by basil_hayden » Wed 16 Feb 2011, 15:13:43
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Watson Supercomputer Terminates Humans in First Jeopardy Round
IBM supercomputer Watson closed the pod-bay doors on its human competition Tuesday night in the first round of a two-game Jeopardy match designed to showcase the latest advances in artificial intelligence. The contest concludes Wednesday.
By the end of the Tuesday’s shellacking, Jeopardy’s greatest champions, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, were sporting decidedly sour looks.
Watson had a near-miss at the end of the game, when it incorrectly answered the Final Jeopardy clue, but when the dust settled, the supercomputer had earned $35,734, blowing out Rutter and Jennings, who had earned $10,400 and $4800, respectively.
That final missed clue puzzled IBM scientists. The category was US Cities, and the clue was: “Its largest airport was named for a World War II hero; its second largest, for a World War II battle.”
Rutter and Jennings both correctly wrote “What is Chicago?” for O’Hare and Midway, but Watson’s response was a baffling “What is Toronto???” complete with the additional question marks.http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/02/watson-game-oneInteresting.. why would the supercomputer add those additional question marks. Odd how little sparks of humanity can come out like that.. ????? seems a very human thing to add when one isn't sure about a guess.
EDIT:
Here's the video..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h4baBEi0iA&feature=player_embeddedInteresting thing is that the supercomputer knew it wasn't sure and so didn't bet much on that Toronto answer.
Background video on Watson from IBM:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FC3IryWr4c8At the end, the scientist says "it's limitless, the things you can apply this technology too." Yup, it sure is.. and it will mean A LOT OF PEOPLE losing their jobs. This Watson computer is a big step in that coming watershed I mentioned earlier, a question-answering system that can understand and speak fluently with humans. Once they have that, many millions of jobs are gone.
I watched this and was dumbfounded by the Toronto answer by Watson.
Something appears to be wrong here, from what little I know about computers and logic. Hopefully I can explain it here so others understand it the way I do.
A human reads the clue, and sometimes forgets the category while giving their answer and we all realize that the human is not a dumbass but made a "human" mistake and provides a city from outside the US even though the category is US cities.
But how could a computer, or Watson if it's not a true computer, "forget" the category or make a simple "human" mistake? The first thing Watson should have registered is that the answer had to be a US city, not a Canadian one.
Can someone smarter than me explain how a computer can make this kind of mistake, or forget what category it was working with? And if this is going to be par for the course, how can we rely on AI to solve all our problems? Can computers forget, or was it a mistake, or some kind of "glitch"? Was Watson pining for some heavy crowd sighs and pity? I can see where a computer was not programmed for a specific answer, but if you entered "US city, two airports, one named after WWII hero" into Google, the first thing that comes up is Chicago. Suddenly I'm not so worried about the Skynet scenario. Maybe Watson belongs on one of those Japanese game shows and not Jeopardy?