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If you hadn't heard of it, "Watson" is a supercomputer built by IBM which is competing against two of the top Human players at the game show 'Jeopardy.' The purpose of the challenge is to test the ability of a machine to decipher natural language in all it's subtlety and nuance. Computers are good at logic but when you go to Google (or Bing or Yahoo, etc) and enter a search the Google/Bing/Yahoo servers are interpreting the search query using strict logical rules which aren't a significant factor in natural speech between people. Hence, search queries have to be formatted a certain way to get optimal results. So, despite the seemingly trivial nature of the game it's an important step in teaching machines to speak as people do. As a spiritual successor to "Deep Blue," which defeated Garry Kasparov at chess a decade ago, Watson is a much more powerful machine undertaking a much more challenging task from the standpoint of traditional computer science.

Two of the three rounds have been played (with Final Jeopardy due for tonight) with Watson leading the scoring. There is a bit of a controversy regarding response time, since a lot of Watson's advantage seems to have come from it being able to press the buzzer very quickly, letting it answer first even when it's human competitors may already have the answer also. Still, from a Comp Sci perspective, the mere fact that it is successfully competing in the setting of a semi-natural speech environment means that IBM was successful regardless of the particular aspects of the game itself.

I watched it last night (missed the first game); talk about a clobbering.

I still can't imagine how the developers at IBM resisted the temptation to call this thing either Wintermute or Neuromancer.

Well, it's over.

Ken Jennings won $24,000, Brad Rutter won $21,000 and Watson won $77,000 (two-day scores).

That, my friends, is a sound thrashing at Jeopardy!

Hmm, I wonder what Watson is going to do with his money.

In reality, the dollar amounts won were treated like points; first place (Watson) actually won $1,000,000, second place $300,000 and third place $200,000.

100% of Watson's winnings went to charity, while Ken and Brad gave 50% of theirs to charity.

Mikey wrote:Hmm, I wonder what Watson is going to do with his money.

According to the Guardian

In the end, Watson won with $77,147 (£47,812), while Jennings, who won 74 games in a row during the show's 2004-2005 season, came in second with $24,000. Brad Rutter, who has in previous appearances won a total of $3.3m, followed with $21,600. IBM plans to donate Watson's winnings to charity.

My favorite part of the story is

"I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords," Jennings wrote next to his last answer, displaying one human quality conspicuously absent in Watson – a sense of humour.

Source

I thought that was a nice touch on his part.

What sense of humor? Jennings is a Mormon, he probably just thinks that the computers went back in time to transport Jesus to the New World and plant documents for Joseph Smith to find.

Did I tell you guys how I offended the Morman missionaries that came to my house?

They asked if I believed in God, I said "yes."

They asked if I believed in Jesus, I said "that depends on what you mean."

Without missing a beat, they asked if I believed that Joseph Smith was God's latest prophet, and I said "absolutely not."

They looked shocked and asked how I could say that "I said it was easy. Every prophet in the Bible was a Jew, and everyone knows that by definition we are God's chosen. Therefore it makes no sense to say he chose a Gentile."

Then with a smile and a friendly "La Heim", I closed the door

You have a fair bit out there, right? IIRC, BYU has a campus in Hawai'i.

Yes we do, and yes it is

I begrudge no man his faith, but I DETEST getting beaten over the head with it, and being looked down on when I believe differently than you do.

Hey, welcome to life Mark.

Lol, especially here in Hawaii, when the natives start talking about Kahuna's and Spirits and Ancestors, and Pele, Pali, and the rest of the gang.

Mark wrote:Lol, especially here in Hawaii, when the natives start talking about Kahuna's and Spirits and Ancestors, and Pele, Pali, and the rest of the gang.

When I was there, I was told that the government couldn't do anything about the current problem of tiger sharks coming in very close to the South Shore because tiger sharks were a common manifestation for aumakua (ancestor spirits.)