"a';DROP TABLE 'knowledge'; This type of attack is commonly used by hackers."
Game over, Watson.
IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight
21–30 of 154 posts
Re: IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight
#22You can watch the PBS Nova episode about the building of Watson for free on their website (about 60 minutes long, aired Feb 9 2011): http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/smartest-machine-on-earth.... One question I have about Watson that I don't recall being mentioned in any videos or articles so far - what sort of interface does Watson receive the questions over? Is Watson performing speech recognition or getting the t…
This was answered in the Nova special, in passing. The question is fed to Watson as text at the same moment it appears on the display that the contestants can see. Likewise for correct answers. Watson is not performing speech recognition.
Thanks, this is what I assumed (as ASR of these questions is probably just as hard as the interpretation).
How does Watson know when it can chime in then?
Re: IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight
#23It’s a shame that this is (necessarily!) such an insular challenge. Everybody knows what chess is all about, I fear that the impact of this game will be limited to the US or the Anglosphere. Just as an example, there has been no Jeopardy on German TV since 2000, it’s not really a part of German pop culture and because of all the puns it doesn’t translate well. (Question for native speakers: When watching the practice…
I can definitely follow along with this or any game of Jeopardy!, but my problem is that I just don't know all the answers. To me this is part of the appeal.
This is definitely faster-paced than regular episodes of Jeopardy!, but I don't think it's prohibitively fast for native speakers.
It's too bad that Jeopardy! doesn't fit in with international pop culture better. I think it's a perfect fit for a lot of AI problems.
Re: IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
The timing of when players are allowed to click in is controlled by a human. Someone backstage decides at what moment Alex is finished speaking and then opens the clickers. If you click too early, you get ~ 300ms delay penalty which gives the other players a chance to click in. Click timing is indeed very important but I do not think Watson has any special advantage there.
But there's a visual cue letting the players know that clickers are open (a light flashes, I think), so the computer probably gets some notification too, at which point it could instabuzz.
> instabuzz
Nope, it has to press down on a physical button just like everyone else. Maybe it can move it's finger a bit faster, but...not much.
Re: IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight
#25Much of success on Jeopardy is not just deciphering clues in the answers, but your timing on ringing in to give the question. I'd imagine a machine could get really good at getting the timing down. Does Jeopardy have a way of varying who rings in first to keep things more fair?
Something I wrote from a previous thread. The one piece of info that wasn't in this comment is that Watson can NOT anticipate when Trebek is about to finish the question. Watson must wait until it gets a signal that the buzzer is now available, and only then can it begin the process to physically depress the button. Remember that Watson also has to depress a physical button (the same buzzer everyone else uses). The e…
Another key to remember is that there is time after the button press to think of the answer - it's a common strategy to ring in when you have a certain confidence level that you can think of the answer quickly. Watson uses confidence levels, too, but he already has a particular answer in mind instead of a vague confidence level for the whole clue.
Re: IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight
#26It’s a shame that this is (necessarily!) such an insular challenge. Everybody knows what chess is all about, I fear that the impact of this game will be limited to the US or the Anglosphere. Just as an example, there has been no Jeopardy on German TV since 2000, it’s not really a part of German pop culture and because of all the puns it doesn’t translate well. (Question for native speakers: When watching the practice…
Typically real jeopardy will show the text on the screen. I can get about 30 (sometimes up to 35ish) "questions" for a normal show but it is all about reading it to get those extra few brain cycles.
Re: IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight
#27Is there somewhere in Silicon Valley to watch this together in person?
You could try to sneak into IBM Almaden.
Re: IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight
#28One thing I'm interested in is any skew in the questions from normal. In particular I hope they ask linguistically tricky questions where you can't even figure out what's being asked at first. I felt like they went a bit easy on that front in the preview round: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFR3lOm_xhE
I doubt they are skewing the questions. That kind of defeats the point. I suspect Jeopardy is constantly adding to a pool of questions. My hope is that they simply grab from that pool just like any other episode.
Note, the hardest questions for Watson are short questions -- the reduced time hurts Watson more than most human competitors.
Re: IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight
#29Is there somewhere in Silicon Valley to watch this together in person?
The geek equivalent to the sports bar... There must be some website for doing this, right?
Re: IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight
#30You can watch the PBS Nova episode about the building of Watson for free on their website (about 60 minutes long, aired Feb 9 2011): http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/smartest-machine-on-earth.... One question I have about Watson that I don't recall being mentioned in any videos or articles so far - what sort of interface does Watson receive the questions over? Is Watson performing speech recognition or getting the t…
This was answered in the Nova special, in passing. The question is fed to Watson as text at the same moment it appears on the display that the contestants can see. Likewise for correct answers. Watson is not performing speech recognition.
The documentary mentioned that Watson does some speech recognition. It attempts to listen to the competitor's answers so that it doesn't give a wrong answer that was already given.