Lost in Space
I'm going to try to watch the final episode tonight. I'm really intrigued by this, not so much by Watson's ability to search vast libraries of data (that's what computers are good at, after all) as by its ability to process natural language (the Jeopardy clues) and arrive at correct conclusions regarding what's being asked.
It has some rather staggering implications for weak AI in the fields of natural language - imagine a search engine that could process your queries as natural language and return actually relevant results? It's been tried before but seldom successfully.
edited 16th Feb '11 7:25:24 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
This must be like the fourth thread we have on Watson.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Really? I searched both "Watson" and "Jeopardy" in the titles and didn't see it. Similarly on Yack Fest.
edited 16th Feb '11 8:17:45 AM by BonsaiForest
Lost in Space
Well, if there are separate threads on OTT, IJAM, and Yack Fest, they can generally stay that way since the membership for those subfora is very different.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
This is all news to me, but still incredibly cool.
Now if they only brought Watson in for Celebrity Jeopardy...
Well it seems like quite a success since IBM started their "better search engine" research at the Watson labs.
Brother of Favio
Anyone have a full video on this? It sounds really interesting, but I can only find brief clips on Youtube.
Brother of Favio
I watched the last episode of the "saga" on TV a while ago. Wow, that computer is pretty amazing. It's funny how they show its top 3 choices, though, because the third one is typically something that's really far off and barely related to the topic at all.
Only One Avatar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgYSv2KSyWg
That is a video of Watson strutting its stuff. It gets the daily double correct.
edited 16th Feb '11 6:14:16 PM by Grain
Anime geemu wo shinasai!
More like giant cherries
What is Toronto? Apparently not a U.S. city.
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play
The capital of Canada.
Unchanging Avatar.
The largest city in Canada.
Except for 4/1/2011. That day lingers in my memory like...metaphor here...I should go.
I am wrong.
Watson finds the answer elementary.
edited 16th Feb '11 8:14:27 PM by Newfable
Yep, My Brain Stopped
I for one embrace our inevitable robot overlords.
edited 16th Feb '11 8:17:02 PM by Apocali
This foreboding is fa...
The AI aspect of interpreting the question is pretty cool, but it does seem like the computer would have a better reaction time for "pushing" the buzzer (I'm imagining it's just wired up to it directly, which seems a bit unfair.) Or does it not buzz in until it has a set of 3 answers?
edited 16th Feb '11 10:46:39 PM by deathjavu
Look, you can't make me speak in a logical, coherent, intelligent bananna.
See ALL the stars!
It works out if it'll have the answer by the time it needs to push the buzzer. There's also a pause between the end of the question and the buzzers activating.
edited 17th Feb '11 4:04:41 AM by Yej
Da Rules excuse all the inaccuracy in the world. Listen to them, not me.
More like giant cherries
Actually, they set up a mechanical button pusher to make it fair.
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play
More like giant cherries
I went to a presentation by one of the guys who worked on Watson. It was pretty interesting. He also talked a bit about the infamous "What is Toronto" answer and why Watson missed it.
Apparently, the top three choices were Toronto 14% Chicago 11% Omaha 10%
So Watson did get the correct answer in the top three at least. And it was also smart enough to realize that it's answer probably wasn't correct.
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play
Geomancer
This is incredible. I can't believe they came up with something like this!
You got some dirt on you. Here's some more!
The Fastest Man Alive
I heard that the reason it missed the fact that Toronto is in Canada is because of the overabundance of places in the United States called "Ontario." It saw Ontario, connected it to the myriad of other Ontarios, and came up with the wrong answer.
Either way, I hope IBM realizes they created Skynet.
Honestly I say this "Watson" should be smashed to pieces.
I'm highly against AI computers.
^ What? It's a fancy search engine. It's Google dressed up so it can parse strangely worded queries.
Anyone happen to see the episodes of Jeopardy they're running this week (the last of the set will be shown today), where Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter compete against an IBM-built computer named Watson?
The computer, of course, is kicking their asses.
I think it's a pretty cool idea. Whenever someone rings in, 3 answers that the computer thinks might possibly be correct are shown at the bottom of the screen, with percentages of each being correct according to Watson's logic. It got a few questions wrong, in some cases WAY wrong uses odd computer-like logic, but you could see what it was thinking in a sense by seeing the possible answers.
It also wagered odd, random amounts of money. "I'll wager $1246."
I hope it's on You Tube. I'm at work now, so I can't check, but if you guys can check it, link up some You Tube vids in this topic so others could see?
I realize it's a gimmick, both in terms of marketing for IBM (and there were breaks in the match containing "informercials" about how great this new technology is), and in terms of a novelty match for Jeopardy, but I found it really fun.
Oh yeah, Watson is not internet-connected, but instead has a ton of information contained within his hard drives. So he wasn't searching Wikipedia or anything, but instead his own internal memory.