Sunday, January 9, 2011

IBM Computer Takes on Two Jeopardy Champions


Recently, the game show, Jeopardy, announced that they will pit man versus machine this season. The IBM computer, Watson, will be taking on two of Jeopardy’s former champions, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Ken Jennings broke the Jeopardy record during the 2004-2005 season for most consecutive games won. He played 74 games during the 2004-2005 season and accumulated more than $2.5 million. Brad Rutter was a contestant who had won more money than any other contestant on Jeopardy; more than $3.2 million. The IBM team hopes that their IBM computer, Watson, can answer questions as fast as a human. They have created Watson to listen to the questions then quickly and correctly answer them. In preparation, the IBM computer has been playing mock Jeopardy games with former game show participants. The developers believe that the IBM computer is now ready to face Jeopardy’s most successful champions. The Jeopardy challenge is similar to the chess match played by an IBM machine in 1997. In the chess match in 1997, the IBM computer called Deep Blue beat chess champion Garry Kasparov. Deep Blue was able to calculate 200 million chess moves per second based on a fixed problem. In the Jeopardy challenge, Watson will have to work differently then Deep Blue. Watson will have to listen to the question, interpret the question, figure out what it is being asked and answer the question.

The Jeopardy games featuring Watson will be airing February 14-16. The IBM researchers hope that question-answer systems like Watson will have real-life impacts on businesses such as health care, online self-service desks and tourism. The computer’s ability to quickly sort large amounts of data and answer precisely, as well as rank its confidence, will improve the intelligence of computerized systems and thus make life easier for humans.

I am amazed that new question-answer computers like Watson actually exist. I am anxious to see how well Watson performs against humans. I can’t wait to see if a computer system like Watson can think and react like a human. Like many others, I will be watching Jeopardy to see how Watson performs in this Jeopardy challenge. If the IBM team can create a computer that can think like a human, there is no telling what advances can be made to artificial intelligence.


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By: greendragon
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