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Day 1: IBM Watson Ties for first on Jeopardy

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Re: Day 1: IBM Watson Ties for first on Jeopardy

#51

Post by TheAmazingIdiot »

jluxenberg wrote: post #48

Does anyone know why Watson was unable to buzz in immediately in some cases when he had 97% confidence in his answer? Seems odd that a computer would not be able to beat the human opponents at hitting the buzzer. (It's possible that he didn't have the answer until after the human opponents, but that seems unlikely.)

Other articles, not linked directly here, indicate that there is a lockout on the buzzer if Watson hits it too soon. I've heard anywhere from 300-1000ms delay if you punch in the buzzer before Trebeck stops speaking.

I also read that due to buzzer experience, Ken Jennings also advocated to the producers that competitors should be given practice on the buzzer before doing the game. It would make a more fair game. Honorable "battle", if you will.

Re: Day 1: IBM Watson Ties for first on Jeopardy

#52

Post by jeffcoat »

gojomo wrote: post #50

That Trebek gave Watsom credit for "Maxwell's silver hammer" when the clue was looking for the person – Maxwell – gave me a moment's pause. Jeopardy does tend to be a little more forgiving of contestants during the first round – such as giving them a reminder to phrase-as-a-question, and letting them correct an initially wrong or incomplete utterance, if done almost instantly. Still, I'm not sure if such a interpreti…

I noticed that, too; but a little later in the game, Trebek declared "leg" (instead of "he was missing a leg") wrong without hesitation.

So it's definitely being held to some standard.

Re: Day 1: IBM Watson Ties for first on Jeopardy

#53

Post by coffeedrinker »

chaosmachine wrote: post #2

After not being able to find a suitable online stream of this event (I don't have cable), I gave up and built a rudimentary antenna for my TV. Basically, I just wound a bunch of copper wire around a piece of cardboard and stuck it in the window. The other end of the wire went into the cable port on the back of my TV. Surprisingly, I was able to pick up the game in crystal clear, digital 1080p!

I grabbed it out of youtube not long after it played on the East coast.

youtube search: jeopardy watson

search options: upload today

edit: I think I may have included the date in the search

Re: Day 1: IBM Watson Ties for first on Jeopardy

#54

Post by dimatura »

ubercore wrote: post #44

I'd like to see the next version take the avatar concept further. They went half way by making it physically buzz in. Go the rest of the way, and make it only receive input from the avatar. Add a computer vision and speech recognition component, and make it read the board and listen to Trebek like the human players. Then, make it mobile, and put the avatar in the actual Jeopardy! studio. EDIT: Clarified "human" playe…

According the designers they considered it, but finally decided to concentrate on the question answering. OCR for this situation could probably be done in fast and reliable way, so it wouldn't make much of a difference. Speech recognition would be harder and less reliable, but redundant most of the time (though it presumably could have helped for the 1920s question).

Re: Day 1: IBM Watson Ties for first on Jeopardy

#55

Post by dimatura »

TheAmazingIdiot wrote: post #51
jluxenberg wrote: post #48

Does anyone know why Watson was unable to buzz in immediately in some cases when he had 97% confidence in his answer? Seems odd that a computer would not be able to beat the human opponents at hitting the buzzer. (It's possible that he didn't have the answer until after the human opponents, but that seems unlikely.)

Other articles, not linked directly here, indicate that there is a lockout on the buzzer if Watson hits it too soon. I've heard anywhere from 300-1000ms delay if you punch in the buzzer before Trebeck stops speaking. I also read that due to buzzer experience, Ken Jennings also advocated to the producers that competitors should be given practice on the buzzer before doing the game. It would make a more fair game. Hono…

According to the designers Watson waits for the light indicators (not seen on TV) that you can press the button, so no lockout. Humans often try to predict when the light will turn on instead of waiting, so sometimes they press the button faster than Watson.

Re: Day 1: IBM Watson Ties for first on Jeopardy

#56

Post by shkb »

nyellin wrote: post #13

Does anyone want to create a community site for the contest? I am looking for another Django developer who can participate in an all-night code sprint. The site would: 1. Show an online score board. 2. Track Watson's performance (like shkb is doing on Google Docs) 3. Aggregate pictures, videos, and written analysis of the event

Just to clarify, I didn't do anything but link to what ckwalsh made and posted at I guess a bad time to draw attention. Least here, the reddit discussion seems to be going well.

Re: Day 1: IBM Watson Ties for first on Jeopardy

#57

Post by dimatura »

I attended a talk by one of the designers. Some of Watson's 'wrong' answers he described were pretty funny. There was one where the clue (paraphrasing) was 'Punch below the beltline that rhymes' and the right answer was 'Low blow', but Watson came up with 'Wang bang'. In another one the clue was something like 'The end of this had an exclamation mark in headlines in 1919', with the right answer being 'World war I', whereas Watson answered 'Sentence'.

Re: Day 1: IBM Watson Ties for first on Jeopardy

#58

Post by Benjo »

jeffcoat wrote: post #52
gojomo wrote: post #50

That Trebek gave Watsom credit for "Maxwell's silver hammer" when the clue was looking for the person – Maxwell – gave me a moment's pause. Jeopardy does tend to be a little more forgiving of contestants during the first round – such as giving them a reminder to phrase-as-a-question, and letting them correct an initially wrong or incomplete utterance, if done almost instantly. Still, I'm not sure if such a interpreti…

I noticed that, too; but a little later in the game, Trebek declared "leg" (instead of "he was missing a leg") wrong without hesitation. So it's definitely being held to some standard.

Actually, according to arstechnica, that lack of hesitation was before the segment was reshot.

A human had answered "missing a hand," which created context that means "What is a leg" could be interpreted as "he was missing a leg". Initially Alex did give him credit, before realizing that Wattson couldn't have been using that context.

http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2011/02/ibms-watson-tied-f...

Re: Day 1: IBM Watson Ties for first on Jeopardy

#60

Post by hallman76 »

AgentConundrum wrote: post #12
cryptoz wrote: post #10

I couldn't have wished for a more exciting opening to this game. Watson just shot right off into the lead like there was no tomorrow, jetting ahead by thousands! I was blown away. Then he slowly started to crumble a bit and his answers were faulty more and more. But his strategy is amazing! He hops from category to category, while most humans pick a category and stick with it. I wonder if IBM has him do that purely b…

He hops from category to category, while most humans pick a category and stick with it. I noticed the same thing, but I really hoped it was unintentional. It doesn't feel like it's a fair fight otherwise, since it means he's exploiting a weakness intrinsic to his competitors. The whole point of this competition is to show that a computer can compete and win at a human level. If it weren't, then why force him to physi…

It doesn't feel like it's a fair fight otherwise, since it means he's exploiting a weakness intrinsic to his competitors

Late in the first round you can see Jennings change his strategy a bit -- he starts ringing in before he knows the answer. Jennings is exploiting the fact that Watson won't ring in until it has confidence in an answer.

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