Tuesday, December 14, 2010

THE COMPUTER WILL BE PRODUCED BY A COMPANY CALLED CYBERDYNE SYSTEMS: In February, Jeopardy! goes to a new place--Men (Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings) vs. Machine (IBM's Watson)--for $1 million.

12 comments:

  1. Eric J.11:07 AM

    "What is love, Alex?"

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  2. Don't miss the NYT Magazine piece on this from the summer:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/magazine/20Computer-t.html.  Favorite part?  When Watson hit a glitch, and answered "Who is Tommy Lee Jones?" to multiple successive questions.

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  3. sconstant11:15 AM

    I thought that computers were good at figuring out the answers ("forty-two") but require dolphins and fjords and millions of years to come up with the questions?

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  4. Jenn C11:34 AM

    I mean seriously, should we just hand the keys to our robot overlords now?

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  5. girard312:30 PM

    Many questions come to mind. How will the computer buzz in? Will it take human form? If so, will it look like Vicki from "Small Wonder" or Hal from "2001"? Or may be Jude Law from "A.I."? Is Ken Jennings really a robot himself?

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  6. Tracy H4:23 PM

    As an IBMer and infrequent commenter, I can answer several of these questions after reading about it on our intranet today.  Watson will be hooked up to a buzzer and when he "thinks" he knows the correct answer, he will actually be able to buzz in.  An avatar will be used as his character face.  It will be one of the logos that is part of the Smarter Planet campaign.  You may have seen some of the commercials - spinning circles or lines around the earth.  Nowhere near as good looking as Jude Law!  There was no info on the intranet as to whether Ken Jenning is really a robot himself!  Should be fun to watch, but unfortunately, as I am currently living in Helsinki, I'll miss it.  i am hoping they post it to the IBM You Tube channel so I (and the majority of IBM employees) can catch it!

    Here's a link to the press release in case anyone is interested:
    http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/33233.wss

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  7. Will he always be able to buzz in before humans?

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  8. Anonymous5:34 PM

    As a sometime reader of Ken's blog, I'll say: definitely not a robot.
    Thanks for the inside scoop, Tracy!

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  9. Genevieve5:36 PM

    That's a major question - contestants' reflexes on the buzzer, and ability to game buzzer timing, can make or break games.  Though Ken and Brad are extremely practiced on the buzzer, the machine's ability to ring in makes this contest possibly quite questionable.

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  10. Kasparov himself wrote a great story about the challenges of man vs. machine games (and why computers/programmers needed a new challenge beyond chess):

    http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/feb/11/the-chess-master-and-the-computer/

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  11. Tracy H2:48 AM

    A little bit more info this morning about the buzzing in on questions. 

    In one of many efforts to create a level playing field with the human contestants, a Jeopardy! contestant buzzer is physically mounted on Watson’s podium. Attached to a solenoid that is wired into Watson, the computer will depress the button when it has sufficient confidence in its response.

    Apparently, they have also had former Jeopardy champs in the lab in the last several weeks playing against Watson.  No info on wins/losses.  Also, it's important to note that Watson will not be hooked up to the internet during the game, this will all be based on knowledge he "knows."

    I hope the ThingsThrowers do a post on the games, I'd love to hear your take on it!

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  12. Genevieve2:18 PM

    Thanks for the extra info, Tracy!  Definitely helpful to hear it, and good to know Watson won't be able to google search the answers.

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