Who is Watson? Or the Future is here 2.

I can't believe I'm the first to mention it - I thought this was a place for geeks.

Anyhow, here it is: Big Blue Watson on Jeopardy. Quite impressing, although not quite laptop stuff. Yet.

So:
What is the question about life, universe and everything?
Who is Kent Brockman?

And: Who will be back?

Isn't it just a slightly advanced search engine?

I wouldn't say slightly, as it is actually able to gather information based on questions instead of specific queries. There's a vast difference between understanding a language and understanding certain command words.

Still, for computers to move in this direction is pretty much inevitable, so I'm hardly surprised.

It was impressive. Watson is made up of 10 racks of servers. Not 10 servers, 10 RACKS. That's insane.

Gotta love Jennings:

Anyone know if Watson has access to the internet? if it does… well that is cheating… I could also win Jeopardy if I could use the internet.

Not impressive IMHO.

edit: O it appears it wasn't. That changes a lot. In that case it was impressive!

One thing is having access to the internet. Quite another is - in a general purpose context - to understand what to look for, and to be able to filter the noise from useful information. It would still be impressive, perhaps even more.

It's not a trivial task - hence the huge amount of hardware involved. And some of the rather stupid mistakes it made.

Well, since it didn't have internet I would assume a lot of the amount of hardware was memory

360 8-core, 4 threaded CPU's in 90 IBM Power7 750 servers. 15 TB RAM.

They "fed" it encyclopedias and such to put into memory. That's how they built up the knowledge base, rather than via internet.

The point of Watson isn't the searching but deciphering the answers (in Jeopardy the answers are given and you have to figure out the questions). Often the answers are phrased in a way as to give hints to the question.

Saying "it would be easy with access to the internet and Google" is ridiculous. A *person* with access to the internet and Google and given lots of time might be able to ferret out some of the correct questions but then the person is doing some of the hardest work.

Some kinds are "easier" for Watson. For example, something like this:

Answer: On Sept. 1, 1715 Louis XIV died in this city, site of a fabulous palace he built.

Even then it is pretty complicated to figure out the meaning of that.

Others are very difficult. Something like this:

Answer: "Hard times," indeed! A giant quake struck New Madrid, Mo., on Feb. 7, 1812, the day this author struck England.

For fun type in the above into Google and see if you can get the right answers. Ignore the sites that pose those exact ones and give the questions (they are samples of real ones from Jeopardy).

For the last one the answer is Charles Dickens. Here is what Google gives you; good luck ferreting that out from these results:


They Must Be Hiding Something Really Big
Jul 5, 2010 … Author: Mac Slavo Date: July 5th, 2010 … 7. You can protect yourself from a tornado by hiding in your bathtub. ….. Much higher than the BP estimate of 5000 barrels a day. ….. “Our evidence shows the New Madrid seismic zone is indeed a threat … would strike within 500 years of the 1812 quake. …

The Numismatic Bibliomania Society Esylum: Volume 14, Number 05 …
Jan 30, 2011 … To learn more about a new book on Hard Times Tokens, the national …. “The 100 Greatest were selected and ranked by the authors with input from leading coin … 100 Greatest U.S. Modern Coins will be available February 21, 2011, …. Burdette Silver Dollars Struck Under the Pittman Act of 1918

12 March: This Date in History
Indeed, both nations established repressive right-wing regimes in the years …. On 08 March (23 February Julian) thousands of women textile workers in Petrograd ….. 2004 Eight of the wounded in the previous day's Madrid massacre, ….. Although the storm also strikes New England, New York is the hardest hit,

America, 9-11, Islam, Fear, Terrorism, Values | The New Republic
Aug 13, 2010 … It was perpetrated against the body of America—indeed, the world, …. New York City has a proud tradition, going back to its days as the … This is the dark side — where we run in hard times when fear and ….. Prior to the war of 1812 Massachusetts was a commercial but not a manufacturing State.

Anonymous - Photography in America: The Formative Years 1839–1900 …
saying, 1930s, quoted in Studs Terkel, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great … writer Robert Heinlein in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress ( 1966 ). … Crane , a hero of the War of 1812 , did not resemble the easily afeared ….. 125 The New England folks have a saying that three Philadelphia lawyers are a match

Important Quotations For Bible-Believers - warnings from Jesus …
Jesus Christ (in Hebrew, Yeshua Messiah) is indeed the God of Life and Light (YHWH …. till they were well within the England channel, almost in sight of Plymouth. … Hilmar Von Campe is a modern-day Christian and an eyewitness to the ….. author of The Coming Economic Earthquake, warns Christians to prepare for

Slices of History
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat
biblical days, the setting of new texts to already existing music came to be known …. Page 7 ….. Sure the pace they set was dizzy/And they made the Heinies quake. … Indeed, George M. Cohan was in their direct line of descent. … An illicit Chicago publisher, who hid his identity, struck gold in the

Perhaps jeopardy is fairly different in US compared to sweden, here the questions is farily straightforward.

Q: Played Jack in titanic.

A: Who is Leonardo Dicaprio?

with imdb it would be very fast for any human to figure that out. Well, not always that straightforward but often it is almost as simple as that.

For a human, yes. For a machine, no. For instance, it's not trivial to realize that imdb is the place to look for information. And then it would have to analyze information found there to find the correct answer, eh question. Difficult.

well, it is not that hard for google either try it…..

I used to watch Jeopardy a lot and rarely if ever were there such straightforward answers.

Given that they've been working on it for a few years now, I'm confident the problem is non-trivial, GG.

Originally Posted by BillSeurer
I used to watch Jeopardy a lot and rarely if ever were there such straightforward answers.

And of course, Watson did participate in US Jeopardy. Not the kindergarten version they use in Sweden.

BTW: Google finds 2860 possible results for "Played Jack in Titanic". One of them is this one: http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showt…p?p=1061051030

Originally Posted by pibbur
Google finds 2860 possible results for "Played Jack in Titanic". One of them is this one: http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showt…p?p=1061051030

Infinite loop!

you'd typically use some kind of algorithm… with the ones on top bearing higher relevance, the most occurring name being most likely and so on.

But it is kind of irrelevant to disucss now because

1. It did not have internet access.
2. The US version has a different style of questions from the Swedish one.

Given that they've been working on it for a few years now, I'm confident the problem is non-trivial, GG.

3. The machine beat the best human players on earth.. even if IBM made it

( IBM is not exactly know for being fast and cutting edge, they are reliable though )

Originally Posted by GothicGothicness
…
( IBM is not exactly know for being fast and cutting edge, they are reliable though )

On the contrary. IBM has a very advanced research department. It was at IBM@Zürich the scanning tunneling microscope was developed for which the two inventors won the Nobel price in physics in 1986.

And for what it's worth: I can't see how internet acess would have made it any easier for Watson, because as BillSeurer explaied so well: The challenge is not the search, but deciphering what it's about.