On Watson on Jeopardy

[xiphias]

In case you haven't see the results yet,

I bet Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings had some pretty mixed feelings at that match.

In order to be a Jeopardy champion, you have to have a good competitive streak, so they can't have liked losing.

On the other hand, in order to be a Jeopardy champion, you also have to be a pretty serious geek, and, to a pretty serious geek, a computer that can win at Jeopardy is really freakin' cool.

Comments

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

It looked to me as if Rutter was constantly leaning away from Watson, while Jennings was standing up straight; and Soren and I both giggled when Jennings patted Watson at the end of the match.

The men looked a bit tired in the second game; our guess is that they were being much much more alert and quick on the buzzer, which is draining.

[ron_newman]

I thought whoever answered "What is TAB" should have been credited with a correct question.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

That was Watson's big advantage -- buzzer speed. If Watson was able to get to a high enough confidence level within the four to six seconds of the question being read, then Watson was going to be faster off the buzzer than either Jennings or Rutter. The only time Watson WOULDN'T be fastest off the buzzer would be if it was still in the process of choosing an answer. If it was a question that all three contestants knew, Watson would buzz in first.

[querldox.livejournal.com]

Ken's comment on that: "Believe me, I was enjoying (almost) every second. Getting beat on the buzzer is frustrating, but are you kidding? I AM PLAYING A PRIME-TIME GAME SHOW AGAINST A SUPER-ADVANCED ROBOT! This is the coolest thing I will every do in my life by a factor of a million. The future is here."

From a chat he did at http://live.washingtonpost.com/jeopardy-ken-jennings.html?hpid=talkbox1

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

By the way, were you involved in any way with this? I'd heard that they did practice matches against former Jeopardy contestants, and was wondering if they'd tapped you. I couldn't remember if you had any IBM connections.

[querldox.livejournal.com]

Nope. Still haven't made it on the show, although per an in-person audition back in November, I'm in the contestant pool through May 2012. I strongly suspect at this point I'm probably the record holder for most passed the test tryouts without getting on the show.

I did work at IBM for a summer back in 1980, and they did make me a fulltime offer, which I turned down. The closest I came to this was that Ed Hovy, a natural language understanding researcher who had a short clip on Tuesday show, is both a former AI grad school classmate and co-worker of mine, although we've not been in touch in years.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Okay, Ken Jennings is a remarkably funny man.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

.... sounds about right.

[ykats.livejournal.com]

There were a few occasions where Watson's confidence was above 90%, yet it lost the timer. I think human contenstants of that calibre are trained to anticipate the buzzer, based on audio and visual cues from Alex. They don't just wait for the signal.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

My guess is that, in those cases, Watson was still processing until a millisecond after the signal to buzz in. Just a guess, of course.

[ykats.livejournal.com]

That may have always been the case. After all, humans press the button while they continue thinking, and even take some time to think while they start to answer. It's only logical for a computer of that scale to press the button even when it did not fully finish computing, winning a second or two, let alone milliseconds.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Ken Jennings talked about that in an interview -- Watson didn't buzz in until it had a confidence level high enough to justify it, while humans do buzz in before they've completely figured it out, sometimes. He was talking about how that was part of his strategy against Watson.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

Ken Jennings is an absolutely delightful man. I had the um, privilege? of being trounced by him during his run in 2004. I loved his comment on Final Jeopardy!