Ken Jennings | Onelargeprawn

You may recall an earlier post on Watson (refresh your memory), IBM’s artificial intelligence system that is part of their DeepQA, a research project that aims to understand and answer questions that are asked in everyday natural language.

During a warm-up match shot in early January 2011, Watson competed against two of the all-time greats of the popular American quiz show, “Jeopardy!” Watson was pitted against Ken Jennings, who has won over USD 3,000,000 and Brad Rutter, the biggest all-time money earner on the show. At the end of the round, Watson came out the clear winner. Now the time for the IBM Challenge has come, and during the period from February 14th to the 16th Watson will officially face the two champions in two matches. The winner of the matches will pocket the USD 1,000,000 prize. Here is day one of the IBM Challenge where the show introduces Watson and takes a look at its innards and history before proceeding to the contest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PSPvHcLnN0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtHlxzOXgYs

So, were you surprised at the results?

[via Aki Anastasiou on Twitter]

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]