IBM Computer v. Jeopardy Champs
In Jeopardy’s! 47 year history, there has NEVER been a contestant like Watson. And who knew the first public face-off between man and machine would be a TV game show.
Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter represented humanity in a demonstration of intellectual prowess against a new IBM supercomputer named Watson.
Both seasoned human contestants say playing against Watson is like playing against a really tough competitor but it can be beat both on the buzzer and in answering the question.
IBM unveiled Watson, which is the size of ten refrigerators, not to beat Jeopardy champions but to demonstrate that it has the ability to take information from atlases, encyclopedias and other reference works and not just regurgitate facts. Watson has the ability to contextualize by taking all surrounding facts about a place, person or process and arrive at a likely conclusion based on the information presented.
The company is hopeful that this new generation of supercomputer will speed medical diagnoses and perform other useful real world computation in a fraction of the time.
“I don’t know if there is a Vegas [betting] line, but always bet on humanity.” — Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings
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