Watson

[tamakun]

So I finally got around to watching the IBM Grand Challenge of Watson on Jeopardy.

First off, I love the concept of just having this simple avatar. Note that it never turned red when it got a question wrong, it turned a dull amber-orange. Red would've been too HAL, I think.

His voice has a nice calming, tone to it, I actually kinda giggled every time he said a number, "for two hundred."

The number amounts that he chose during Daily Doubles and Final Jeopardy made Trebek raise an eyebrow. I have to admit, I don't think any Jeopardy players ever strayed from multiples of 100. To see Watson request to bet "six thousand, four hundred thirty five" is impressive in that it made me laugh. I don't think he was meant to make me laugh, but he did in its inimitable way.

Also, speaking of his oddities. he had the occasional "I'll hazard a guess" or "Let's finish off this topic", statements I didn't suspect he'd say! I know that would be easy to program in, but the rest of his programming seemed very robotic. I thought it was a nice touch that the IBM team gave him a personality.

Watson was a quick buzzer... Ken Jennings was visibly upset! Maybe they set Watson's buzzer timer too low. ;)

All in all, though, an impressive result from the IBM Grand Challenge Team. I commend their programming and I hope to hear more from the Watson programming in the future.

May I make an interesting relation? Trauma Team was released about a year ago, and Spike Speigel Gabriel Cunningham is given a computer assistant, RONI, to help him make his diagnoses. Watson was suggested to be used to be able to help diagnose medical patients. I wouldn't be surprised to see something like Watson running in a hospital short of five years from now.

However, I expect the doctors to be a bit more respectful... ;P

~~

Oh yeah! I knew there was something else I wanted to add to my Linkdump: zillabean mentioned a few odd books awhile back, and I grabbed one of them, called "Alien Hand Syndrome". It's a bunch of strange things that have happened over the course of human history. Anyone who listens to the Dean Blundell Show on The Edge in the mornings will occasionally hear about the "Edge Files" (check their podcasts for older shows which have the title "Edge Files"), which involve odd-yet-true stories that are happening in the news, such as the hermaphorditic dog (I can't make this stuff up, and even if I had, I'm sure it's happened!) - anyways, I'm losing the trail here. The book comes from the website "Damn Interesting" and has a whole bunch of odd stories, such as the titular Alien Hand Syndrome, Exploding Lakes, Fartistes (yes, they're musical farters), and Mad Jack Churchill. The book collects most of the stories from the website, so I'd suggest either reading the book or losing a few hours on the website. :)

Comments

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Watson didn't have a buzzer timer, he buzzed in as soon as he thought he had a good answer! Otherwise, yeah, it either wouldn't have been fair to him, or the humans. X3

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

I thought I remember hearing that he had a small delay built in to give himself a more human-relatable response, and to give the humans a chance - though if that were true that delay didn't seem to affect him too much, so you're right :)

I did a quick Google search for "watson buzzer delay" and I'm finding some rather interesting discussions on the matter. Did IBM program in a delay or not? Did they say?

It appears like Watson didn't have anticipatory programming built in - since he couldn't listen, he couldn't anticipate when Trebek was done reading and therefore couldn't have his "buzzer finger" ready to go.

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Oh, weird -- I didn't think about waiting for Trebek to be done! Man, now I'm not sure where I heard about his delays, or if they were right or just guessing.... Phooey. :<

[zillabean.livejournal.com]

Oh you got Alien Hand Syndrome!!!!! Isn't it FUN?!!!! I love stuff like that, I can never get enough of oddity stories :) AND NOW I KNOW HOW LONG A HUMAN HEAD WILL SURVIVE after it's been severed from its host. Which honestly is something I have wondered about silently for years and years, and am so relieved to now have a semblance of an answer :D

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

I don't read enough stuff, but yes, I love reading about the strange things in the world. I used to read a weekly e-mail called This is True (http://www.thisistrue.com/) since it always involves some pretty strange things that happen around the world - those small newspaper snippets that get buried into the corner of page 34, you know?

I had listened to a podcast (the same one that has its "Edge Files") where the hosts were talking with one Robert Kern about zombies, the undead, and super soldiers. I immediately thought that you would want to know about it, but I can't seem to find anything on the book he's apparently recently released on the subject...

[zillabean.livejournal.com]

I absolutely LOVE the fact that people think of me the minute Layton, little round birds, or zombie super soldiers come to mind <3