IBM's Watson Aims To Prove Its Intelligence On Jeopardy!
from the the-only-winning-move-is-not-to-play? dept
The world of supercomputing and artificial intelligence has always been fascinated with games like chess, Go and poker -- where evaluating strategies for winning could be approached using vast computational resources. Another historical challenge for AI projects is the classic Turing Test, which requires an understanding of human communication in order to pass the test. So it's interesting to see IBM starting a project called Watson (named after IBM's founder, not Sherlock's assistant) to create a computer to compete on Jeopardy! against human contestants -- because doing so combines the goals of natural language processing and strategic game planning.Obviously, though, Watson is more of a product demonstration than a serious research project to advance the field of computer science, but it's still a brilliant move, nonetheless, since the effort can be understood by anyone who watches popular game shows, and at the same time, the project studies a practical problem for algorithms. However, the game of Jeopardy! is somewhat trivial (no pun intended, honest) since Jeopardy's given answers all have matching questions -- and it doesn't really require true comprehension to guess (apparently, human contestants respond correctly about 85% of the time). Granted, Jeopardy! is a bit harder to play than Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, but Alex Trebek doesn't seem quite as computationally demanding as search engines can be (unless you count the audio/video Daily Doubles?). Still, IBM should be applauded for supporting its research as eye-catching PR campaigns -- while other companies like Microsoft are getting more attention for downsizing their research divisions.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
I would read the article, but it is NYT - registration
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
IBM recently cut 5000 US employees. Transferring jobs and customer accounts to India/Brazil/Malaysia.... They are a horrible corporate citizen and are led entirely by self serving greedy executives who only care enough to keep IBM afloat to continue to line their own pockets.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Isn't this SOP in the business world?
I think it is covered in BUS 101.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Sorry some one had to say it :)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
IBM's Watson Aims To Prove Its Intelligence On Jeopardy!
Thats ok though IBM will still make money.(For those of you that dont get it that is called sarcasm)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Hmmm
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
IBM vs MS
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
This isn't new
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: This isn't new
Watson isn't rigged in that way. This Watson computer system will try to interpret the answers and come up with its own answers, so that it's playing fairly against human contestants. It's possible that the program will just guess gibberish and only occasionally get a correct response.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Project Watson
We at International Quizzing Association are very excited by this development. This should be quite a challenge in future.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
More Watson appearances=more people running World community grid. It's a shame they never took a few minutes to talk about WCG instead of Watson on jeopardy.
http://www.itnewsonline.com/showprnstory.php?storyid=144786
[ link to this | view in chronology ]