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IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight

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Re: IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight

#31

Post by fefzero »

kj12345 wrote: post #13

One 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

The writers had no knowledge of which clues would be used for the Watson episodes; they only mention that they don't use audio or video clues. I certainly haven't done any analysis of it, but I didn't feel like they were any less common in the preview round than normal. Between all the games I'm sure we'd see more "linguistically tricky" clues. I'm hoping for some good "before and after" questions.

Re: IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight

#32

Post by jimmyjim »

brown9-2 wrote: post #22
lrm242 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I would think as soon as it computes an answer. Of course there is a penalty for getting an answer wrong, so it can't be pressing the button all the time. But the PBS documentary I think hinted that it will be a sent a signal to know what amount to wait before reading aloud an answer.

That said, I wish the engineers would have implemented OCR technology into Watson so it could see the TV screen, decipher the text question, and understand it -- instead of directly being fed the question. It would have given Watson a nice little title of being'complete'.

Re: IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight

#33

Post by kls »

cryptoz wrote: post #7
umjames wrote: post #4

Much 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?

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.

Not it does not have a special advantage but it also does not interface with the questions in the way that humans do, it cannot hear Alex or read the question on the screen, the questions are messaged to Watson via something akin to a text message or an email.

Re: IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight

#34

Post by [deleted] »

cryptoz wrote: post #7
umjames wrote: post #4

Much 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?

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.

[deleted]

Re: IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight

#35

Post by alanfalcon »

jimmyjim wrote: post #32
brown9-2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I would think as soon as it computes an answer. Of course there is a penalty for getting an answer wrong, so it can't be pressing the button all the time. But the PBS documentary I think hinted that it will be a sent a signal to know what amount to wait before reading aloud an answer. That said, I wish the engineers would have implemented OCR technology into Watson so it could see the TV screen, decipher the text que…

What he means is that you aren't permitted to buzz in on Jeopardy until the host has completed reading the question and the buzzers are activated. Perhaps Watson is spamming the 'answer' button from the moment he knows the answer, or perhaps they let him cheat by sending him a signal when the buzzers become activated. Given that the process of buzzing in to answer a question is a large part of the strategy of the show though, I hope they aren't letting him cheat in that way.

Edit: Failed to read the comments lower on the page. Looks like Watson plays by the same rules as everyone else, using a physical buzzer which can't be activated until the question is read and the 'answer now' signal light is activated. I know that another restriction on when to answer that Watson has is that he won't buzz in until he's confident in an answer, while human players will sometimes buzz in figuring they will be able to come up with the answer in the couple seconds between buzzing and answering.

Re: IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight

#40

Post by lrm242 »

SMrF wrote: post #30
lrm242 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, it is fed the correct answer by text once the question is completed. They said "listen" in the documentary, but later, in passing, specified what they meant by that. In particular, the demonstrated the active learning when Watson failed to understand a category required dates as answers. After 4 it learned that dates were the type of answer required and got the last question correct. Again, the feeding of the correct answers was happening after the question completed and via text, not speech.
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