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02/16 2011

Call of the Day: What If IBM’s Watson Was An Athlete, Not A Jeopardy Contestant

Posted by Dan Levy.

Tuesday’s episode of Jeopardy was day two of the long-running game show’s three-day ad for IBM, featuring super computer Watson as one of the contestants against the show’s two greatest human champions. Watson destroyed Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in Double Jeopardy, so much so that the segment about how smart Watson became more entertaining than the actual competition.

Now the question becomes: did IBM make Watson too smart for Jeopardy?

Obviously the answer is no, it’s impossible to make computers “too smart” for anything. But it’s pretty obvious after two days that the computer isn’t exactly set up properly for this particular game show, and the rules they had to bend to accommodate Watson have made the game more of a cheap gimmick than a true test of man-v-man-v-machine.

We mentioned this yesterday, but it bears repeating that Watson cannot see, nor hear, meaning the computer cannot digest the clue in the same manner by which the human contestants do. Watson receives the clues by text, giving the computer a clear advantage over someone who has to read the clue while Alex Trebek is talking, using two senses at the same time his or her brain is trying to find the answer (question). It does make you wonder if the original plan was to have Watson see and hear, but when that proved too difficult to accomplish, the game changed some rules to make it work.

Only, it kinda ruined the game. This is the equivalent of having a computer on Wheel of Fortune that can’t spin the wheel. Sure, Pat Sajak can spin it for him, but that defeats the purpose of a contestant actually spinning the wheel to decide his or her own fate. It’s half the game!

We have some bloggy friends who were on the Teen version of the show so maybe they can say better, but I’d surmise that part of the difficulty of the game show is not just knowing the answer, but knowing the answer in enough time to be the first to buzz in when the opportunity comes. Keeping in mind that Watson is a COMPUTER that can trigger the signaling button in a nanosecond once he knows the answer, the game becomes less about Watson knowing enough to beat humans and more Watson constantly beating the humans in a game of who can buzz in first.

What was most shocking, however, last night was that the Final Jeopardy category was U.S. Cities and Watson’s answer (question) was TORONTO.

Some super computer, IBM.

Anyway, the sports point: since this Jeopardy exercise hasn’t really shown anything other than a super smart computer can read keywords in a clue and use those keywords instantly to give the best answer (question) to that clue — an amazing feat, don’t get me wrong, but how different is that from a search engine, really — I thought about what Watson would be if IBM made him into an athlete, not a contestant on Jeopardy.

Watson would be the greatest home run hitter of all time. He’d figure out a way to crush every fastball, curveball or slider thrown to him. Of course, he’d have an inability to hit a knuckleball, because who’d take the time to teach him how to his such a statistically-insignificant offering.

But since Watson doesn’t have arms or legs, he’d need someone to wheel him around the basepaths. So Watson could never be a real baseball player, just like he’s not a real competitor on Jeopardy: the real Watson can’t see or hear, two very important parts of the actual game show. Without that, he’s an amazingly fast computer that has mastered speech, cognitive deduction and buzzing in faster than two super-smart humans. It’s amazing — like super deserves three days on national TV amazing, I grant that — but it’s kinda like hitting the ball really far and then not being able to do anything else after that. He might be the best power hitter of all time, but without the ability to run, he couldn’t even be a DH. HE COULDN’T EVEN DH!

He’d be relegated to the Home Run Derby.

I guess that’s what this three-day Jeopardy tournament is: the home run derby of knowing stuff. Still pretty cool, I guess.

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Posted on February 16, 2011 at 8:59AM

 

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