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Meet Watson, the AI Jeopardy Genius!

Word around the server room is that a super computer has beaten two supremely champions in a test match of Jeopardy. It was in preparation for the human vs. computer contest that is due to be recorded in the coming days. Initially I wasn’t surprised the machine won, it’s a supercomputer; it can search through its massive banks of data and produce the correct answer before its human opponent can say “Um…” But it turns to be somewhat more complex and grand undertaking than I could have ever imagined.

Watson is the name of this all-conquering overlord artificial intelligence system created by IBM. It is named after the founder of IBM, Thomas J. Watson who in 1948 said, “I think there’s a world market for about 5 computers.” I bet his mind would have exploded if he were to see the extent to which computers are ingrained in our lives today. In 2007 IBM Research began creating Watson as part of DeepQA, a research project that aims to understand and answer questions that are posed in spoken sentences that we use every day, natural language as it’s called. This little clip from IBM explains how Watson came into being.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1c7s7-3fXI&NR

And here is the warm-up match where Watson competed against contestants Ken Jennings who has earned over USD 3 million on the game show, and Brad Rutter who is biggest all-time money winner on Jeopardy.

If Watson had emotions (we are informed he does not), I’d just imagine a huge shit-eating grin would be plastered all over its LCD screen. The human vs. computer Jeopardy episode will be aired in mid February. If you’re a betting person, who would you put your money on?

[via Geekologie | Tvtrophes]

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3 replies on “Meet Watson, the AI Jeopardy Genius!”

According to the FAQ, Watson is not connected to the Internet. Its “knowledge” comes from the data stored in its databases.

How can you find all these answers without being connected to the Internet?

Watson will not have enough data to answer every possible Jeopardy! question in its self-contained memory, nor can it possibly predict the questions it will get. In this sense it has the same limitations as do the best human contestants. The entire Watson computer system will be self-contained and on stage as are the human contestants – no external connections, no life-lines – what you see is what you get. The purpose of this technology showcase is to demonstrate the system’s ability to deeply analyze the data it does have and to compute accurate confidences based on supporting or refuting natural language evidence. Think of it as if Watson has read a lot of books and in real time relates what it read to the question to find and support the right answers.

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