Topic: Anyone going to watch Jeoprdy tonight? (Read 2335 times)

Sirgod · « **on:** February 14, 2011, 02:31:22 pm »

The whole Man vs. Machine should prove interesting IMHO.

IBM's "Watson" Computing System To Challenge All Time Greatest Jeopardy! Champions

ARMONK, N.Y. and CULVER CITY, CALIF. (December 14, 2010) -- IBM and America's Favorite Quiz show® Jeopardy! today announced that an IBM computing system named "Watson" will compete on Jeopardy! against the show's two most successful and celebrated contestants -- Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.

http://www.jeopardy.com/news/watson1x7ap4.php

Stephen

The Postman · « **Reply #1 on:** February 14, 2011, 07:19:47 pm »

I did watch tonight and plan to for the next 2 if I can. I was surprised to see How Ken was totally stopped for the first part of the show before he recovered and started making up for lost ground.

LordSaxon · « **Reply #2 on:** February 14, 2011, 07:44:59 pm »

Watson came out strong, but man they had a serious error where he can repeat the same (wrong) answer; surprised that didnt show up in testing.

Sirgod · « **Reply #3 on:** February 14, 2011, 08:56:24 pm »

That kind of surprised me also. Maybe he didn't have that kind of input available (What the other guy said.) If they where able to provide that, I imagine it would be easy to go with his next probable answer.

Still, I could play some serious SFC with those 5 rackmount x 10 IBM 760s or whatever they called them.

Stephen

LordSaxon · « **Reply #4 on:** February 14, 2011, 09:18:37 pm »

Well Alex said at the beginning that he can't "See or Hear" so I guess he has no way to tell what other contestants responses are. Think they coulda put in a mic. and a voice recognition/conversion program with the 800cubic feet of server, lol.

Sirgod · « **Reply #5 on:** February 15, 2011, 08:58:14 am »

LOL, no doubt. I made a mistake also on the servers. Turns out it was :

10-racks of 10-servers each (100 servers). The servers are IBM Power 750s with octa-core Power7 CPUs made by IBM. These are RISC-architecture chips, similar to what Apple used to use before they switched to Intel.

It's running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, for those of you interested in the "guts"...
- http://www.novell.com/promo/suse/ibm-watson.html

Stephen

EschelonOfJudgemnt · « **Reply #6 on:** February 16, 2011, 07:14:38 pm »

Patiently awaiting the final game. Watson has a huge lead, but it should be fascinating nonetheless.

I watched the Nova special about Watson on Sunday. Pretty fascinating. The designers acknowledged that Watson not 'hearing' the other player's responses was an issue, but I thought they had worked out a 'fix' for that (i.e. piping the player responses to Watson in some way).

Watson's big mistake on the final question last night was explained as well. Due to the 'trickiness' of Jeopardy questions, Watson was 'trained' not to put too much weight in Category names. Hence his choosing 'Toronto' as a US City, when the answer was different.

Ken Jennings is my Jeopardy hero, but it's awesome to see how much AI work has progressed recently. Not that we'll see our own computers with anywhere near Watson's computing power in the near future, but imagine what this will do for Google searches and such...

Sirgod · « **Reply #7 on:** February 16, 2011, 07:58:54 pm »

For myself, I'm getting a double enjoyment from this. First of all, of course is the tech issues, and the complexity of language.

But secondly, I have been talking with my Aunt and Grandmother, both elderly ladies who grew up with the likes of Tom swift in prose, and Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers in serials. Witnessing the child like awe with these two is akin to living a childhood from the 20's -40's. They have no idea of the tech we have.

Stephen

ShadowDiver · « **Reply #8 on:** February 16, 2011, 11:19:24 pm »

Watson vs Big Blue?

manitoba1073 · « **Reply #9 on:** February 17, 2011, 12:00:50 am »

Quote from: Sirgod on February 16, 2011, 07:58:54 pm

For myself, I'm getting a double enjoyment from this. First of all, of course is the tech issues, and the complexity of language.

But secondly, I have been talking with my Aunt and Grandmother, both elderly ladies who grew up with the likes of Tom swift in prose, and Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers in serials. Witnessing the child like awe with these two is akin to living a childhood from the 20's -40's. They have no idea of the tech we have.

Stephen

well you do need to let them outa your basement, ibstead of using them to power ur house.

knightstorm · « **Reply #10 on:** February 17, 2011, 05:02:11 pm »

Here's a NOVA episode about Watson
http://video.pbs.org/video/1786674622

EschelonOfJudgemnt · « **Reply #11 on:** February 17, 2011, 07:07:31 pm »

Quote from: ShadowDiver on February 16, 2011, 11:19:24 pm

Watson vs Big Blue?

Big Blue is a toaster compared to the computing power of Watson! Gotta luv Moore's Law!

Kreeargh · « **Reply #12 on:** February 18, 2011, 12:08:00 am »

Its cool and all but I hope they dont go to the point where that t8000 shows up at my door asking Jeopardy questions then kills my famaly for a wrong answer. Think it aint so it will prove you wrong!

EschelonOfJudgemnt · « **Reply #13 on:** February 18, 2011, 07:26:30 pm »

Speaking of which, some people in Detroit are erecting a Robocop statue:

http://www.freep.com/article/20110216/NEWS01/110216015/Sci-fi-fans-rejoice-RoboCop-statue-coming-Detroit

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