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3 comments
02/15 2011

Call of the Day: IBM’s Watson on Jeopardy (The Sports Parts)

Posted by Dan Levy.

Yesterday was the much-heralded debut of WATSON on the fantastic game show Jeopardy! (the exclamation point is theirs, not mine). The half-hour program was basically an ad for IBM with a few questions sprinkled throughout, so hopefully the next two nights of man-vs.-man-vs.-machine will be more about the actual game and less about the giant server room that houses the dozens of racks it takes to make Watson intuitive.

The process is pretty neat, and there’s a little bit of that in this video (though I only put that in to show everyone that one of Watson’s initial choices for a question about non-dairy creamer was LPGA golfer Paula Creamer, which automatically qualifies Watson as one of the biggest LPGA supporters on the planet.) Still, there was a category about sports on the show last night, so here are all the sports parts.

Here’s my only issue with this gimmick: I’ve watched thousands of episodes of this show and always assume that every Jeopardy contestant knows at least 75% of the answers (or questions), making ultimate success or failure based simply on who can buzz in first. Didn’t Ken Jennings basically admit that much of the reason why he was on the show for so long was because he’d developed a better sense of timing for when to press the buzzer than his new opponents?

So, if Watson is getting the questions in text form and not listening to Alex Trebek give the clue, he has more than a second longer to find the answer while the other two contestants have to try and read the screen and listen to Trebek’s voice, all while processing the answer before preparing to click a buzzer. If you can teach a computer how to be intuitive, you can surely teach it to buzz in at the right nanosecond.

Did you catch the grimmace by Jennings on nearly every question Watson answered? He wasn’t stuck in last place because he didn’t know the answers and Watson did. He was stuck in last place because a computer figured out how to buzz in faster than he did. I’m not sure exactly what that proves.

Still, it’s a great ad for IBM and, uh, SPORTS on Jeopardy!

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Posted on February 15, 2011 at 6:49AM

 

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  1. Nathan Jaschob
    02/15 2011

    From a mechanical engineer by training that has no dog in this fight at all…

    Dan, I think you’re missing the point…the computer cannot really buzz in before the others get the chance. The text Watson gets is received when Trebek finishes reading the clue, which is the moment anyone’s buzzer works. Yes, the computer may be able to buzz in a fraction of a second earlier, but it’s not because it processes the clue any sooner (quicker, perhaps, based on reaction time, but not sooner).

    And to Nick’s point about “recognizing human speech”…that was never claimed in any story I saw. The bigger story is the ability to recognize speech patterns, figures of speech, etc that previous computers could not do (as you even saw early in Watson’s “life” with the “milk” or “Paula Creamer” responses to the non-dairy creamer clue).

    I agree it’s largely a big ad for IBM, but it’s cool nonetheless because it shows progress made in a computer’s ability to process not only straight facts but more subtle clues. It may get old after a few days, agreed, but let’s not pooh-pooh this too quickly.

  2. ed lafenium
    02/15 2011

    Nathan, you are completely wrong. They specifically said Watson gets the text at the samne time the other contestants SEE the clue. i.e. when it appears on the screen. he has the whole time Trebek reads the question to come up with his answer and figure out when to buzz in.

  3. ovirto
    02/15 2011

    I agree with ed. My understanding is that Watson is getting the entire digital text of the Jeopardy answer as soon as Trebek starts reading. In a lot of cases, it appears that Watson is not winning because it knows answers Jennings/Rutter don’t know or deriving the answer faster than Jennings and Rutter, it’s winning because it’s beating them to the buzzer.

    What is impressive in the way Watson is able to interpret the Jeopardy answer though. The ability to parse the words into something meaning and get at the essence of what is being asked is pretty remarkable. It is doing it with the speed and accuracy of the human brain, but with the ability to reference a lot of raw data than any human could.