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Ken vs. Brad vs. Watson

J

jericho

mascot extraordinaire
Well, after the Double Jeopardy and the Final Jeopardy round, Watson has a commanding lead. However, the inventor of Watson made him out to be a total a-hole. :D
 
Re: Ken vs. Brad vs. Watson

Holy crap, was that board geared for Watson. Nothing but straight trivia, no puns, some wordplay but it didn't really affect the trivia portion of the answer at all. That's exactly what he excels at.
 
Re: Ken vs. Brad vs. Watson

Twitch Boy said:
Holy crap, was that board geared for Watson. Nothing but straight trivia, no puns, some wordplay but it didn't really affect the trivia portion of the answer at all. That's exactly what he excels at.
Click to expand...

I'm sure IBM has given a few "donations."
 
Re: Ken vs. Brad vs. Watson

Surprised he struggled so much with the last question. I'm not a computer guy, but it seems like there should be a way for him to know when the question is asking for a US city to give a US city.
 
Re: Ken vs. Brad vs. Watson

Wow... I've never seen Brad or Ken look frustrated like that. They know those answers too, they just can't buzz in as quickly, and Watson rarely buzzes in with a wrong answer. I'd like to be an optimist, but the only way back I see for Brad and/or Ken is if the last day has a whole lot of questions with wording that's hard to parse. Maybe 12 columns of "before, during and after"?
 
Re: Ken vs. Brad vs. Watson

jmh said:
Wow... I've never seen Brad or Ken look frustrated like that. They know those answers too, they just can't buzz in as quickly, and Watson rarely buzzes in with a wrong answer. I'd like to be an optimist, but the only way back I see for Brad and/or Ken is if the last day has a whole lot of questions with wording that's hard to parse. Maybe 12 columns of "before, during and after"?
Click to expand...

I read an article somewhere that says they equipped Watson with a physical device that manually presses the buzzer, in order to make the competition somewhat fair.

However, it also mentioned that Watson is fed the question in text, while the humans have to listen to Alex read the question (or read it themselves, if they even show it to them - not sure on this.) Presumably, Watson could scan his text question and run his algorithms faster than human brains can process Alex's speech and think of a response, and thus already have his response cocked and in the chamber when the buzzers are activated. That's exactly the split second you need to dominate on Jeopardy. I'd like to know the exact timing breakdown of a question for Watson.
 
Re: Ken vs. Brad vs. Watson

Twitch Boy said:
I read an article somewhere that says they equipped Watson with a physical device that manually presses the buzzer, in order to make the competition somewhat fair.

However, it also mentioned that Watson is fed the question in text, while the humans have to listen to Alex read the question (or read it themselves, if they even show it to them - not sure on this.) Presumably, Watson could scan his text question and run his algorithms faster than human brains can process Alex's speech and think of a response, and thus already have his response cocked and in the chamber when the buzzers are activated. That's exactly the split second you need to dominate on Jeopardy. I'd like to know the exact timing breakdown of a question for Watson.
Click to expand...


As an aside, they should have given Watson a Sean Connery voice, to add to the smarminess. :D
 
Re: Ken vs. Brad vs. Watson

From Hijinks Ensue:
2011-02-15-culturally-biased.jpg


You should click through because the comment thread has a bunch of funny other ideas of categories that would stump Watson, such as:

What Makes You Laugh
Stoner Humor, Or Just Silly?
The Psychology Of College Freshmen
(Complete The) Knock Knock Jokes
Life Events Tinged With Regret

And the opposite, including:

Binary Numbers
Are You Sarah Conner?
Spot The Hexadecimal Error
 
Re: Ken vs. Brad vs. Watson

The thing is that you can't buzz in until Alex finishes the clue and a light comes on in the studio. Watson can react with perfect reaction time to this, but the humans cannot. He also presses the button perfectly every time which the humans can't.
 
Re: Ken vs. Brad vs. Watson

pardonme said:
The thing is that you can't buzz in until Alex finishes the clue and a light comes on in the studio. Watson can react with perfect reaction time to this, but the humans cannot. He also presses the button perfectly every time which the humans can't.
Click to expand...

And if you ring in early, the system will freeze you out for a split second. If you keep hitting the button, it will keep freezing you out. That's why you see people all the time clicking furiously on the buzzer and not getting in. Watson will never do this.
 
Re: Ken vs. Brad vs. Watson

Twitch Boy said:
And if you ring in early, the system will freeze you out for a split second. If you keep hitting the button, it will keep freezing you out. That's why you see people all the time clicking furiously on the buzzer and not getting in. Watson will never do this.
Click to expand...

They can and should fix this to be more equitable. Allow a buzz in any time before the light goes on and for a split second (maybe 0.1 s) afterward; all buzzes in that time are considered equal and the one selected to answer (er, question) is chosen randomly. That simultaneously avoids the issue with differences in how the two process the question and in how they know when to buzz in.
 
Re: Ken vs. Brad vs. Watson

Craig P. said:
They can and should fix this to be more equitable. Allow a buzz in any time before the light goes on and for a split second (maybe 0.1 s) afterward; all buzzes in that time are considered equal and the one selected to answer (er, question) is chosen randomly. That simultaneously avoids the issue with differences in how the two process the question and in how they know when to buzz in.
Click to expand...

The real fair option would be to create a system that would parse Alex's speech, and that would be an entirely new endeavor on its own.
 
Re: Ken vs. Brad vs. Watson

WeWantMore said:
Surprised he struggled so much with the last question. I'm not a computer guy, but it seems like there should be a way for him to know when the question is asking for a US city to give a US city.
Click to expand...

Watson knows "The Church Lady" from SNL, but not an American City. Actually, this sounds like it really WAS built in America.
 
Re: Ken vs. Brad vs. Watson

jericho said:
As an aside, they should have given Watson a Sean Connery voice, to add to the smarminess. :D
Click to expand...

They should have modeled him after the guy on Jeopardy two weeks ago that looked and talked like a low-level mob stoolie, and yet was freaking brilliant. He may have been my favorite Jeopardy contestant ever.
 
Re: Ken vs. Brad vs. Watson

Answer was "proverbially, this is where the heart is." Watson didn't answer, but it showed his percentages.

Home Is Where The Heart Is 33%
delete key 15%
screwdriver (or maybe it was another tool, not sure) 12%
 
Re: Ken vs. Brad vs. Watson

Well, that was frustrating. Props to Ken for showing a bit of a sense of humor about it all with his Final Jeopardy answer.
 
Re: Ken vs. Brad vs. Watson

When Watson answered Mickey Mouse to the question...The third choice was Family Guy.
 
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