Comments on: Jeopardy-Playing Computer Tromps Human Players in Practice Round

By: Stanley D.

Stanley D. — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 16:04:37 +0000

Did Watson have a switch that he had ot flip before he answered?

By: Retlaw

Retlaw — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 06:29:14 +0000

Correct me if I’m wrong, but won’t the humans be fighting to split up the points that can be accumulated against the machine? If Blue Boy get 35% of the points available….he wins if one of the humans can not defeat the other. Bit of a skewed contest….how about trying it one on one?

By: Brian Too

Brian Too — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 00:00:52 +0000

This is really quite impressive. Parsing normal human speech and phrasing has been very difficult for computers. They struggle with ambiguity, missing information, probabilistic assignments to meaning/intent, and so forth. Even with textual input that only helps with the actual speech to text component.

Also, coordinating the knowledge contained in Watson’s databases must be a challenge. Merely having the data does not mean that it is easily accessible or usable.

By: moioci

moioci — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 20:01:21 +0000

@Nibra — “always never” would be an oxymoron (no hyphen). “Almost never” is perfectly expressive and not in any way a terrible statement.

By: Nibra

Nibra — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 16:41:27 +0000

” ….almost never wrong. ” What a terrible statement. Why not say it got one or two wrong. Almost never, oxy-moron.

By: davidinark

davidinark — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 15:29:05 +0000

“42″ could also be “What uniform number belonged to Jackie Robinson?” – Again, context would be key. Then again, there are many questions for which the answer would be “42.” Though, for any true, ultimate answer, the one supplied (Life, the Universe…) would have to be accepted regardless of the category given…

By: Bob

Bob — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 12:50:48 +0000

@Johan: What is the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything from the book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?

(It’s a very easy question to answer outside the universe of those books.)

By: Johan

Johan — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 08:33:38 +0000

I wonder what Watson will formulate as a question to the answer ’42′.

By: Fred

Fred — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 07:48:08 +0000

@John Each of those 2,880 processors is not the equivalent of a human brain. Indeed, the human brain is not ‘single’ in the same sense each of those processors is. There is parallel processing that occurs in the neural system.

By: Nicholas

Nicholas — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 07:19:59 +0000

I don’t think the computer just does searching and answering things.Each answer from the computer depends on context analysis, so it makes a great step for artificial intelligence

By: John

John — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 04:38:11 +0000

The computer is basically just doing a fast lookup from the 10 million books and such entered into its memory. Also, Watson utilizes 2,880 “brains” or processors, while each human player uses 1. Not to mention each human player is mobile and doesn’t take up the space of 12 refrigerators.

By: nick

nick — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 04:29:27 +0000

@TerryCloth: Yes, in the form of questions. And for your second question, there is probably 3 years worth of artificial intelligence research required to explain it. :D

I’m disappointed you didn’t have a picture of the whole Watson monolith – except for the display it’s a dead ringer for the monolith from 2001….

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 03:50:27 +0000

Watson’s real advantage is that it actually knows the clue before the human competitors do. Although Watson might only receive any actual clue at the same time as the other competitors, the human beings have to take a moment to actually read it — Watson can spend this time cognizing what the question means and cross referencing its database for possible answers before the human players even finish knowing what the question actually was, which can give it a significant advantage. My guess is that Watson performs much better against humans when the clues are more verbose and thus take more time for the human players to finish reading.

By: Terry Cloth

Terry Cloth — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 01:17:15 +0000

So, does Watson put the responses in the form of questions? How does it handle who is/what is choice?

By: walla

walla — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 22:46:21 +0000

I for one welcome our new elementary overlord

By: Brad Q

Brad Q — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 20:57:06 +0000

In college I went to a talk by a 5-time Champion (the limit at the time), and he specifically mentioned the buzzer timing. There is a guy sitting off stage that enables the buzzers once Alex finishes reading the question, the contestants can literally see him flip the switch. He said he always used the first few low-dollar questions to practice his timing while watching the guy enable the buzzers.

By: Cmdr. Awesome

Cmdr. Awesome — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 20:33:14 +0000

‘As for Watson’s state of mind, Ferrucci puts it this way: “Watson does not have emotion, but Waston knows that humans have emotion.”’

This is a genuinely creepy thing to hear.

By: aaron b

aaron b — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 20:26:33 +0000

Eddie! I’m always surprised he’s not mentioned in the same breath as Ken Jennings. It seemed that Eddie could have been a champ for a long, long time, but that was before the rule change.

I’m excited to see this episode- best believe I’ll be tuned in in February!

By: Matt T

Matt T — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 20:18:44 +0000

So, if Watson had to do spoken text only, would you blindfold Ken and Brad so they couldn’t read either?

Conversely (contra-positively?), are deaf people not allowed to be on Jeopardy!? Because they can’t hear the spoken question. I know there was a blind champion a while back…

By: Andrew Moseman

Andrew Moseman — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 20:15:07 +0000

@Bill Excellent point; they say people watching at home often drastically underestimate how important buzzer timing is to winning the game.

By: Not Alex Trebek

Not Alex Trebek — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 20:13:49 +0000

@ Dr. Kenneth

One of the rules of Jeopardy is that contestants cannot buzz in until the host has finished reading the entire question. I do think it’s an unfair contest in that the computer is getting the clues in text only. The computer should be required to act on the spoken question.

By: Bill

Bill — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 20:13:26 +0000

Unless they changed the Jeopardy rule, the players are not allowed to buzz until the question was completely read by the moderator. I remember reading (when Ken Jennings was ruling the stage) that one advantage Jennings had was experience (from having played so many days in a row) with the timing system for the buzzer. On most questions, contestants who figure out the answer will have done so before the question was completely read. So having a feel for when the buzzing window opens can give the player an edge.

By: Dr. Kenneth Noisewater

Dr. Kenneth Noisewater — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 19:44:13 +0000

I’m surprised they don’t require the computer to take voice input from the host reading the question, one of the advantages a human may have would be to answer questions before they’ve been fully spoken..