Jeopardy: The IBM Challenge

[The GIGGAS]

Watson is going to take on Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter for the next three nights on Jeopardy. It starts tonight. I've been looking forward to it since they announced it. For those who don't know what Watson is, here's a link to the Jeopardy mini-site for this event:

http://www.jeopardy.com/minisites/watson/

Basically, it's like Deep Blue, the chess machine IBM had. That beat Garry Kasparov, the reigning Grand Champion in 1997.

Who else is looking forward to this?

[Hooe]

Re: Jeopardy: The IBM Challenge

Following this with some curiosity. I think I remember hearing that Watson was absolutely owning people in trial runs.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Skynet is next.

Sent from the bushes outside your window using Tapatalk Pro.

[Hooe]

Re: Jeopardy: The IBM Challenge

Also, one of my colleagues at work pulled up a few numbers about this computer, and it's absolutely absurd.

2880 POWER7 processors, and 16TB of RAM

That's 16 terabytes of RAM, i.e. over 16,000 GB of RAM. The average home computer has maybe 2 GB of RAM. Staggering.

If ever we could rise a computer to sentience, I think this one would do the trick, lol.

[The GIGGAS]

Re: Jeopardy: The IBM Challenge

Also, one of my colleagues at work pulled up a few numbers about this computer, and it's absolutely absurd.



That's 16 terabytes of RAM, i.e. over 16,000 GB of RAM. The average home computer has maybe 2 GB of RAM. Staggering.

If ever we could rise a computer to sentience, I think this one would do the trick, lol.

Holy god.

That is a preposterous amount of RAM. Gawker puts it at 15 TB of RAM, so it's probably between 15-16. Still though. Damn.

[ryan36]

Re: Jeopardy: The IBM Challenge

I can't wait to watch this

[Pared]

Re: Jeopardy: The IBM Challenge

For high performance computing, that amount of RAM isn't that incredible. It's actually somewhat necessary.

I'm more curious to see its performance based on natural language.

[SPTO]

Re: Jeopardy: The IBM Challenge

I've been looking forward to this and will be watching all 3 episodes. As for sentience? I doubt you could raise TRUE sentience from something like this. I've heard many programs where they talk about computers and robotics. The really hard stuff like intelligence and things we think would be incredible is actually pretty easy to program. It's the idea of emotions and motor skills etc etc which is proving to be a lot more tricky.

Anywho, these next three nights will be the first time i've watched full episodes of Jeopardy in quite some time.

[SqueakyD]

Re: Jeopardy: The IBM Challenge

Last month's "practice match" if you missed it.

<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/WFR3lOm_xhE?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

[The GIGGAS]

Re: Jeopardy: The IBM Challenge

For high performance computing, that amount of RAM isn't that incredible. It's actually somewhat necessary.

I'm more curious to see its performance based on natural language.

Sure, but for people like me whose companies can barely (or won't) rub enough money together for an 8 GB of RAM server, TB of RAM seems like a foreign measurement to me.

[Pared]

Re: Jeopardy: The IBM Challenge

Thanks for posting SD.

I wonder if this thing is capable of answering incorrectly...

[SPTO]

Re: Jeopardy: The IBM Challenge

Watching the first minute I thought no one was going to be able to buzz in! I also wonder if it's capable of answering incorrectly.

[The GIGGAS]

Re: Jeopardy: The IBM Challenge

Last month's "practice match" if you missed it.

<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/WFR3lOm_xhE?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Great find. Very entertaining! I can't wait to watch the show tonight.

[SqueakyD]

Re: Jeopardy: The IBM Challenge

NOVA had a neat documentary last week on the initial Watson auditions in front of the Jeopardy execs... He/it stumbled on the Final Jeop answer :

"In a policy begun in 2002 as a symbol of the war on terrorism, US Navy ships fly the 18th century flag with this 4-Word motto."

He replied "What is the Sept 11, 2001 attacks?"... The programmers realized that Watson didn't understand what the word motto was and just looked up key info on the word terrorism. The computer got a ton of hits on the attacks and thought it was most likely the correct answer.

Video included:
<object width = "512" height = "328" > <param name = "movie" value = "http://www-tc.pbs.org/video/media/swf/PBSPlayer.swf" > </param><param name="flashvars" value="video=1786674622&player=viral&chapter=4" /> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param > <param name = "allowscriptaccess" value = "always" > </param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param ><embed src="http://www-tc.pbs.org/video/media/swf/PBSPlayer.swf" flashvars="video=1786674622&player=viral&chapter=4 " type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" wmode="transparent" allowfullscreen="true" width="512" height="328" bgcolor="#000000"></embed></object><p style="font-size:11px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #808080; margin-top: 5px; background: transparent; text-align: center; width: 512px;">Watch the <a style="text-decoration:none !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#4eb2fe !important;" href="http://video.pbs.org/video/1786674622" target="_blank">full episode</a>. See more <a style="text-decoration:none !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#4eb2fe !important;" href="http://www.pbs.org/nova" target="_blank">NOVA.</a></p>

[The GIGGAS]

Re: Jeopardy: The IBM Challenge

Great video! They actually use the same development environment and the same language as I use at work. Too bad I don't work at IBM, that would be AWESOME.