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[alway]

So, now that the first game has been aired, I figure it's time to make a thread about it.
After the first game Jennings had $4800, Rutter had $10400, and Watson had $35734. After the second game, the totals were 21600 for Rutter, 24000 for Jennings, and 77147 for Watson.
Part 1, day 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLdkJpAtt1I&feature=related
Part 2, day 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXH7jn2AHAw&feature=related
Part 1, day 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk7Ic8dx9bg
Part 2, day 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaJR4HpoWgU
Part 1, day 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3XrYaxKBJY
Part 2, day 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W36OuMU0yE

IBM videos about Watson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fanwviCWMQs&playnext=1&list=PL4F1C783776E708A8

The future: you are in it.

[Enzo]

"FIFTEEN TRILLION BYTES" That's...uh...actually not all that impressive. Considering it's a supercomputer and everything.

Also, why do they have to give this things human names? It's just creepy.

[breadbocks]

Yeah. I'd say Watson had a huge advantage. He had instant reflexes to be able to respond, so Ken/Dave (I think that was the other guy...) couldn't beat Watson to the gun, and Watson had literally the entirety of ANYTHING those questions could be about in his databanks. All in all, no surprise it won. I'm shocked this hasn't been done before, in fact.

[freeformschooler]

Yeah. I'd say Watson had a huge advantage. He had instant reflexes to be able to respond, so Ken/Dave (I think that was the other guy...) couldn't beat Watson to the gun, and Watson had literally the entirety of ANYTHING those questions could be about in his databanks. All in all, no surprise it won. I'm shocked this hasn't been done before, in fact.

Yeah, but it's still impressive that it stored and instantly retrieved the answer to anything as compared to anything from physical data banks without actually even touching the internet a single time.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

"FIFTEEN TRILLION BYTES" That's...uh...actually not all that impressive. Considering it's a supercomputer and everything.

If I've got my unit orders right....
15,000,000,000,000 Bytes = 15,000,000,000 Kilobytes = 15,000,000 Megabytes = 15,000 Gigabytes = 15 Terabytes

...yeah, that's not much at all. There are civilian hard drives that have way more memory.

Also, why do they have to give this things human names? It's just creepy.

Stupid human tricks.

[alway]

Also, why do they have to give this things human names? It's just creepy.

Stupid human tricks.

And because addressing it as Language Processing Unit 001 just sounds corny.


Actually, one of the things they were talking about earlier in its development was that it won't ring in unless it is reasonably certain of its answer. IIRC, it took around 3 seconds to get to that point, and so for short questions it may actually not have an answer by the time you are allowed to ring in.

Essentially the task looks trivial until it is actually described in depth by IBM's previously released videos.

Edit: IBM's playlist of said videos added to OP.

[Jopax]

Why was my first tought after seeing the title "Watson from Sherlock?"

[Chutney]

because it was named after him?

Anyways, yea, this was really interesting! I liked some of the potential answers Watson came up with. Too bad it didn't know somebody already tried "1920's", haha.
I have no idea why it doesn't have voice recognition. WE have voice recognition on OUR tiny crappy campus, in the ATC labs. I figure IBM would at least be able to use that technology to their purposes. but huh, maybe they didn't have time?

[Tellemurius]

it was named after the founder of IBM Thomas J. Watson

[Chutney]

it was named after the founder of IBM Thomas J. Watson

well, my professor lied to the entire class
what a mean old man  (though it probably isn't his fault)

[Zangi]

it was named after the founder of IBM Thomas J. Watson

well, my professor lied to the entire class
what a mean old man  (though it probably isn't his fault)

Spreading rumours and half-truths is all the rage.

[alway]

Speaking of which, the end amounts for the players was wrong on the site I originally pulled them from. Updated now. And found the final part's video.

[Duke 2.0]

 Information storage and gathering: Unimpressive. It's just archiving information. We have been doing stuff like that for decades, and while it may not have been as fast about it as this the whole database aspect to it is not what's impressive here.

 It's the contextual understanding of questions. Some answers have puns and indirect ways of conveying themselves, things that computers have huge difficulty understanding. The fact that the computer could recognize what most of these questions meant was the impressive thing.

[Aqizzar]

I couldn't agree more.  In all honesty, Johnny 5 was more prescient than it looked.  Understanding a joke is an ability we humans take for granted, but that's because we're extraordinary parallel-processing computers.  Just think how you translate "Whatever God wants, he keeps" into a something a machine can understand.  Then think about how to write a program that can translate crap like that on the fly.  It basically relies on cross-referencing all of human culture against a question to look for clues, and build a database of illogical references.

However, it's complicated programming, but it's obviously not terribly processor-intensive.  That it arrived at correct answers at all is a landmark in programming, but "Watson" still had a huge advantage in that it took microseconds to arrive at an answer.

[PenguinOverlord]

Either Jeopardy with Watson/a supercomputer already happened, or I have powers to see into the future.
Huh. I guess it did, or with some other game show.