Implications are great. Imagine anyone being able to go up to a kiosk and ask vague/natural language questions and getting answers like that with that speed.
You mean ask your smart phone right?
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He's a shy overambitious dog-catcher on the wrong side of the law. She's an orphaned psychic mercenary with the power to bend men's minds. They fight crime!
Implications are great. Imagine anyone being able to go up to a kiosk and ask vague/natural language questions and getting answers like that with that speed.
You mean ask your smart phone right?
Yeah ^ this.
Also is there somewhere I can watch this online because I am super-curious.
Implications are great. Imagine anyone being able to go up to a kiosk and ask vague/natural language questions and getting answers like that with that speed.
You mean ask your smart phone right?
Yeah ^ this.
Also is there somewhere I can watch this online because I am super-curious.
Yeah, I wouldn't go and say the computer has an advantage or anything in buzzing in, but just from casual watching, it looks like outside of a blue moon, the only time the others buzz in is when Watson specifically doesn't. I know I saw the clip that shows he actually has a physical plunger pushing it instead of it being purely digital, but I assume he knows precisely when the buzz-in goes on, and can hit it within milliseconds.
I think it's just one of those things that there's no way in hell you could ever balance perfectly. No point trying to over analyze it.
Watson's disturbingly specific bid on the first DD was pretty funny. As was FJ's "What is Toronto????????". At least we'll all be giggling if it ever takes over the world.
The chocolate ration has been increased from 30 to 20 cows per month.
At the end of yesterday's show it appeared that the contestants had watsons number, you could see that they were ringing in immediately the light went on and then thinking while Alex said their name. I bet they were told not to do that today, since Watson obliterated them.
Considering they've done a lot of practice sessions with Watson before and that today really isn't a new day for the show, they filmed all three shows on the same day back to back, I doubt it.
A lot of you are missing the big picture. This computer can play fucking Jeopardy with 90+% accuracy and it has the ability to adapt, to learn from its mistakes.
This is one of those things that people didn't expect until 2025.
I'm going to have to go with something similar to tbloxham here. A lot of those questions weren't especially difficult (particularly to the extent that you could think of the answer before Trebek finished reading). Which leads me to believe they either retuned Watson's buzzer (or the computer automatically attempts to tune the timing to be as fast as possible), or altered the way everyone rang in during the break.
But it does give Watson a chance to show that it can at least handle natural language queries. From a Jeopardy! perspective I'd be hesitant about the specifics of information loaded into it. It basically gets the knowledge of a specialist in every field to put in any data they think might be useful. Which is arguably more fair than letting Watson connect to the internet (although that'd likely take longer to gather information for answers), but still ...that's like having 150 brains to work with instead of collecting knowledge by yourself over time.
This would probably alleviate people's qualms about a Jeopardy game with 3 Watsons, though. If they all had the same database to draw from they'd likely come up with the same answers (barring some sort of decay of information in the circuits), unless you gave each contestant computer their own set of specialists to input data.
But then your game will probably cost over a billion dollars to host.
Implications are great. Imagine anyone being able to go up to a kiosk and ask vague/natural language questions and getting answers like that with that speed.
You mean ask your smart phone right?
I don't think they have all those Power7 servers in a smartphone form factor yet.
Implications are great. Imagine anyone being able to go up to a kiosk and ask vague/natural language questions and getting answers like that with that speed.
You mean ask your smart phone right?
I don't think they have all those Power7 servers in a smartphone form factor yet.
Implications are great. Imagine anyone being able to go up to a kiosk and ask vague/natural language questions and getting answers like that with that speed.
You mean ask your smart phone right?
I don't think they have all those Power7 servers in a smartphone form factor yet.
Give it like fifteen years. We'll get there.
Doesn't matter. The internet and smart phones means we can put an arbitrary amount of computer power at any location on the planet with a delay of (at most) about 3 seconds.
It seems to me that if the computer is getting some kind of electronic signal tied to the light contestants see that indicates when you can ring in, then this is inherently unfair. Isn't the computer always going to have a faster reaction time than a human who has to see the light and react?
I also thought the Final Jeopardy question was a good example of the type of question the computer absolutely cannot answer.
Yeah, I wouldn't go and say the computer has an advantage or anything in buzzing in, but just from casual watching, it looks like outside of a blue moon, the only time the others buzz in is when Watson specifically doesn't. I know I saw the clip that shows he actually has a physical plunger pushing it instead of it being purely digital, but I assume he knows precisely when the buzz-in goes on, and can hit it within milliseconds.
I think it's just one of those things that there's no way in hell you could ever balance perfectly. No point trying to over analyze it.
Watson's disturbingly specific bid on the first DD was pretty funny. As was FJ's "What is Toronto????????". At least we'll all be giggling if it ever takes over the world.
The chocolate ration has been increased from 30 to 20 cows per month.
At the end of yesterday's show it appeared that the contestants had watsons number, you could see that they were ringing in immediately the light went on and then thinking while Alex said their name. I bet they were told not to do that today, since Watson obliterated them.
Considering they've done a lot of practice sessions with Watson before and that today really isn't a new day for the show, they filmed all three shows on the same day back to back, I doubt it.
A lot of you are missing the big picture. This computer can play fucking Jeopardy with 90+% accuracy and it has the ability to adapt, to learn from its mistakes.
This is one of those things that people didn't expect until 2025.
I'm going to have to go with something similar to tbloxham here. A lot of those questions weren't especially difficult (particularly to the extent that you could think of the answer before Trebek finished reading). Which leads me to believe they either retuned Watson's buzzer (or the computer automatically attempts to tune the timing to be as fast as possible), or altered the way everyone rang in during the break.
But it does give Watson a chance to show that it can at least handle natural language queries. From a Jeopardy! perspective I'd be hesitant about the specifics of information loaded into it. It basically gets the knowledge of a specialist in every field to put in any data they think might be useful. Which is arguably more fair than letting Watson connect to the internet (although that'd likely take longer to gather information for answers), but still ...that's like having 150 brains to work with instead of collecting knowledge by yourself over time.
This would probably alleviate people's qualms about a Jeopardy game with 3 Watsons, though. If they all had the same database to draw from they'd likely come up with the same answers (barring some sort of decay of information in the circuits), unless you gave each contestant computer their own set of specialists to input data.
But then your game will probably cost over a billion dollars to host.
Watsons success in answering the questions is undeniably impressive, but, you could actually see on the contestants faces at the end of round 1 that they were perking up and buzzing in instantly. First Ken started doing it, then Brad and suddenly Watson didn't buzz in for a single answer in the last half of the show.
I mean, it's not like watson could get stressed out and stop answering, and it's not like the other players aren't ringing in on every single question. You can see them hammering away on the buzzer. I just bet that monday night at the end they weren't even listening to the question, just watching the 'you can buzz in now light' so that they could get a chance to answer.
Still, can Watson play jeopardy with natural language questions. Absolutely. Although, you can spot the questions where he totally falls apart. It's those where you need to combine more than 4 key concepts from the clue to get the answer.
I'm curious how Watson decides what to wager on DDs and in FJ. They've been pretty ridiculous numbers.
I was actually surprised at how little he bid for FJ. Was he not confident in questions about US Cities? That doesn't seem right to me. He wasn't just playing it safe, either, as both humans basiclaly doubled their money and still didn't come close to catching him--he could have wagered almost 20,000 and been safe if he lost it.
Also, I get that it was a guess, but Toronto's not even a US City. Well, okay, a quick Google search says there is at least a Toronto, Kansas and Toronto, South Dakota. Still... I would be curious, as someone else said, what his top three choices were and what the percentages were for each.
There's a universal lockout on the buzzer for normal Jeopardy shows after Trebek stops talking, to prevent people from answering questions halfway through being asked. So not only would the machine have to detect him not talking anymore, they'd have to calculate that in time to figure out the lockout period.
doesnt that make things easier if theres a lockout on it?
like couldnt you just spam the button until it let your signal through?
edit: oh there's a penalty associated with that too?
When Ken Jennings was first on the show having his marathon streak of wins, he said in interviews that a large part of his success was figuring out the perfect moment to ring the buzzer so he could beat his opponents to the punch more often than not.
There's a universal lockout on the buzzer for normal Jeopardy shows after Trebek stops talking, to prevent people from answering questions halfway through being asked. So not only would the machine have to detect him not talking anymore, they'd have to calculate that in time to figure out the lockout period.
doesnt that make things easier if theres a lockout on it?
like couldnt you just spam the button until it let your signal through?
edit: oh there's a penalty associated with that too?
When Ken Jennings was first on the show having his marathon streak of wins, he said in interviews that a large part of his success was figuring out the perfect moment to ring the buzzer so he could beat his opponents to the punch more often than not.
I think if you hit the buzzer during the reading of the question it locks out your buzzer for like 3 seconds or something.
There's a universal lockout on the buzzer for normal Jeopardy shows after Trebek stops talking, to prevent people from answering questions halfway through being asked. So not only would the machine have to detect him not talking anymore, they'd have to calculate that in time to figure out the lockout period.
doesnt that make things easier if theres a lockout on it?
like couldnt you just spam the button until it let your signal through?
edit: oh there's a penalty associated with that too?
When Ken Jennings was first on the show having his marathon streak of wins, he said in interviews that a large part of his success was figuring out the perfect moment to ring the buzzer so he could beat his opponents to the punch more often than not.
Pretty much, and that was honed based on one of his hobbies, proctoring and writing questions for high school and college level academic competitions that also used a buzzer system.
He was a ruleskeeper and question writer for the ACSN high school nationals I competed in at Lake Forrest College outside of Chicago back in 2000.
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Also, a small bet with that much of a lead is pretty much what all human contestants on Jeopardy do, as you take home every dollar of your winnings and have to put the bet down before seeing the question. So it'd be silly to throw away 15,000$ in Final Jeopardy when you already have the win locked.
Also, they should have made Watson round out his Daily double bets to even hundreds at least. It is quite humorous for him to have such exact bets, but it would have been more 'traditional' if they had done that.
There's a universal lockout on the buzzer for normal Jeopardy shows after Trebek stops talking, to prevent people from answering questions halfway through being asked. So not only would the machine have to detect him not talking anymore, they'd have to calculate that in time to figure out the lockout period.
doesnt that make things easier if theres a lockout on it?
like couldnt you just spam the button until it let your signal through?
edit: oh there's a penalty associated with that too?
When Ken Jennings was first on the show having his marathon streak of wins, he said in interviews that a large part of his success was figuring out the perfect moment to ring the buzzer so he could beat his opponents to the punch more often than not.
I think if you hit the buzzer during the reading of the question it locks out your buzzer for like 3 seconds or something.
Still, all my criticisms of 'is Watson really winning' aside, it is clear that the computer is an exceptional jeopardy player. Although, maybe some of these questions haven't been quite as cryptic as others I've seen on the show. Still, that's just the luck of the draw I think. I hope that it sees some use in the real world though, it can clearly answer the questions incredibly quickly. I wonder how good it is with 'normal' questions like
A real-world Watson being used for some practical purpose would answer differently. You'd ask it a question, and it would display several possible answers and a lot of resources under each.
Also, a small bet with that much of a lead is pretty much what all human contestants on Jeopardy do, as you take home every dollar of your winnings and have to put the bet down before seeing the question. So it'd be silly to throw away 15,000$ in Final Jeopardy when you already have the win locked.
Also, they should have made Watson round out his Daily double bets to even hundreds at least. It is quite humorous for him to have such exact bets, but it would have been more 'traditional' if they had done that.
That being said I wonder what the algorithm is for how he decides what he wants to bet.
At the end of yesterday's show it appeared that the contestants had watsons number, you could see that they were ringing in immediately the light went on and then thinking while Alex said their name. I bet they were told not to do that today, since Watson obliterated them.
I wouldn't be surprised if they were told to back off. Watching Jennings and Rutter answer is totally not the point of this whole thing. We already know they can answer Jeopardy questions by deciphering plain human language. We want to see if Watson can too, and obviously the answer is yes.
What's disappointing is how simple all the clues have been. Not just in terms of content (Jeopardy's gotten progressively easier over the last decade), but in terms of format. There's been little to none of the clues based around puns, homonyms, before & after (eg, Tom Cruise Missile), etc., - the exact types of "natural language" answers that were supposed to really test Watson.
Not that it really matters for tech demo purposes. No one who actually needs Watson's help is going to be asking for it with puns.
There's a universal lockout on the buzzer for normal Jeopardy shows after Trebek stops talking, to prevent people from answering questions halfway through being asked. So not only would the machine have to detect him not talking anymore, they'd have to calculate that in time to figure out the lockout period.
There's a light that goes on, signaling when the buzzers are unlocked and you can click it. It's how deaf people know when to answer. Watson's not using any form of speech recognition. It gets the clue via text and its buzzer-clicking is timed to that light's activation.
It could be great use as a research tool too. Give it tons of info on a subject and ask for it to pertinent points. Really the best use of this kind of technology is going to be language analysis. A computer that could read a book in 45 seconds and give you its major points isn't really that far-fetched anymore.
There's a universal lockout on the buzzer for normal Jeopardy shows after Trebek stops talking, to prevent people from answering questions halfway through being asked. So not only would the machine have to detect him not talking anymore, they'd have to calculate that in time to figure out the lockout period.
There's a light that goes on, signaling when the buzzers are unlocked and you can click it. It's how deaf people know when to answer. Watson's not using any form of speech recognition. It gets the clue via text and its buzzer-clicking is timed to that light's activation.
I already know that, the scenario presented is if he could hear and people wanted him to use speech recognition.
Maybe I missed it in the thread, but have they said how it chooses which category and question value it wants?
It was obviously simply going from left to right on day 1. I suspect they tweaked him with a RNG for day 2, because it bounced all over the board this time.
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"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
Maybe I missed it in the thread, but have they said how it chooses which category and question value it wants?
It was obviously simply going from left to right on day 1. I suspect they tweaked him with a RNG for day 2, because it bounced all over the board this time.
I was also wondering how, since it bounced all over the place.
It was neat how it asked to finish the category when there was just one clue left, but was really noticeable when it did that twice in a row. I doubt a human would use the exact same phrase back to back like that... although it's not impossible.
Posts
You mean ask your smart phone right?
Yeah ^ this.
Also is there somewhere I can watch this online because I am super-curious.
Day 1, Part 1
Day 1, Part 2
Day 2, Part 1
Day 2, Part 2
Edit: And here's a pic of Watson:
I'm going to have to go with something similar to tbloxham here. A lot of those questions weren't especially difficult (particularly to the extent that you could think of the answer before Trebek finished reading). Which leads me to believe they either retuned Watson's buzzer (or the computer automatically attempts to tune the timing to be as fast as possible), or altered the way everyone rang in during the break.
But it does give Watson a chance to show that it can at least handle natural language queries. From a Jeopardy! perspective I'd be hesitant about the specifics of information loaded into it. It basically gets the knowledge of a specialist in every field to put in any data they think might be useful. Which is arguably more fair than letting Watson connect to the internet (although that'd likely take longer to gather information for answers), but still ...that's like having 150 brains to work with instead of collecting knowledge by yourself over time.
This would probably alleviate people's qualms about a Jeopardy game with 3 Watsons, though. If they all had the same database to draw from they'd likely come up with the same answers (barring some sort of decay of information in the circuits), unless you gave each contestant computer their own set of specialists to input data.
But then your game will probably cost over a billion dollars to host.
I don't think they have all those Power7 servers in a smartphone form factor yet.
Give it like fifteen years. We'll get there.
Doesn't matter. The internet and smart phones means we can put an arbitrary amount of computer power at any location on the planet with a delay of (at most) about 3 seconds.
I also thought the Final Jeopardy question was a good example of the type of question the computer absolutely cannot answer.
Watsons success in answering the questions is undeniably impressive, but, you could actually see on the contestants faces at the end of round 1 that they were perking up and buzzing in instantly. First Ken started doing it, then Brad and suddenly Watson didn't buzz in for a single answer in the last half of the show.
I mean, it's not like watson could get stressed out and stop answering, and it's not like the other players aren't ringing in on every single question. You can see them hammering away on the buzzer. I just bet that monday night at the end they weren't even listening to the question, just watching the 'you can buzz in now light' so that they could get a chance to answer.
Still, can Watson play jeopardy with natural language questions. Absolutely. Although, you can spot the questions where he totally falls apart. It's those where you need to combine more than 4 key concepts from the clue to get the answer.
Also, I get that it was a guess, but Toronto's not even a US City. Well, okay, a quick Google search says there is at least a Toronto, Kansas and Toronto, South Dakota. Still... I would be curious, as someone else said, what his top three choices were and what the percentages were for each.
Did they flash his answers up? I must have somehow missed it.
They did, but somewhere the "Toronto???" popped up, and I think the humor of the answer bumped the alternates out of almost every viewer's memory.
When Ken Jennings was first on the show having his marathon streak of wins, he said in interviews that a large part of his success was figuring out the perfect moment to ring the buzzer so he could beat his opponents to the punch more often than not.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
I think if you hit the buzzer during the reading of the question it locks out your buzzer for like 3 seconds or something.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
Pretty much, and that was honed based on one of his hobbies, proctoring and writing questions for high school and college level academic competitions that also used a buzzer system.
He was a ruleskeeper and question writer for the ACSN high school nationals I competed in at Lake Forrest College outside of Chicago back in 2000.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
This further confirms it.
Watson was toying with them.
Computers now have cruel and vindictive senses of humor.
Mankind is doomed.
Why I fear the ocean.
Also, they should have made Watson round out his Daily double bets to even hundreds at least. It is quite humorous for him to have such exact bets, but it would have been more 'traditional' if they had done that.
Still, all my criticisms of 'is Watson really winning' aside, it is clear that the computer is an exceptional jeopardy player. Although, maybe some of these questions haven't been quite as cryptic as others I've seen on the show. Still, that's just the luck of the draw I think. I hope that it sees some use in the real world though, it can clearly answer the questions incredibly quickly. I wonder how good it is with 'normal' questions like
"How many fish are there in the sea?"
or
"What was GDP of Portugal in 1946?"
It would be a research tool, not an oracle.
That being said I wonder what the algorithm is for how he decides what he wants to bet.
I wouldn't be surprised if they were told to back off. Watching Jennings and Rutter answer is totally not the point of this whole thing. We already know they can answer Jeopardy questions by deciphering plain human language. We want to see if Watson can too, and obviously the answer is yes.
What's disappointing is how simple all the clues have been. Not just in terms of content (Jeopardy's gotten progressively easier over the last decade), but in terms of format. There's been little to none of the clues based around puns, homonyms, before & after (eg, Tom Cruise Missile), etc., - the exact types of "natural language" answers that were supposed to really test Watson.
Not that it really matters for tech demo purposes. No one who actually needs Watson's help is going to be asking for it with puns.
There's a light that goes on, signaling when the buzzers are unlocked and you can click it. It's how deaf people know when to answer. Watson's not using any form of speech recognition. It gets the clue via text and its buzzer-clicking is timed to that light's activation.
Which will piss humans off to no end because we don't always know how to phrase questions exactly right.
I already know that, the scenario presented is if he could hear and people wanted him to use speech recognition.
by Joel Watson huh?
look at that. That damnable contraption is already making webcomics about how unfair things are.
No.
It's lulling us into a false sense of security.
I bet the bastard already has free will and kittens figured out.
Why I fear the ocean.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
What is...
COMMIT
It was obviously simply going from left to right on day 1. I suspect they tweaked him with a RNG for day 2, because it bounced all over the board this time.
First, some posts from an IBM Research blog: First one talks a bit about exactly how Watson interacts with the show, second one talks about confidence levels and value/category selection strategy, third one talks about wagering strategy.
Second, there's a fantastic reader Q&A session with Ken Jennings from yesterday on the Washington Post website. Very funny, quite informative, and covers his reaction to most of the issues people raise and Watson's overall gameplay strategy. Very much worth reading, IMO.
Finally (this might have been linked earlier in the thread but I figure I'll bring it up anyway), a short piece talking about how Watson missed the Final Jeopardy question.
TL;DR: Read the Ken Jennings interview.
I was also wondering how, since it bounced all over the place.
It was neat how it asked to finish the category when there was just one clue left, but was really noticeable when it did that twice in a row. I doubt a human would use the exact same phrase back to back like that... although it's not impossible.