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IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight

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Re: IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight

#61

Post by jarin »

icefox wrote: post #47
brown9-2 wrote: post #15

You 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…

The real question I have is according to that episode Watson does not take into account the category only the 'answer' and the already shown questions. It seems _really_ odd that they would ignore this bit of information.

Since there are a lot of pun-based categories on Jeopardy, I can understand why they would have problems with it.

Re: IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight

#62

Post by ugh »

Bud wrote: post #49
jasonkester wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in the same way. PBS never plays commercials and actually takes several days off each year to ask people to donate money so that they can continue broadcasting. It genuinely is supported by individual donations. Showing their programs to a wider audience could only result in more people donating to them.

You've market-tested this approach to fund-raising for a non-profit, then, I assume?

How much more does it cost them to make their content available worldwide? Couldn’t they upload everything to YouTube and let Google foot the bill? (Which Google would gladly do.)

I don’t know whether more people would donate if they made their content available worldwide but if such a move wouldn’t cost them anything or nearly nothing there certainly wouldn’t be any harm in doing so.

Re: IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight

#63

Post by brown9-2 »

jarin wrote: post #61
icefox wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real question I have is according to that episode Watson does not take into account the category only the 'answer' and the already shown questions. It seems _really_ odd that they would ignore this bit of information.

Since there are a lot of pun-based categories on Jeopardy, I can understand why they would have problems with it.

Exactly - the category label probably is very little help in narrowing down possible answers to a text-processing algorithm.

Re: IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight

#64

Post by jokermatt999 »

Xpirate wrote: post #53
jasonkester wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(if you're in the United States) Amazing that PBS is locking down their videos. They're public television fer cryin' out loud.

What's amazing to me is NPR, PBS, CBC and BBC haven't gotten together to make their own public domain codecs. It's kind of their job to do this stuff. I guess if you take contributions from "The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation", you got make some compromises.

What about Dirac? It's for archive purposes, but still a public domain codec. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_(codec)

Furthermore, the insinuation at the end is uncalled for. Calling for cutting funding of public radio/tv is already a political talking point (at least in regards to cutting BBC), so can you imagine the heat they'd catch for trying to develop codecs as well?

Edit: removed PBS from list of cutting funding. Forgot they're donation supported.

Re: IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight

#65

Post by waxpraxis »

I'm currently finding out what information we're allowed to share about how the avatar works and what went into developing it. The problem is we're so far down the totem pole I probably won't know for a while yet. :-/

http://automatastudios.com/automata-gives-ibms-watson-a-face...

Re: IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight

#66

Post by T-hawk »

tpatke wrote: post #57

I assume this is pre-recorded and IBM would have cancelled it if they didn't like the outcome.

It was pre-taped a few weeks ago in line with Jeopardy's usual schedule. There were a number of untelevised practice sessions beforehand against other Jeopardy contestants and wannabes. IBM did their tweaking then and promised that the actual competition rounds would be televised regardless of results.

Re: IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight

#67

Post by brown9-2 »

mcav wrote: post #51
brown9-2 wrote: post #15

You 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…

It looked like they were using Java. (Unless that was just fabricated for the screen.)

I was curious about the same thing - did they ever mention what languages were used in the documentary?

The screenshots looked like Eclipse with Java. The brief snippets I could make out certainly looked like they had to do with evaluating rules and scoring judgment, but that could have easily been stock footage.

Re: IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight

#69

Post by mcav »

brown9-2 wrote: post #67
mcav wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looked like they were using Java. (Unless that was just fabricated for the screen.)

I was curious about the same thing - did they ever mention what languages were used in the documentary? The screenshots looked like Eclipse with Java. The brief snippets I could make out certainly looked like they had to do with evaluating rules and scoring judgment, but that could have easily been stock footage.

I didn't hear any languages mentioned. If it was only stock footage, they did a good job making up source code.
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