IBM "Watson" responding on Jeopardy. Very realistic voice and quick responses.




Blessed are the murderous.

It started last night. I felt a little cheated cause they only did the first round and did a bunch of explaining about Watson and what it does and how they developed it. Tonight is Double Jeopardy and Final Jeopardy and then Wednesday maybe we get a whole episode all in one?

By the way Watson didn't destroy them. I think one of the guys is and the computer are tied. Ken Jennings' is in third.

I love it when the computer says "Let's finish 'Chicks dig me'"

It's only a matter of time until we achieve Skynet.

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That's not a ladybug, that's a cannapiller.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/15/2011 12:20PM by Warhawk.

I'm not impressed by this thing. It's just a really refined, giant search engine. This is not artificial intelligence. It's an algorithm. It's designed to recognize patterns and statistics--it's all mathematics--just another machine. Wake me when they design a machine that can think abstractly. It's the same technology that Amazon.com uses to suggest books you might be interested in. Big deal. What a wast of time and money.

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I apologize to those I unfairly hurt. To Harry Tuttle in particular.

http://www.studio360.org/2011/feb/11/category-man-vs-machine/

Last year technology writer Clive Thompson visited Watson at IBM to watch him gear up for the big match. Clive told Kurt that thanks to the internet, scientists have fed millions of digitized documents into Watson’s “brain.†As soon as Alex Trebek gives the clue, Watson scans the documents and runs hundreds of algorithms to come up with the most statistically probable answer.

Watson is about the size of 10 refrigerators (and requires at least that much Freon to stay cool), but on Jeopardy! he'll appear as a tall flat screen monitor. According to Clive, his synthesized voice “sounds a little like the movie War Games… the computer that almost destroys the world in thermonuclear holocaust.â€

Mr. Misery Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm not impressed by this thing. It's just a
> really refined, giant search engine. This is not
> artificial intelligence. It's an algorithm. It's
> designed to recognize patterns and
> statistics--it's all mathematics--just another
> machine. Wake me when they design a machine that
> can think abstractly. It's the same technology
> that Amazon.com uses to suggest books you might be
> interested in. Big deal. What a wast of time and
> money.


You are exactly right. It is voice recognition and high speed Google search.Wow! I think I have a version of that on my Droid.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/15/2011 12:42PM by mcsmack.

Mr. Misery Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm not impressed by this thing. It's just a
> really refined, giant search engine. This is not
> artificial intelligence. It's an algorithm. It's
> designed to recognize patterns and
> statistics--it's all mathematics--just another
> machine. Wake me when they design a machine that
> can think abstractly. It's the same technology
> that Amazon.com uses to suggest books you might be
> interested in. Big deal. What a wast of time and
> money.


I worked for IBM and have designed and written much software to do what Watson is doing. I did it 20 and 30 years ago and it really hasn't improved. That really is the best available with what is available today. There really is not anything such as artificial intelligence. It is only as smart as the software behind it. You can grow your data with additional info as you get it, but that is about it. I am enjoying watching Watson but I am not really impressed at all. It seems that they still have some obvious bugs. I can't believe they couldn't determine that the other player already answered with the answer he gave. I think it is much harder to do then it would appear. I am still going to watch the rest of the series.

Anyone else noticed that Ken Jennings seemed visibly pissed off at Watson?

mcsmack Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> You are exactly right. It is voice recognition and
> high speed Google search.Wow! I think I have a
> version of that on my Droid.

It doesn't even do that. My understanding is that the questions are submitted via text file as it does not have voice recognition. This makes me feel it's a bit unfair as a computer can "read" the question faster than a human. Also, at what point is the question submitted to Watson? Seems kinda sketchy.

More Complete Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> mcsmack Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> >
> > You are exactly right. It is voice recognition
> and
> > high speed Google search.Wow! I think I have a
> > version of that on my Droid.
>
> It doesn't even do that. My understanding is that
> the questions are submitted via text file as it
> does not have voice recognition. This makes me
> feel it's a bit unfair as a computer can "read"
> the question faster than a human. Also, at what
> point is the question submitted to Watson? Seems
> kinda sketchy.

i watched it last night and it does seem kind of sketchy.

however, i thought it was funny that watson did not get any answer correct in the "decades" (or whatever it was) category. not even the 3 answers it was thinking of was correct.

Probably should have test run it on "Are you smarter than a 5th grader"

mcsmack Wrote:
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> Probably should have test run it on "Are you
> smarter than a 5th grader"


That'd make national headlines. "Jeff Foxworthy crashes IBM Game Show Computer"