IBM vs Jeopardy

[Insomniac]

Surprised no one has started a topic yet. Anyone else watching it? I found it really fascinating. I found myself rooting for Watson.

Some interesting things I noticed.

Watson found the daily double on it's first opportunity to choose an answer. I noticed it then stayed at the top of the board working sideways (vs. the traditional find a category you like and work down). I guessed that it must've been programmed to find the daily double first. Then I saw this article on Slate (http://www.slate.com/id/2284678/):

While we're discussing strategy, where's the best place on the board to find a Daily Double? Far from being randomly distributed, Daily Doubles are heavily concentrated at the bottom of the board. Of the roughly 10,000 such clues logged on J-Archive, 92 percent were in the bottom three (of five) rows. In fact, only two Daily Doubles in the archive ever appeared in the top-left corner, once in 1999 and then in 2003. The cell densest with Daily Doubles? Fourth from the top, far left—home to 834 of them, or 8 percent of the total.
And that was the location of the daily double. I'm sure the engineers there probably ran the statistics on every show.
The lack of voice recongnition resulted in a funny moment where Watson repeated a known wrong answer and lost $1,000.
Watson started out real strong, leading $5,200 to $200 (Ken Jennings) to $1,000 (Brad Rutter)
Watson had a right answer, but then they took it away (http://thenumerati.net/index.cfm?postID=725).

[Insomniac]

Funny chat with Ken Jennings.

http://live.washingtonpost.com/jeopardy-ken-jennings.html

[Steve99]

I watched it. I was a little disappointed they didn't do voice or visual recognition, but I guess that can be a challenge for next time.


Funny chat with Ken Jennings.

http://live.washingtonpost.com/jeopardy-ken-jennings.html

Some funny stuff in there.


Ken Jennings :

The Watson team told me two things after the match: that the idea for Watson was born after watching my 2004 streak on Jeopardy, and that they watched LOTS of tape of me while honing its skills. "There's a lot of you in Watson," one guy said. So I already feel like the Dr. Frankenstein here. If it goes amuck and kills humanity and stuff so sorry lolz my bad!

[Don Quixote]

It must be a little intimidating to play jepardy against this.

http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2008/12/18/terminatorrobot_narrowweb__300x418,0.jpg

[pchall]

Watson reminds me of the computer in the classic 50s SF short story of a chess playing computer. "Sixty-four Square Madhouse" --- probably appeared in Astounding/Analog at some point back then. I used to check out back issues of that rag by the dozen in the mid-60s.

[WickerBill]

Watson struggled at the bottom of the board -- he was far ahead by answering the peanut answers but was very unsure of a lot of answers in the tougher questions. Double Jeopardy, tonight, should be very interesting.

[pchall]

Watson struggled at the bottom of the board...

I can understand that. When I actually had to watch Jeopardy every evening I was spending with the then current GF in the mid/late 80s the bottom of the board was the only interesting part of the game. I earned a lot of pouts and extruded tongues by snapping out answers before the players. :D

[WickerBill]

Well forget what I said earlier. Wow. Crushing...

[BarillaGirl]

Absolutely amazing. My whole family cracked up when Watson wagered such an odd amount of money. Even the four year old knew it was funny.... just didn't quite know why.

"TORONTO?????" :rofl:

[Insomniac]

Well forget what I said earlier. Wow. Crushing...

I guess it doesn't need to learn with the low value ones first. I wondered what the confidence was on Final Jeopardy.

14% Toronto
11% Chicago

http://thenumerati.net/index.cfm?postID=726

[Insomniac]

I think Watson has come a long way. I wonder if it has also exposed the optimal way to play Jeopardy is to chase after the daily doubles. It looked like that was the only way either of the humans were going to have a chance.

It will be interesting to see what IBM does going forward.

[devilmaster]

I think Watson has come a long way. I wonder if it has also exposed the optimal way to play Jeopardy is to chase after the daily doubles. It looked like that was the only way either of the humans were going to have a chance.

It will be interesting to see what IBM does going forward.

I think one of the biggest challenges is making watson smaller. The jeopardy set had to be built where the computers that make up watson were.

I think the other idea would be to see how well it stacks up against other game shows past and present.

[SteveH]

I'll bet it would kick ass on Concentration. :gomer:

[High Sided]

watson vs mac on jeopardy, now that would be interesting.

[BarillaGirl]

I really liked Watson as a contestant. I hope they consider having "him" on annually.

And I realize Watson's not named after Dr. Watson, but I think it would be cool if the next two more capable versions are named Sherlock and Mycroft.

[Insomniac]

I think one of the biggest challenges is making watson smaller. The jeopardy set had to be built where the computers that make up watson were.

I've been trying to find out exactly what the purpose is for the computational power. Was it simply speed/parallelism? If so, then there is probably no reason that they can't use it on a much simpler scale but take longer to answer. Not sure if you noticed, but during Final Jeopardy, it seemed to make use of the extra time.

[Steve99]

I've been trying to find out exactly what the purpose is for the computational power. Was it simply speed/parallelism? If so, then there is probably no reason that they can't use it on a much simpler scale but take longer to answer. Not sure if you noticed, but during Final Jeopardy, it seemed to make use of the extra time.
There's computational power and then there's data storage. Of the 10 racks (IIRC) I don't think they said how much of the physical space was used for servers and how much was used for data storage.

[pchall]

I'll bet it would kick ass on Concentration. :gomer:

I would not like to play Watson at Mind Master. I'd turn him loose on my ex wife, though. Especially the 70s binary code breaking plastic peg version. ;)

[chop456]

http://i.imgur.com/lZd0q.jpg



:laugh:

[SteveH]

:laugh::rofl::laugh:

[Don Quixote]

:thumbup: :rofl: