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View Full Version : I’ll Take Geography for 1000 Puny Human Alex


GenericGuy
2011-02-11, 04:34 PM
Next week an IBM super computer named Watson is facing off against the two biggest winners in Jeopardy history, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. However, during a practice round last month it already beat the two; is our new machine overlord now here:smalltongue:? So anyone else watching next week?

http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/13/technology/ibm_jeopardy_watson/index.htm
Geno9999
2011-02-11, 04:49 PM
http://scienceguild.org/wiki/images/b/bd/Insect_overlords.jpg
I for one, welcome our new robotic overlords.
snoopy13a
2011-02-11, 04:51 PM
The contestants on Jeopardy know most of the correct answers (well, technically questions). Who wins is usually determined by the person who is best as buzzing in. If the computer is significantly better as buzzing in then the human contestants have no hope.
grimbold
2011-02-12, 11:02 AM
what sort of algorhythm does the computer have?
its ridiculous to have
google VS normal guy
Traab
2011-02-12, 01:00 PM
Honestly, if it has a voice activated search feature, it could likely look up the answer as Trebek speaks the words. Only real downside is if it auto fills in the rest and jumps the gun too soon on certain question. For example,

"This was the first US president to declare war as a democrat." That has several possible gun jump moments. But either way, technically, it could find the answer in a database within a half second of the question being asked. So unless the humans playing are better at intuiting what trebek is asking, they will get stomped.

There is a huge difference between spouting off facts like this super computer, and say, deep blue, playing chess against a grandmaster of the game. A fact spewing contest will always favor the computer, one that involves strategy will actually come down to a contest between how far ahead the computer can plan. Going back to the chess thing, I used to play against my automated board so much, I was actually able to figure out how many moves in advance it could plan for on each difficulty setting, so I was able to figure out how far ahead I had to set things up in order to win.

Oh, and if they ever put a computer up against the best wheel of fortune players, im pretty sure the computer will always be able to guess the phrase first. Simple odds based program to determine the most likely letters to pick as each round unfolds. So it would all come down to random luck of the spin.
Gamerlord
2011-02-13, 03:19 PM
GO TEAM WATSON! GO TEAM WATSON!
:smalltongue:

But (un)seriously, I saw the documentrey, and the development crew said what they want for machines in the future is Star Trek. Seriously?

I want one of THESE:

http://collider.com/wp-content/image-base/Movies/T/Terminator/terminator_movie.jpg

As a pet. I will call him Happy.
Istari
2011-02-13, 03:55 PM
I think you guys are underestimating the amount of wordplay involved in jeopardy.
Dr.Epic
2011-02-13, 04:06 PM
http://scienceguild.org/wiki/images/b/bd/Insect_overlords.jpg
I for one, welcome our new robotic overlords.

Those are ants.
AtlanteanTroll
2011-02-13, 05:36 PM
What is cheating?

I don't get how this is fair. Can't the computer just hook up to the web? The chess championship should've been much harder for it as I understand it. Which I may not.
Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll
2011-02-13, 10:19 PM
What is cheating?

I don't get how this is fair. Can't the computer just hook up to the web? The chess championship should've been much harder for it as I understand it. Which I may not.

However, you need to program the computer to listen to colloquial human speech, listen to what are sometimes RIDDLES, and figure out what's being asked of it. For example, if the category is "Who said me?", and the question is "I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart of a king", the computer has to make a leap of judgement that what's being asked of it is to find who said the quote. It could be worse if the quote is a question, "Why must this nation hazard its ease, its interest, and its power for the sake of a people so far away?", like that one.

I would guess it would definitely get Queen Elizabeth I of England on the first one, but would it be able to get President Lyndon B. Johnson for the second, with the question worded as it is?

A large part of Jeopardy is figuring out what the question is asking of you, and that requires making leaps of judgement that the Human mind can make easily, but an AI will have trouble with.
Form
2011-02-14, 05:26 AM
They should have had the computer spit out a few HK-47 or HAL lines for hilarity.

"I will take history for 1000... meatbag"
"Condescending answer:"
rakkoon
2011-02-14, 05:31 AM
I would love it if the questions were asked in a different dialect each time. That should hamper the automatottotototo[BLEEP]on!
shadow_archmagi
2011-02-14, 09:44 AM
Yeah. I mean, obviously if you ask a computer "What is the capital of argentina" it can check that against its massive database.

However, what about questions like "What city in the southernmost country in South America has been under siege more times than any other since 1984?" (Computer has to be able to organize countries by "most south" and then subcatagorize based on continent, and then it has to be able to count number of sieges and compare and then cull based on time constraints... if it can even follow the grammar.)

Or, heck, what about rhyme time?

"Delicious fruit challenge"
"PEAR DARE"

"Attack of a flat-bedded river craft"
"BARGE CHARGE"

I'll be really impressed if a computer can answer those sorts of questions.

I'll also be saying

"Computer, send game invites to all my friends, launch company of heroes, and then load the daily show because my friends are fat and take forever to join"

Of course, my computer won't actually do these things, because I won't have a WATSON since they cost truckloads of diamonds.
GenericGuy
2011-02-14, 06:18 PM
During a practice round all the questions were holidays and the correct answer was the month the holidays were in. At first Watson answered with just “what is a Holiday,” but after it got it wrong and the other contestants were answering with months it figured it out and finished the category with all correct answers. So yes it can “learn” from its mistakes:smalleek:....:smallcool:
ZombyWoof
2011-02-14, 06:30 PM
I can still outrun it.
Lemonus
2011-02-14, 06:34 PM
Didn't anyone watch the Nova on it? It can't hook up to the web, although it has a huge memory bank. It's weakness is that it is a computer, so it will have a hard time understanding the riddles that are in the Jeopardy clues.
Istari
2011-02-14, 07:59 PM
Just watched it, pretty good showing on Watson's part even if it had trouble with some questions.

I lol'd when I said the same answer as Ken
shadow_archmagi
2011-02-14, 08:01 PM
Just watched it, pretty good showing on Watson's part even if it had trouble with some questions.

I lol'd when I said the same answer as Ken

I had a 5 dollar bet with my roommate

and then they tied

uggggh the drama! The intrigue!
AtlanteanTroll
2011-02-14, 10:27 PM
Didn't anyone watch the Nova on it? It can't hook up to the web, although it has a huge memory bank. It's weakness is that it is a computer, so it will have a hard time understanding the riddles that are in the Jeopardy clues.

What's Nova? :smallconfused:
Gamerlord
2011-02-14, 10:37 PM
What's Nova? :smallconfused:

...The TV show? On PBS?
Traab
2011-02-15, 12:12 AM
Ok, I can see it being confused by some of the odder categories, but those rarely take up more than one or two lines on the board, so its not that big of a loss. For every barge charge style of question, or oddly worded one, there are 5 straightforward, "This man invented the cheese wheel" type questions.
skywalker
2011-02-15, 01:13 AM
To add some clarity, they said tonight that the computer doesn't have to hear the question: it receives the entire question electronically as soon as the other contestants do. Seemed a bit of an advantage to the computer, to me.
thubby
2011-02-15, 03:01 AM
the real feat here isn't what it knows, it's that it can reason out jeopardy's system which is essentially finding questions from the answers.
shadow_archmagi
2011-02-15, 08:54 AM
To add some clarity, they said tonight that the computer doesn't have to hear the question: it receives the entire question electronically as soon as the other contestants do. Seemed a bit of an advantage to the computer, to me.

Well, it's sent them as a text file, and then it has to search for the correct answer in its database.

The difficulty here isn't in information storage, because all three contestants know everything forever anyway. The difficulty is in finding out how to make it understand natural language.

Human thought processes are very complex and sentence structure is very difficult to program. Why do you think that early adventure games always had to use commands like "LOOK MAN"
The Linker
2011-02-15, 09:03 AM
Those are ants.

Riiiight. He's referencing the well-known Simpsons joke but substituting robots due to the subject matter of the thread. :smallconfused:
Dr.Epic
2011-02-15, 02:31 PM
Riiiight. He's referencing the well-known Simpsons joke but substituting robots due to the subject matter of the thread. :smallconfused:

Yeah, I know. He just should have found a reference with robots.
shadow_archmagi
2011-02-15, 02:46 PM
Yeah, I know. He just should have found a reference with robots.


comic (http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=748#comic)


Fine, fine, make me do ALL THE WORK AROUND HERE
shadow_archmagi
2011-02-15, 08:04 PM
Wow, WATSON did extremely well tonight.

What was up with his betting strategy?
AlterForm
2011-02-15, 08:31 PM
Wow, WATSON did extremely well tonight.

What was up with his betting strategy?

Confuse the pathetic meatbags into submission.

I liked his answer to the U.S Cities category, though. "Toronto?????"
The Linker
2011-02-15, 08:57 PM
So that's what Shadow's status update meant.

My life makes 0.7% more sense.
Dr.Epic
2011-02-15, 09:24 PM
comic (http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=748#comic)


Fine, fine, make me do ALL THE WORK AROUND HERE

That's better.
shadow_archmagi
2011-02-16, 08:28 PM
Ken Jennings is a hero among heroes and a man among men.
Private-Prinny
2011-02-16, 10:36 PM
Does anyone have any idea what was up with Watson's betting strategy? That has got to be the strangest wager I've ever seen.

Also, is anyone else impressed that Ken was keeping pace with Watson through most of the game?
Science Officer
2011-02-16, 11:26 PM
Does anyone have any idea what was up with Watson's betting strategy? That has got to be the strangest wager I've ever seen.

Also, is anyone else impressed that Ken was keeping pace with Watson through most of the game?

well there's a few things it could be based on, points possessed, points on the board, points possessed by other players, confidence,.... lots of things that could be used to weight decisions, generate odds, do some game theory stuff.
but some of those really low bets were puzzling.
shadow_archmagi
2011-02-17, 08:30 AM
well there's a few things it could be based on, points possessed, points on the board, points possessed by other players, confidence,.... lots of things that could be used to weight decisions, generate odds, do some game theory stuff.
but some of those really low bets were puzzling.

Yeah, it was probably something like

1. Default bet is 20% of current winnings
2. Modify default bet by percentage of confidence
3. Increase or decrease bet by up to 50% based on whether competition is winning or losing