[Kraetos]

Did anyone watch Jeopardy tonight? They pit the two highest scoring Jeopardy contestants of all time against Watson, an advanced artificial intelligence which is part information retrieval and part natural language processing.

It was really fascinating to watch. During the show they would show Watson's three best answers how confident Watson was they were correct. Watson has a certainty threshold and if the three possibilities it came up with were below that threshold, it wouldn't answer unless another contestant already got it wrong.

Watson did really well to begin with, but it messed up some of the harder questions. I think it got every question in the Beatles lyrics category. But generally, the more abstract the question was, the less likely Watson was to get it right. Also, there was one category I don't think Watson got any questions right for: name the decade.

They also gave it a voice that was basically the built in Alex voice on your Mac. I think they should go the extra mile and find a way to simulate Majel Barrett's voice

[drewprops]

NOVA devoted an episode to the workup to getting Watson on Jeopardy, ending with a note about when Watson would be on the air. I'm sorry that I missed it!

[Kickaha]

I'm good friends with one of the guys who was on the team, and worked down the hall from the group when I was at IBM Research.

Quite the feat.

[Chinney]

A brief video about some of Watson's earlier trials:

http://www.slate.com/id/2284900/

[Fullthrottledesigns]

What is Skynet...

[bassplayinMacFiend]

Originally Posted by drewprops NOVA devoted an episode to the workup to getting Watson on Jeopardy, ending with a note about when Watson would be on the air. I'm sorry that I missed it!

I think it is a 3-day competition so you can still catch parts 2 and 3. As someone who saw all of Ken Jennings' run I may have to check it out.

[spotcatbug]

Originally Posted by Kraetos They also gave it a voice that was basically the built in Alex voice on your Mac. I think they should go the extra mile and find a way to simulate Majel Barrett's voice

I was thinking Sean Connery's voice would have been awesome.

[drewprops]

Originally Posted by spotcatbug I was thinking Sean Connery's voice would have been awesome.

I'll take "The Rapists" for $200, Alex!




Pssst.
SNL should reprise the Trebeck/Connery skit with Watson in the middle.
Just saying.


...

[Kickaha]

Originally Posted by spotcatbug I was thinking Sean Connery's voice would have been awesome.

I made one suggestion to the Watson team when I was there... that their (un)official team tshirts say "Suck it, Trebek."

And they made it so. ^_^