watch. I was wondering tho do you think it could have describe the charities?

    ReplyDelete
  5. O.O I'm in shock, very good info, thanks man

    ReplyDelete
  6. this was better than i expected, thanks or sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Awesome to watch, I dont find this scary at all I think its a great leap towards the future for us.

    ReplyDelete
  8. It's just like Deep Blue. Soon machines will kill us all just like in Terminator.

    ReplyDelete
  9. But will it be important for our future?

    ReplyDelete
  10. What a pussy, should've just went all in if he knew it was the right answer.

    And I suspect Ken is part robot, he did seem a bit of a stiff in that interview.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I watched it last night. For some reason, the girlfriend was cheering for Watson.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I can't wait till they use machines like Watson in other applications!

    ReplyDelete
  13. Hey, my fridge might also win jeopardy someday.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I was amazed at seeing this! Pretty cool thing to watch and thanks for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  15. I've been keeping up with this on Youtube. Watson is awesome - but I was disappointed when I found out that it wasn't using speech recognition - it goes through text files. Still, mad impressive.

    ReplyDelete
  16. i, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

    ReplyDelete
  17. tht was insane!!
    the computer won!!

    ReplyDelete
  18. Oh! the machine won. I have no doubt they will rule the earth soon.

    ReplyDelete