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Doctor Q

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Watch out Ken Jennings. Watson is coming!

News story

IBM's Jeopardy-playing supercomputer is now capable of beating human Jeopardy contestants on a regular basis, but has a ways to go before it takes on the likes of 74-time champion Ken Jennings.

IBM announced plans to build a computer that can win on Jeopardy last April, and expects to stage a public tournament involving human players and the machine within the next year or so.
 

Doctor Q

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Will the next Jeopardy! superchamp be an IBM computer?

From IBM's press release:
Officials from Jeopardy! announced plans to produce a human vs. machine competition on the renowned show.

For nearly two years, IBM scientists have been working on a highly advanced Question Answering (QA) system, codenamed "Watson." The scientists believe that the computing system will be able to understand complex questions and answer with enough precision and speed to compete on Jeopardy!

"The challenge is to build a system that, unlike systems before it, can rival the human mind’s ability to determine precise answers to natural language questions and to compute accurate confidences in the answers," said Dr. David Ferrucci, leader of the IBM Watson project team. "This confidence processing ability is key. It greatly distinguishes the IBM approach from conventional search, and is critical to implementing useful business applications of Question Answering."​

YouTube video

More info at http://ibm.com/whatiswatson.
 

RawBert

macrumors 68000
Jan 19, 2010
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^^^This would be very interesting. Although, a machine on Jeopardy! wouldn't Be the same as a machine (like Deep Blue) playing chess. That's a strategy game and this is a knowledge game. :confused:

PS, I want me some Larissa Kelly. Oh, baby.
Look at them cans.
lk-hot.jpg
 

Doctor Q

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^^^This would be very interesting. Although, a machine on Jeopardy! wouldn't Be the same as a machine (like Deep Blue) playing chess. That's a strategy game and this is a knowledge game.
They are both both (strategy and knowledge).

Knowledge: Deep Blue had a store of game openings and game endings; it didn't compute them each time. Watson has a store of facts.

Strategy: Deep Blue used heuristics, not just analysis of the next N moves, to guide it. Watson must use strategy to decide how confident it is about questions it must "guess" at, when to buzz in, what the category names mean, which category and point value to choose when it gets to pick the next answer, and how much to bet on Double Jeopardy and Final Jeopardy.
 

RawBert

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Jan 19, 2010
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I found out who won, but I will still watch.
There's no way I would try to find out who won. :)

I'm really excited about this challenge.

What Watson should become (IMO):
Since 1996 when we want a question answered, we usually Google it. It refers us to websites that contain the keywords searched.
If a version of Watson was modified to be an online know-it-all answer engine, it could be pretty useful.
But it would only be useful for straightforward questions you want answered instead of research. Either way, I'd love to use Watson online some day.
 

Doctor Q

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I tried stating this at ask.com:
This household pet is considered man's best friend.​
and the first result begins "A Dog".

But it didn't phrase it as a question. Sorry, Jeeves, you lose!
 

yg17

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Aug 1, 2004
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Not a bad showing from Watson tonight. If it asks for "The Rapist for 200" then insults Trebek's mother, it'll be a winner in my book.

"Not in the Rs? That's not what your mother said last night Trebek!"

"...and if the penis mightier really works, I'll order a dozen!"
 

Doctor Q

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Did you notice that when Ken Jennings got a question wrong and then Watson had a turn, it made the same wrong guess as Jennings? I guess Watson is fed the Jeopardy! answers as Trebek reads them, but isn't told what the other players say during their turns. Presumably they aren't set up for live transcription and it's not set up for real-time audio interpretation either.

I have a question about the rules. Can players buzz in before Alex finishes reading the question? For example, if he says
This executive, famous for wearing a black turtleneck...​
and they think the question is "Who is Steve Jobs?" can they buzz in to guess before the question is complete? If Watson is given the question only when Alex finishes reading it then early buzzing would be an advantage that the humans should exploit.

I wonder if Watson will shake hands at the end of the game or of it's a bad sport. :rolleyes:

Just for fun: history of the ACM computer chess championships
 
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