Watson on "Jeopardy!"

[Thorn]

Has anyone else been following IBM's Watson supercomputer appearance on Jeopardy? It's been interesting for the last two nights to see how Watson parses natural English, and the weighting it assigns to each of its answers. Even the wrong answers have been insightful.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/...answer-trebek/

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/02/watson-game-one/

While Watson's "avatar" -the terminal at the player's console- is interesting in that it shows a representation of the amount of processes use to a derive an answer, it would have been a great homage if the terminal was a ruby lens and a flat panel display.

[bascule]

Re: Watson on "Jeopardy!"

Yeah definitely, this is one of those things that happens every once in awhile that makes me think "I'm living in the future"

Watson is the most impressive natural language processing system ever devised and it was really awesome watching it kick the humans' asses

[theprez98]

Re: Watson on "Jeopardy!"

My only complaint is that they should have taken all the "how and why we built this" stuff and stuck it in a webisode. It's like one big long IBM commercial. More Jeopardy, less commercial.

Oh, and Watson is Skynet.

[Cipher]

Re: Watson on "Jeopardy!"

Wow! This is so amazing, I literally cried. Think of the potential particularly medical diagnoses.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BflW1hQ4RwE

[Thorn]

Re: Watson on "Jeopardy!"

Yeah definitely, this is one of those things that happens every once in awhile that makes me think "I'm living in the future"

Exactly! Although, I'm STILL waiting for my flying car, dammit.

My only complaint is that they should have taken all the "how and why we built this" stuff and stuck it in a webisode. It's like one big long IBM commercial. More Jeopardy, less commercial.

Agreed. While it's very interesting, I would have preferred it to be a half-hour special or a something on the web.

[theprez98]

Re: Watson on "Jeopardy!"

Wow! This is so amazing, I literally cried. Think of the potential particularly medical diagnoses.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BflW1hQ4RwE

I'm not quite ready for a computer that doesn't know Toronto isn't a U.S. city to be making medical diagnoses.

[Thorn]

Re: Watson on "Jeopardy!"

Wow! This is so amazing, I literally cried. Think of the potential particularly medical diagnoses.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BflW1hQ4RwE

I'm not quite ready for a computer that doesn't know Toronto isn't a U.S. city to be making medical diagnoses.

Ha! Good point. What I thought was most interesting about that was that the confidence weight was very low (~32%, if I recall) for Toronto. Watson knew it didn't know and it was essentially making a wild ass guess.

So called "expert knowledge systems" have been around for 20+ years, and are good for use in specific fields like medicine, where a body of knowledge is large, but still finite. Some even run on PCs. Those type of artificial intelligence actually work best in areas like medicine where you can break down the knowledge into specifically linked portions that have limited connections, and can be written as logical, almost Boolean, sentences. i.e. "Symptom X + Sign Y = Test for Diseases Z and AA"

In the medical field, they tend to be good double checks for doctors in places where a colleague isn't conveniently located for a referral or second opinion.

What makes Watson a tougher system to build and make work, is it's ability to parse natural language and make word/knowledge associations on language nuances, rather than a specific area of expertise.

Watson would probably make a better lawyer than a doctor.

[Cipher]

Re: Watson on "Jeopardy!"

I'm not quite ready for a computer that doesn't know Toronto isn't a U.S. city to be making medical diagnoses.

That's funny, here a group right here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto...ambiguation%29

By the way, The way the question was given confused Watson. But his bet of $947 illustrates how much weigh he put on that answer.

Essentially,He was NOT completely wrong.

[theprez98]

Re: Watson on "Jeopardy!"

That's funny, here a group right here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto...ambiguation%29

By the way, The way the question was given confused Watson. But his bet of $947 illustrates how much weigh he put on that answer.

Essentially,He was NOT completely wrong.

Actually, Final Jeopardy requires you to place your bet when you know the category but before you see the answer. So the computer could not have hedged its bet, as you suggest, based upon its low confidence.

[Dalearnednoob]

Re: Watson on "Jeopardy!"

Watson kind of reminds me of big blue in a way , but it just shows you that are tech is soon going to take over our ways of living for good and worse

[astcell]

Re: Watson on "Jeopardy!"

I'd like to ask Watson this question and see what it says:

"Isthay entencesay isay ittenray innay utway anguaglay?"

Answer: Pig Latin.

[bascule]

Re: Watson on "Jeopardy!"

I'd like to ask Watson this question and see what it says:

"Isthay entencesay isay ittenray innay utway anguaglay?"

Answer: Pig Latin.

Sorry, your answer must be phrased in the form of a question.

Regarding Wason's Final Jeopardy bets, I'm guessing it didn't bet a lot because it didn't need to in order to win the round (and based off the confidence on the topic)

[astcell]

Re: Watson on "Jeopardy!"

Here's what they should have asked for Watson:

http://www.imgjoe.com/x/watson.jpg

[Dark Tangent]

Re: Watson on "Jeopardy!"

I know someone is actually looking into the subject of this thread.

[Thorn]

Re: Watson on "Jeopardy!"

I know someone is actually looking into the subject of this thread.

Ar you able to share any details, DT?