OT: Jeopardy! fans

[Jas_lov]

Watson was dominating until the commercial break. It seemed to struggle with the decades category. On one question Jennings answered the question wrong and then Watson gave the same wrong answer. I guess since it can't hear it can't rule out previous incorrect responses.

It seemed to have an advantage buzzing in on the easier questions, but in the 2nd half Jennings and Rutter had better timing. I wonder if it takes Watson's confidence longer for more difficult questions or if the humans were able to adjust.

[Solecismic]

I think Rutter and Jennings both realized that if they wanted a respectable score, they were going to have to buzz in on every question before determining whether they knew the answer.

I was hoping Trebek would explain how Watson was buzzing in. In the studio, there a blue ring around the question board that lights when the buzzers are active. But Watson can't see or hear.

I'm very impressed with the programming. The sophistication required to get some of those answers right is amazing. The real work in this project is in the context parser for the encyclopedia entries.

[Lathum]

I thought it was pretty cool.

"What is milk"

lol

[Passacaglia]

Watson is obviously cheating. Gets the first one right, then finds the daily double out of nowhere? The fix is in, folks.

[Easy Mac]

Originally Posted by Solecismic

This makes very little sense. More than half of your success on Jeopardy is related to how quickly you can hit the button after the question has been read (in the studio, there's a light surrounding the game board signaling the opening). A computer would presumably be able to react much more quickly to the signal and would buzz in every time.

That seemed to be the case, although Watson seemed to struggle mightily on the more difficult questions. It will be interesting to see how it does in double jeopardy. Ken is easily the slowest on the buzzer.

[sachmo71]

it was amazing to watch. my wife was confused as to why i found it so exciting, but she thought it was cool.

[Dr. Sak]

I wish Watson would answer a question with the response: Who are three people who've never been in my kitchen?

[Lathum]

I just got in and saw the last few Questions. Man, Jennings and Rutter look pissed.

[Dr. Sak]

Originally Posted by Lathum

I just got in and saw the last few Questions. Man, Jennings and Rutter look pissed.

I agree. It has to be frustrating to not even be able to buzz in.

[Jas_lov]

Jeopardy! Champ Ken Jennings - The Washington Post

Here's an interesting chat with Ken Jennings.

[Suburban Rhythm]

Originally Posted by Dr. Sak

I wish Watson would answer a question with the response: Who are three people who've never been in my kitchen?

If these programmers had a sense of humor, if Watson has a huge lead heading to Final Jeopardy, it would answer "Suck it, Trebek! "

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Jas_lov

Jeopardy! Champ Ken Jennings - The Washington Post
Here's an interesting chat with Ken Jennings.

Interesting to see how much humor/personality comes through in his answers. Wasn't exactly what I expected.

[Radii]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Interesting to see how much humor/personality comes through in his answers. Wasn't exactly what I expected.

q: Did Watson's voice throw you off your game at all?

a: Yes, because I wanted him to sound like Darrell Hammon doing Sean Connery on SNL's Celebrity Jeopardy instead. "That'sh not what your mother shaid lasht night, Trebek!"

[Easy Mac]

The more I watch, the less impressed I am with the computer. It is literally a glorified search engine. Its just playing a word association game, not performing any type of complex thought like they claim. Its destroying people because it can hit a button faster, not because its a huge leap forward in understanding human syntax. When it stumbles, its because it can't parse human syntax.

[Ronnie Dobbs2]

Originally Posted by Easy Mac

The more I watch, the less impressed I am with the computer. It is literally a glorified search engine. Its just playing a word association game, not performing any type of complex thought like they claim. Its destroying people because it can hit a button faster, not because its a huge leap forward in understanding human syntax. When it stumbles, its because it can't parse human syntax.

Are humans playing Jeopardy that different than glorified search engines? Seems to me the order of operations for humans is to break down the answer, determine the information it is looking for, then check our "database" to see if we have that information.

[Ronnie Dobbs2]

Does anyone know exactly how Watson is fed the questions? That would seem to be one place (along with buzzer reaction) where it is not truly fair. Seems to me that he should be fed them a word at a time at perhaps a speed reader's pace? Then the algorithm can decide to wait for more information or go for an answer as the words come in.

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by Ronnie Dobbs2

Does anyone know exactly how Watson is fed the questions? That would seem to be one place (along with buzzer reaction) where it is not truly fair. Seems to me that he should be fed them a word at a time at perhaps a speed reader's pace? Then the algorithm can decide to wait for more information or go for an answer as the words come in.

I thought they said something about feeding it as a text file.

[Ronnie Dobbs2]

I'm sure that's happening, but if they are feeding it all at once the computer can parse it much more quickly than a human brain - it would be nice if they were fed the data at roughly the same rate.

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by Ronnie Dobbs2

I'm sure that's happening, but if they are feeding it all at once the computer can parse it much more quickly than a human brain - it would be nice if they were fed the data at roughly the same rate.

It's all on one screen though, so the humans see it all at once, too.

[gstelmack]

I thought Jennings had a great take on this from the earlier link: buzzer speed is the key differentiator between actual Jeopardy contestants (most of them know most of the answers anyway, it doesn't usually come down to who knows more), and regardless the fact that Watson can answer the questions at all is the darned impressive part.

[Rizon]

I thought it was overwhelmingly boring and I was completely unimpressed.

When Watson can play American Ninja Warrior, I might be excited.

Also, Watson needs to talk to his cousin, Dopey. Cause I hate talking to Dopey when I call a company and don't reach a human; he can't understand a word I say and makes me repeat things 100 times, then hangs up on me.

[sachmo71]

Originally Posted by Easy Mac

The more I watch, the less impressed I am with the computer. It is literally a glorified search engine. Its just playing a word association game, not performing any type of complex thought like they claim. Its destroying people because it can hit a button faster, not because its a huge leap forward in understanding human syntax. When it stumbles, its because it can't parse human syntax.

we aren't there yet, but a search that can parse like that so quickly is a big win.

[mckerney]

Originally Posted by Radii

q: Did Watson's voice throw you off your game at all?

a: Yes, because I wanted him to sound like Darrell Hammon doing Sean Connery on SNL's Celebrity Jeopardy instead. "That'sh not what your mother shaid lasht night, Trebek!"

I was hoping Watson would have Bender's voice from Futurama. "Bite my shiny metal ass Trebek!"

[DaddyTorgo]

Winner

Did the Watson Jeopardy experience have an "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" feel to it? It creeped me out a little.



A.
Ken Jennings :
Right, the circular Watson avatar looks a *little* too much like HAL's red light, right? I think it's reading Brad's and my lips.
When anyone mentions 2001 to them (or Terminator, or Matrix, or Tron, or...) IBM prefers to bring up the helpful question-answering computer on Star Trek. C'mon IBM! You just invented SkyNet! Own it!

[DaddyTorgo]

Or this gem:

Q.
It was interesting to me that the "Which decade" category seemed especially hard for Watson. Why was that?



A.
Ken Jennings :
I think it took it a little while to figure out that the answers would all be decades. This seems incredible to a human playing along at home, but basic contextual issues like this are incredibly hard for machine intelligence to master. The cool thing about Watson is it learns from those mistakes. By the end of the category, it had learned that the answers were going to be decades, and adjusted accordingly.

It is clearly the modern descendent of "Joshua," the learning computer in the 1980s movie WarGames. "How about a nice game of Jeopardy, Ken?" "No, let's play Global Thermonuclear War."

[cuervo72]

http://www.slate.com/id/2284721/

[BishopMVP]

ken-jennings-overlords.jpg

[gstelmack]

Yeah, that was great when it was revealed on the show. Jennings has a great sense of humor.

[sterlingice]

Sorry, finally caught up with this on DVR last week and the board today.

I loved Ken's final answer- he really is the perfect Jeopardy champion. He's friendly and affable with just a little nerdiness and self-deprecation. He's definitely a geek but not really socially awkward- he really was a great find that helped the show out during his streak.

I only saw parts 2 and 3 as I forgot to DVR part 1. Part 2 was kindof frustrating to watch because Watson just destroyed Rutter and Jennings on buzzer speed. And you could tell it was purely on buzzer speed.

Part 3 was much more compelling as Ken just said "eff it, I'm buzzing in on everything so I beat the computer to the punch. I likely know the answer anyways". It led to some awkward moments where it took him the 5 seconds to answer just to process the question but he got it right almost all of the time so it was a smart gamble. I'm surprised Rutter didn't start doing the same but it seemed like he stayed more reserved. If Ken had been able to find one or both of the Daily Doubles in Double Jeopardy, he might have had a chance but when Watson found both, the comeback was over.

At the end of the day, it led me to believe that if given the same buzzer, the results would have been: Brad then Ken then Watson. The humans still knew more answers, it seemed. So, I think the final tally would be that Brad Rutter is the best Jeopardy player, Ken was the smartest player- think a coach that makes good halftime adjustments and has to settle for "Second Best Jeopardy Player in the World", and Watson had the quickest buzzer. That's not to say Watson wasn't smart- even if you have the fastest buzzer in the world, it doesn't help if you don't have the answers. But it had an unfair advantage that fundamentally altered the way the two best Jeopardy players in the world played the game.

SI

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by Rizon

Also, Watson needs to talk to his cousin, Dopey. Cause I hate talking to Dopey when I call a company and don't reach a human; he can't understand a word I say and makes me repeat things 100 times, then hangs up on me.

SI

[QuikSand]

So, it's hard to watch all this without giving a little thought. For those who have also done so, maybe "we" need to come up with another measuring stick? Yes, I know that it's better television to play two boards of questions with standard TV rules, but that's clearly not the best way to identify a champion. And the buzzer-timing thing is clearly more art than science, I think that's pretty clear.

Here's my general thinking:

-Each contestant gets a full complement of categories and dollar values, generated by the usual process (with the appropriate exclusions of audio/video, etc)

-Given the category and dollar values only, he must indicate whether he would buzz in immediately, in advance of really processing the question

-If not, he then gets to see the question, and then give an indication of whether he would offer an answer after a reasonable processing time

-Presumably, you work out some sort of thresholds for Watson or another AI competitor to indicate whether it would answer -- I think the processing time is essentially moot, so really only the first question would be relevant, I think

-Based on a weighted scoring (more to those indicated as an auto-buzz-in, less to those where he wants to read/process the clue), you can then come up with some sort of score for the battery of questions


Something like that serve as a decent enough starting point? (Haven't thought through whether the presence of an instant-evaluator competitor that doesn't need the second tier of consideration corrupts the competition inherently here)

[BishopMVP]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

Yeah, that was great when it was revealed on the show. Jennings has a great sense of humor.

IAmA 74-time Jeopardy! champion, Ken Jennings. I will not be answering in the form of a question. : IAmA

puredemo: You're in a desert, walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden you look down and see a tortoise. It's crawling toward you. You reach down and you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping.
Why is that, Ken?

WatsonsBitch: Nice try! You can't win 74 straight Jeopardy games without also learning how to pass the Voight-Kampff. Nexus-6 babeeee.

[Raiders Army]

We watched Jeopardy's episode today. I don't know if I've ever watched a guy like Arthur who would still be clicking his button while one of his opponents would answer the question. It's hilarious. Fortunately, he won today so he'll be on tomorrow.

[JPhillips]

Just heard a wrong answer accepted. The question was roughly, "In baseball, these two letters represent walking to the plate one time." The answer accepted, AB when it should have been PA.

[SportsDino]

One thing about the Watson match is if it gets the whole text file when Trebek first starts reading the question, while the guys need to speed read it off the screen or listen along to Trebek's speech, that by itself is a 2-4 second gap which is a lot of time when deciding to hit the buzzer. I think a lot of Ken Jennings half time adjustment is realizing the couple of seconds of stall time he gets after hitting the buzzer is usually enough to finish the thought in his head, so ring in on any confidence and expect to solve it.

It is a lot different for Watson to get the question as a text file, process 2 seconds, and then halt on the automatic signal it gets when the question is done being read, than to get all of the content from speech recognition and also recognize the buzz timing.

Of course, because the other contestants can see you can't show the question on the board as well.

So to me, the fairest match is Trebek reading the questions without any visual cues, and the machine needing to parse the words from sound (which is somewhat harder) or to get each text word as Trebek starts it.

You will be surprised how often when watching the show that looking at the end of the question gives it away almost immediately, and with a search running the way Watson probably is running, getting the words in sequence would make a difference in how it can do its word association algorithm.

That said, it is still highly likely that Watson would be competitive in a match, particularly against normal contestants which have a number of questions that wouldn't make a difference whether there is a couple seconds of startup lag due to the text file advantage.

[cuervo72]

Originally Posted by SportsDino

So to me, the fairest match is Trebek reading the questions without any visual cues, and the machine needing to parse the words from sound (which is somewhat harder) or to get each text word as Trebek starts it.

You will be surprised how often when watching the show that looking at the end of the question gives it away almost immediately, and with a search running the way Watson probably is running, getting the words in sequence would make a difference in how it can do its word association algorithm.

Actually, not surprised at all that you can skim for the "catch" in the clue. Also, I think personally I would have a much harder time playing w/o being able to read the clue - I process that just as much as Trebek. (Makes Eddie Timanus' performance all the more impressive to me.)

[JPhillips]

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- "Jeopardy" host Alex Trebek appeared on crutches today while hosting the National Geographic World Championship at Mountain View-based Google.

Trebek says he was chasing a burglar at his hotel in San Francisco at 2:30 a.m. Wednesday when his Achilles tendon suddenly snapped. Trebek says when he fell, he also injured his other leg.

The female burglar entered his room and stole cash, a bracelet his mother gave him, and other items. The woman stashed the items near an ice machine on the floor he was staying on. Trebek then injured himself while chasing the woman down the hallway.

According to Lt. Troy Dangerfield with the San Francisco Police Department, a 56-year-old white female was arrested and booked on felony burglary and possession of stolen property.

All items except the cash and bracelet were recovered.

Trebek was still able to fulfill his hosting duties Wednesday at the National Geographic World Championship. Three teams of students are in the final round as they vie for the championship; the finalists are Russia, Chinese Taipei and Canada. The U.S. team tied for fourth and is not in the finals.

Trebek reassured the audience that despite the incident, he is OK. He will have surgery on Friday and is expected to be in a cast for six weeks

What is Alex got rolled by a hooker?

[JeeberDMack]

An old hooker. Ick...

[SportsDino]

Originally Posted by cuervo72

Actually, not surprised at all that you can skim for the "catch" in the clue. Also, I think personally I would have a much harder time playing w/o being able to read the clue - I process that just as much as Trebek. (Makes Eddie Timanus' performance all the more impressive to me.)

Ya, but as fast as any person can visually skim a clue Watson can easily do it many times faster. Audio only input is the only way to be fair to all contestants.

Given my guesses at the most general way the Watson machine works, if it doesn't get the keywords among the last few uttered until the end the quality of it's search is going to be very weak in the first few seconds of the clue read because it lacks the same level of contextual intuition a human has in the same situation. Those few seconds (or however long those words are) will actually cut severely into the processing time available.

Granted Watson is an accomplishment as it is, it has reached an incredibly powerful time bound that has been out of reach for machines for a long time (and sorts through a number of problems in language processing and understanding along the way). Quibbling over the quality of the inputs on weak old humans is minor in comparison, but in a buzzer sensitive game like Jeoparody I think it is warranted. Buzzer timing by itself is an art... look at school quiz game competitions, without the 'wait until the end of the clue' rule you will constantly see buzzes within the first few words of a two sentence clue, as soon as they get the first partial fact a gamer will anticipate and risk an answer to get an edge. Maybe not so much if they don't get practice packets of the questions in advance, cough cough damn kids who buzz in on the first two words of a clue and give an answer with zero context because they remember the first two words as unique...

[QuikSand]

I miss watching Jeopardy! on a regular basis. Not enough to, you know, actually start watching it, but on a theoretical level I still miss it.

[cuervo72]

Link reposted from TBL.

Jeopardy! - Interview with Ken Jennings, Producer Harry Friedman, and More: Movies + TV: GQ

Pleasantly surprised that the answer to the steel question cited still popped up from the back of my mind.

[QuikSand]

So, it appears that Alex Trebek is not in good health (not breaking news here, just a general observation).

Has there ever been a more obvious case of "who should replace the legend?" than this one?

[sterlingice]

Bob Barker is somewhat comparable

SI

[QuikSand]

I'm suggesting I believe there's a slam-dunk candidate to take the job... not just that it's a high profile gig that might lead to speculation.

[Kodos]

Ken Jennings?

[albionmoonlight]

Sean Connery?

[sterlingice]

Are you suggesting Ken Jennings?

SI

[britrock88]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

I'm suggesting I believe there's a slam-dunk candidate to take the job... not just that it's a high profile gig that might lead to speculation.

Sajak's only 6 years younger than Trebek, though...

[Pyser]

will ferrell, obviously

[Julio Riddols]

Will Ferrell hosting Jeopardy would be outstanding.