In last night’s episode of “Jeopardy,” supercomputer Watson torched human champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter to win the first of two matches, finishing Final Jeopardy with more than $35,000 — more than twice the total of Jennings and Rutter. Because Watson has the ability to ring in instantaneously, it has the opportunity to answer every clue before its two competitors, which is total B.S. if you ask me, but then nobody ever said that our impending war with robots would be fair.
People must find the end of the world entertaining, because the shows have drawn big ratings:
Monday’s episode featuring IBM’s computer Watson playing Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter had an 8.7 household rating, while Tuesday’s numbers climbed to a 9.5. That’s the bestJeopardy performance in nearly six years. [Inside TV]
What really pisses me off is when people clap for Watson after it gets a Daily Double correct. I WILL SEE YOU TRAITORS HANGED.
Rutter and Jennings will have one more chance to save the humanity tonight, and I think this is our best hope:
(comic from Hijinks Ensue via The Clearly Dope, more analysis at Gizmodo)
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Perhaps we could convince Watson that it’s Robot Party Week at the Galapagos Islands.
If man can make it, man can break it.
If we were smart we’d have “Ways To Kill Humans” as a Jeopardy category. If Watson answers any right, we know the war has already begun.
I’ve been watching these and it is unfair that Watson can respond instantly. Jennings and Rutter are amazingly good at this game and have a wealth of knowledge, but check them out…hardly examples of awesome fast reflexes…we need a combo tag team of Manny Pacquiao and Jennings/Rutter to defeat this robot
This news has me ready to run straight to the nearest suicide booth.
funny thing is, those two were the fastest players in history… that was their game… but if watson can reply instantly, what the hell is the goddamn point?
but like you said matt, robot war won’t be fair
Oh, hell. How long before the Cylon uprising?
Watson receives the question via text, meaning he understands it as soon as the data is received. Unless they lag the words to match a quick reading pace, that might be a bigger advantage than reflexes.
What does it all mean? I don’t know, but we’d better keep John Connor alive.
Isnt Jeopardy a contest of knowledge and reflexes? Watson doesn’t have any unfair advantage when it comes to buzzing in. He has to operate a mechanical buzzer as well.
The only thing I wish they would have done would be to make Watson use visual OCR and speech-to-text to “see” and “hear” the questions the same way that the meatbag contestants do. Instead, they issue the question as a text file… meh.
Joking aside, I feel like it messing up Final Jeopardy was kind of a big deal. The category was US Cities, and it answered “Toronto.” I think it’s significant that it made a mistake like that. I made a wrong guess at home, but at least mine would have fit the category. So I guess the good news is that when it launches all the nuclear missles at once, they’ll all aim for Canada by mistake.
I wonder what this plug is for. I’ll just pull it out and see. What do you think of your boyfriend now, Trebek?
I think it’s time we roll out Robot Nixon to kick some hippie computer ass.
(*dumps bucket of water on Watson*)
HU-MANS! HU-MANS! HU-MANS!
Watson was so dominating that it became uninteresting.
It was obvious he was going to miss that Final Jeopardy question. There was a lack of keywords in the clue for Watson to search its database.
Oh my god, I called the machine “he.” Pretty soon I’ll be giving it civil rights.
@White Boom Boom: I think his answer of Toronto made it obvious that Watson doesn’t know what the categories are, he only knows the questions (answers) he’s given in text files. If he knew the final category was US Cities, there’s no way he could have possibly said Toronto, but it seems like all the info he had was that it was a city with two airports named for certain things, and Toronto might fit that equation (although the Toronto airports listed on Wiki don’t fit the clue).
This whole thing is so pointless. It is like putting a human in a library against a human using google in a information finding contest.
If it makes you guys feel any better, it still takes the most sophisticated robot in the world hours to tell the difference between a coffee cup and a tennis ball.
of course Watson knows about the Simpsons, but can he aimlessly argue what season it stopped being funny?
Anyone else notice the byline on the comic. “Joel Watson”? Joel Watson, the comic illustrator, Watson the computer? IT’S A TRAP PEOPLE!
@Josh You may be right, so I’m hoping they start throwing some more category specific questions to test it, like those “Starts with X” type things, where the answer is ambigious if you don’t know the category.
If it makes you guys feel any better, it still takes the most sophisticated robot in the world hours to tell the difference between a coffee cup and a tennis ball.
I understand scientists at MIT are working around the clock to address this with the RoboGroin.
+1 Stinky Pete
I for one welcome our new overlords.
Here I thought Ken Jennings was the first supercomputer.
Watson can’t ring in instantly, he has to press a button just like the others. “He”‘s just better at it.
Watson does need to push the clicker to answer like the other competitors, but seriously, the response time has to be near instant.
Granted, he failed on behalf of humans everywhere, but I will forever respect Ken Jennings for tonight’s final Jeopardy answer.
what is a hoe?
My piece of shit DVR didn’t record this like it was scheduled to. Wait, does that mean we won?
“Alex…I’d like swords for one thousand please.”
“No Watson, that’s S Words”