NOVA - Jeopardy Watson REMINDER it's on tonight, tuesday and wednesday

[JTsyo]

If watson had more time would it come up with higher degree of confidence or answers? Does it simply show the percentages after someone has buzzed in and if it had more time would it have higher chance of getting correct answer?

On one of the questions, I saw it had low confidence in it's answers and Ken buzzed in, then the top answer jumped up to yellow confidence and it was the right answer, even though Ken got it.
The only way the humans were getting a chance was when Watson didn't know the answer. If all three knew, Watson could get it each time. I wonder they didn't buzz in if Watson would and then provide the wrong answer. Most of the time he didn't buzz in, his top answer was wrong.

 

[a123456]

Spoiler

Yeah, I saw that, but I'm still surprised he risked anything. As some other posters in this thread have said, why risk anything, if you stand to lose? That seemed to be Watson's mentality yesterday when he bet essentially nothing on Final Jeopardy. Tonight, however, he made the largest gamble he could to still win even if he was wrong - very opposite of yesterday. Does anyone know if Watson was programmed to view this contest as a two day event, or simply 2 individual games? Was Watson aware during the first game, that a second game would be taking place?

Spoiler

I can see what happened. On day 1, you're risk adverse because if you bet a ton, the bad decision carries over to the 2nd day. On Day 2, however, nothing carries over. It's a "tourney" so your actual dollar amount doesn't matter at all except being the highest (as opposed to normal shows where you win your $ amount).

It definitely viewed the contest as a 2 day event since it bet the max possible to still win if it got the question wrong if you calculated it using the aggregate results. i.e. (Ken's Day 2 * 2 + Ken's Day 1) = X. And if it got it wrong, it would have had X + 1.

The 17k bet was, I imagine, some way of showing off without risking anything, regarding the 1st place position.

If it had been me, I would have bet some trivial amount on Day 2 since you don't want to cost yourself 700k real dollars if you accidentally make a math mistake and screw it up by betting too much.

Q&A for the episodes here: http://www.j-archive.com/showseason.php?season=27

 

[The Boston Dangler]

what's with the token charity, especially for an exhibition match? IBM donating 100% of Watson's winnings? well, blow me down. the 2 guys donating 50%? pretty stingy from all involved, including jeopardy. kinda reminds me of my former employer - one of those companies that donates $10k and spends $250k making sure everyone knows about it.

 

[ViRGE]

what's with the token charity, especially for an exhibition match? IBM donating 100% of Watson's winnings? well, blow me down. the 2 guys donating 50%? pretty stingy from all involved, including jeopardy. kinda reminds me of my former employer - one of those companies that donates $10k and spends $250k making sure everyone knows about it.

So Jennings and Rutter were supposed to take time off of work, find babysitters for the kids, etc, all on their own dime? Exhibition match or not, there is an opportunity cost for them to fly out from the west coast to New York on very specific dates. Both have mortgages and even with a few mil in winnings neither is rich. If you want to bring out the top two Jeopardy champions out to play on a date undoubtedly chosen by Jeopardy and IBM, that's going to cost money.

 

[zerocool84]

So Jennings and Rutter were supposed to take time off of work, find babysitters for the kids, etc, all on their own dime? Exhibition match or not, there is an opportunity cost for them to fly out from the west coast to New York on very specific dates. Both have mortgages and even with a few mil in winnings neither is rich. If you want to bring out the top two Jeopardy champions out to play on a date undoubtedly chosen by Jeopardy and IBM, that's going to cost money.

I'm sure they were compensated for their appearance on Jeopardy.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

So Jennings and Rutter were supposed to take time off of work, find babysitters for the kids, etc, all on their own dime? Exhibition match or not, there is an opportunity cost for them to fly out from the west coast to New York on very specific dates. Both have mortgages and even with a few mil in winnings neither is rich. If you want to bring out the top two Jeopardy champions out to play on a date undoubtedly chosen by Jeopardy and IBM, that's going to cost money.

i think they should have been cut a check by jeopardy, with 100% winnings donated and matched by jeopardy/ibm.

 

[Powermoloch]

toronto !

 

[TallBill]

i think they should have been cut a check by jeopardy, with 100% winnings donated and matched by jeopardy/ibm.

Semantics...

 

[BoomerD]

Booo!

Ah you're just upset because Watson called Toronto a US city...

 

[Ben90]

If it had been me, I would have bet some trivial amount on Day 2 since you don't want to cost yourself 700k real dollars if you accidentally make a math mistake and screw it up by betting too much

Its a fucking computer. The chances of it making a math mistake are pretty low.

 

[sdifox]

Ah you're just upset because Watson called Toronto a US city...

But there are many Torontos in the US. Just not the one I live in, which is in Canada :biggrin:

I am booing you for the obvious steal of the line from war games.

 

[sdifox]

what's with the token charity, especially for an exhibition match? IBM donating 100% of Watson's winnings? well, blow me down. the 2 guys donating 50%? pretty stingy from all involved, including jeopardy. kinda reminds me of my former employer - one of those companies that donates $10k and spends $250k making sure everyone knows about it.

What is Capitalism?

 

[nublikescake]

again, Watson's ability to buzz in faster, or even win Jeopardy is not the point.

the only thing that matters is that Watson can so consistently answer Jeopardy-style questions correctly. No one really cares that he can beat human buzz-in speed. even the humans that he's beating don't care about that.

While it is impressive that he can compile his answers fast enough, with high enough confidence to trigger the buzz and still beat the opponents' time, the simple fact that he understands how to answer these questions is astonishing.

/thread. That's what I mentioned earlier as well. The whole "it can buzz faster because it's a computer" thing is just missing the point. How about "omg, this thing has the capability to revolutionize entire industries"?

The buzzer timing, the decision-making process behind wagers, selecting the questions/categories and then deciding whether or not to answer the question based on "confidence" level... all that is just simple programming based on the technicalities and strategies of playing Jeopardy that every player practices before going on the show. Of course IBM has put some effort into it to enable Watson to win the game. But in the big picture, that's just Watson being "application specific". IBM engineers will do this kind of "fine-tuning" to make Watson ready for any kind of application, for example a doctor's assistant in the healthcare industry.

I didn't think or really expect anything like the Star Trek computer to actually materialize in our lifetimes but looking at Watson...I think it's possible in the very near future and that's saying something. The ultimate test of course would be passing the Turing Test.

 

[nublikescake]

Spoiler

Now an 18k Final Jeopardy wager from Watson? Now I'm thoroughly confused with yesterday's Fine Jeopardy wager. It seems clear that Watson does, in fact, somehow estimate his prowess in the final Jeopardy category AND is willing to gamble. Very interesting.

As someone mentioned before, that's Programming 101.

 

[nublikescake]

If watson had more time would it come up with higher degree of confidence or answers? Does it simply show the percentages after someone has buzzed in and if it had more time would it have higher chance of getting correct answer?

Interesting question but I doubt that it would come up with better responses given more time. That's because the impression I get from the promo stuff I have seen so far is that IBM has sped up the processing time of the various algorithms by throwing more and more servers at it and bringing down the answer time so that it is competitive in a real-world situation, such as a real Jeopardy game. However, the possibility remains that it is programmed to allow the algorithms only a certain amount of time to come up with initial answers and then use them to be realistically competitive, even if it could have refined the answers given more time.

 

[Jeffg010]

I can't believe how many people are so focused on the buzzer and say it was not fair. lol

Epic show and Ken was winning for a bit and I was hopping he pull it out.

 

[Rubycon]

I can't believe how many people are so focused on the buzzer and say it was not fair. lol

Epic show and Ken was winning for a bit and I was hopping he pull it out.

Well you could have the correct response every time but if you are slower on the button you lose out.

 

[nanette1985]

Wonder if they're going to have a rematch? It would be fun to watch more of this.

I remember now that when Deep Blue beat Kasparov in chess IBM supposedly dismantled Deep Blue and wouldn't allow a rematch.

 

[her209]

 

[spidey07]

Watson's been defeated. How smart you now?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v361/Extorris/Pics/lZd0q.jpg

 

[zinfamous]

Watson's been defeated. How smart you now?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v361/Extorris/Pics/lZd0q.jpg

:awe:

that is great.

 

[Ichinisan]

Watson's been defeated. How smart you now?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v361/Extorris/Pics/lZd0q.jpg

Seriously, there's no excuse for making such a low-resolution image.

 

[spidey07]

Seriously, there's no excuse for making such a low-resolution image.

Better resolution here.

http://d3uwin5q170wpc.cloudfront.net/photo/82232_700b.jpg

 

[zinfamous]

Better resolution here.

http://d3uwin5q170wpc.cloudfront.net/photo/82232_700b.jpg

get thee to the Jesus = Hume thread, stat!

 

[Narmer]

Watson's been defeated. How smart you now?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v361/Extorris/Pics/lZd0q.jpg

Beautiful