Is anyone watching the Jeopardy "Man vs Machine" series?

Yesterday started a three-day series of Jeopardy, but what's different is that we have two of the shows most prolific winners facing off against IBM's "Watson". Here is a practice match from last month:
  

Dear god they have released Skynet on Jepoardy. 
Judgement Day is nigh

I enjoyed it. I hope today's episode has more questions then back story about it.

I'd just like to point out that "WATSON" is written in one of my favourite fonts, Lubalin. Cheers.
 
/fontnerd

I think it's utterly fascinating, and although I'm going to miss the broadcast tonight and tomorrow night, I'll be watching it through the video IBM says they're going to post on Thursday.
 
I appreciate how they're showing Watson's top answers and confidence, as it really helps to understand Watson's strengths and weaknesses throughout the categories. Also interesting is how Watson's employing a bit of a "shotgun" method of category selection, moving around the board horizontally rather than vertically. That seems to be a specific tactic intended to throw Rutter and Jennings off.
 
Should be interesting to see how Watson handles the Double Jeopardy! round. It's apparent it was already struggling a little with some of the higher-value answers in the Jeopardy! round.

I don't think Watson is going to win, he flubs it way too much on the higher value questions.

It seems like the human advantage is mostly limited to stating a question in a way Watson can't understand. In other words, a human understands the question every time and may know the answer, Watson always knows the answer but occasionally doesn't understand the question.

Yes! I remember Trebek mentioning on Friday that they were doing something completely new, but I definitely did not expect this to be what they were doing.  I'm definitely very intrigued and interested to see not only how the games play out over the next two nights, but where this technology goes.  

" I enjoyed it. I hope today's episode has more questions then back story about it. "

In that first video, Watson should have answered "What is purple, bitch?"

" @rentfn said:

" I enjoyed it. I hope today's episode has more questions then back story about it. "

It's seems that they are contnuing from yesterday and moving on to double jeopardy. Although, I wonder if they are going to do final jeopardy today as well. If not what will tomorrows show consist of? "

" Although, I wonder if they are going to do final jeopardy today as well. If not what will tomorrows show consist of? "

I feel like I'm the only person in the world unimpressed with two people who have already been made fucking rich by Jeopardy coming back and being paid to take a dive in a series of 30 minute infomercials. 
 
*adjusts tin foil hat*

" I feel like I'm the only person in the world unimpressed with two people who have already been made fucking rich by Jeopardy coming back and being paid to take a dive in a series of 30 minute infomercials.  *adjusts tin foil hat* "

A robot staring at me and asking "What is purple?" is a pretty horrifying experience.

" @fazzle said:

" I feel like I'm the only person in the world unimpressed with two people who have already been made fucking rich by Jeopardy coming back and being paid to take a dive in a series of 30 minute infomercials.  *adjusts tin foil hat* "

All winnings go to charity, unless you're referring to appearance fees. "

" @fazzle said:

" I feel like I'm the only person in the world unimpressed with two people who have already been made fucking rich by Jeopardy coming back and being paid to take a dive in a series of 30 minute infomercials.  *adjusts tin foil hat* "

All winnings go to charity, unless you're referring to appearance fees. "

Yeah I've been watching the videos, and it's some crazy stuff. The fact that Watson can compete on Jeopardy in particular is impressive because the Jeopardy questions aren't always straight forward, often relying on word play or tricky puns for the layout. And things Watson gets incorrect are usually context based questions. 

" @FrankCanada97 said:

" @fazzle said:

" I feel like I'm the only person in the world unimpressed with two people who have already been made fucking rich by Jeopardy coming back and being paid to take a dive in a series of 30 minute infomercials.  *adjusts tin foil hat* "

All winnings go to charity, unless you're referring to appearance fees. "

No, he's clearly suggesting they're being paid to let Watson win. "

I just heard about it today when they mentioned it on ESPN.  I'll check it out tonight although I'm not sure how I feel about it.  "Deep Blue" vs Kasparov in the 90's was one thing since it was all tactical probabilities.   This time around it's a curiosity for certain, and those jokes about HAL or Skynet don't seem so remote. 

As a computer science major, I find it completely fascinating. I want to work at IBM now haha!

Listen, and understand. Watson is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you lose.    

I wish I could watch this... school projects have got me on lock-down. I'll be watching the footage later on, though.

Watson is absolutely creaming them right now. I am also baffled by the amount it chooses to wager. Also he "guessed" on a Double Jeopardy question.

Wow, Toronto? Really? Lester B. Pearson apparently led a double life and Billy Bishop was a WWII battle.

The ability of watson to read the question faster is a testament to its computing power.  
 
Also changing the topic constantly seemed to have thrown the other two off

Bah, I hope this goes online later. (College student with no cable.)

They didn't really get thrown off. The lower value questions are more directly worded so Watson was on a streak for a while. Once you get up to about 800 Watson can't quite understand most of the questions. So basically the contestants can let Watson hang itself by allowing it to buzz in to any question they think is too esoterically worded.

What is Toronto??????

That is rigged.  AI is not that good, I have played my fair share of Call of Duty campaigns.   
 
But seriously, I don't know if it's that believable or not.

They should have Gary Kasparov as a contestant, I would watch that.

The answer for that Final Jeopardy question sort of proves Watson has some trouble with contextual questions?  I really don't know how it could have gotten the country wrong on that one unless it was trying to tell a joke. Because if it was telling a joke than that means it's self aware, man! It knows! The second that thing gets connected to the internet we're all dead!

" The answer for that Final Jeopardy question sort of proves Watson has some trouble with contextual questions?  I really don't know how it could have gotten the country wrong on that one unless it was trying to tell a joke. Because if it was telling a joke than that means it's self aware, man! It knows! The second that thing gets connected to the internet we're all dead! "

i know how to fix that robot real good. 
 

I'm intrigued, although I remember most of those categories and questions from regular Jeopardy. I watch Jeopardy like it's going out of style and I'm an old retired man.

Watson is a fucking badass.

I haven't seen these episodes of Jeopardy but in that first video Watson never choose another category and the one time it is presented with that as the only option they cut to break... Sooo can Watson choose categories? Does it do so in the full show?

I for one welcome our future robotic overlords. Go Wilson!

Somewhat. I think it is kinda cool, back to being like the Deep Blue chess days.

" @FrankCanada97: True enough, but it still has trouble with the context of questions.  It just seems to disregard certain bits of information (in this case the category "U.S. cities") and only provides the best categorical response.  I'm impressed by it's analytical reasoning and deduction based upon the information it already knows, but feel a little safer inside knowing that some of it's logic isn't quite there yet. "

Watson, in his training phase,  learned that categories only weakly suggest the kind of answer that is expected, and, therefore, the machine downgrades their significance.  The way the language was parsed provided an advantage for the humans and a disadvantage for Watson, as well. “What US city” wasn’t in the question. If it had been, Watson would have given US cities much more weight as it searched for the answer. Adding to the confusion for Watson, there are cities named Toronto in the United States and the Toronto in Canada has an American League baseball team. It probably picked up those facts from the written material it has digested. Also, the machine didn’t find much evidence to connect either city’s airport to World War II. (Chicago was a very close second on Watson’s list of possible answers.) So this is just one of those situations that’s a snap for a reasonably knowledgeable human but a true brain teaser for the machine.

 It's an impressive language parsing feat, but, like most Computer Science AI stuff, it probably wouldn't be so impressive if you knew how it worked. AI is like a magic trick in that way; its about making it seem like real intelligence. 
 
People can't out run cars, wrestle a bulldozer or dig faster than a steam shovel -- but there's nothing meaningful or philosophical about that. That's how I feel about AI.