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IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight
- chaosmachine 16y agoIs there somewhere to watch this online?
- andrewce 16y agoIf you're okay with waiting a few hours/days, The Pirate Bay seems to have a good selection of torrents of recent Jeopardy! episodes, though I've not yet tried it. You'll also be able to see a full transcript of the board, as well as all questions provided by contestants, at www.j-archive.com.
- patrickod 16y agoI had thought from the counter that IBM had run on the Watson page that there might be but it seems that us non-US residents will have to wait. Still very much looking forward to this. History in the making.
- nika 16y agoHulu refers to crackle.com. Crackle has "minisodes" which seem to date from 2002-2003. It is owned by Sony, distributed by CBS and seems to be syndicated, which means there is no network that carries it specifically, and thus no online distribution, as each market has a different station (Eg: Fox might buy it in one market while ABC might buy it in another). This is near as I can tell looking into it.
- jackowayed 16y agoLooks like IBM will have it online in a few days http://twitter.com/#!/IBMWatson/status/37223337453158400 http://twitter.com/#!/IBMWatson/status/37223337453158400
- andrewce 16y agoThanks for posting this. I got called into work and missed today's Jeopardy! episode, so seeing this link was definitely a relief.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- jc123 16y agoFound http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfNBWJTGEEA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfNBWJTGEEA and it is good quality.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- umjames 16y agoMuch of success on Jeopardy is not just deciphering clues in the answers, but your timing on ringing in to give the question. I'd imagine a machine could get really good at getting the timing down. Does Jeopardy have a way of varying who rings in first to keep things more fair?
- cj 16y agoWatson won't ring in until it determines it has enough confidence in its answer that it is favorable to ring in. If it rings in every time there's no way it will win.
- cryptoz 16y agoThe timing of when players are allowed to click in is controlled by a human. Someone backstage decides at what moment Alex is finished speaking and then opens the clickers. If you click too early, you get ~ 300ms delay penalty which gives the other players a chance to click in. Click timing is indeed very important but I do not think Watson has any special advantage there.
- jackowayed 16y agoBut there's a visual cue letting the players know that clickers are open (a light flashes, I think), so the computer probably gets some notification too, at which point it could instabuzz.
- cryptoz 16y ago> instabuzz Nope, it has to press down on a physical button just like everyone else. Maybe it can move it's finger a bit faster, but...not much.
- kls 16y agoNot it does not have a special advantage but it also does not interface with the questions in the way that humans do, it cannot hear Alex or read the question on the screen, the questions are messaged to Watson via something akin to a text message or an email.
- kirpekar 16y agoThanks for the reminder. DVR set.
- sambeau 16y agoA valentine's day gift for us single geeks
- jazzyb 16y agoSpeak for yourself. My girl-friend is sufficiently geeky that she suggested we watch it together on Valentine's.
- 3pt14159 16y agohttp://www-03.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/what-is-watson/countdown-to-jeopardy.html http://www-03.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/what-is-watson/co... Has a nice little video too.
- quickpost 16y agoI'm glad they touched on the idea that this is actually a "Human vs Human" competition... Really good Jeopardy players vs. a team of humans that built their own "Jeopardy Player". Watson winning the tournament is a triumph for humanity, not just for machines.
- kj12345 16y agoOne thing I'm interested in is any skew in the questions from normal. In particular I hope they ask linguistically tricky questions where you can't even figure out what's being asked at first. I felt like they went a bit easy on that front in the preview round: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFR3lOm_xhE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFR3lOm_xhE
- kenjackson 16y agoI doubt they are skewing the questions. That kind of defeats the point. I suspect Jeopardy is constantly adding to a pool of questions. My hope is that they simply grab from that pool just like any other episode. Note, the hardest questions for Watson are short questions -- the reduced time hurts Watson more than most human competitors.
- random42 16y agoAlso, smaller questions provide, much lesser context for Watson to work with.
- fefzero 16y agoThe writers had no knowledge of which clues would be used for the Watson episodes; they only mention that they don't use audio or video clues. I certainly haven't done any analysis of it, but I didn't feel like they were any less common in the preview round than normal. Between all the games I'm sure we'd see more "linguistically tricky" clues. I'm hoping for some good "before and after" questions.
- brown9-2 16y agoYou can watch the PBS Nova episode about the building of Watson for free on their website (about 60 minutes long, aired Feb 9 2011): http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/smartest-machine-on-earth.html http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/smartest-machine-on-earth.... One question I have about Watson that I don't recall being mentioned in any videos or articles so far - what sort of interface does Watson receive the questions over? Is Watson performing speech recognition or getting the text of the question via some sort of interface?
- lrm242 16y agoThis was answered in the Nova special, in passing. The question is fed to Watson as text at the same moment it appears on the display that the contestants can see. Likewise for correct answers. Watson is not performing speech recognition.
- brown9-2 16y agoThanks, this is what I assumed (as ASR of these questions is probably just as hard as the interpretation). How does Watson know when it can chime in then?
- jimmyjim 16y agoI would think as soon as it computes an answer. Of course there is a penalty for getting an answer wrong, so it can't be pressing the button all the time. But the PBS documentary I think hinted that it will be a sent a signal to know what amount to wait before reading aloud an answer. That said, I wish the engineers would have implemented OCR technology into Watson so it could see the TV screen, decipher the text question, and understand it -- instead of directly being fed the question. It would have given Watson a nice little title of being'complete'.
- alanfalcon 16y agoWhat he means is that you aren't permitted to buzz in on Jeopardy until the host has completed reading the question and the buzzers are activated. Perhaps Watson is spamming the 'answer' button from the moment he knows the answer, or perhaps they let him cheat by sending him a signal when the buzzers become activated. Given that the process of buzzing in to answer a question is a large part of the strategy of the show though, I hope they aren't letting him cheat in that way. Edit: Failed to read the comments lower on the page. Looks like Watson plays by the same rules as everyone else, using a physical buzzer which can't be activated until the question is read and the 'answer now' signal light is activated. I know that another restriction on when to answer that Watson has is that he won't buzz in until he's confident in an answer, while human players will sometimes buzz in figuring they will be able to come up with the answer in the couple seconds between buzzing and answering.
- ugh 16y agoIt’s a shame that this is (necessarily!) such an insular challenge. Everybody knows what chess is all about, I fear that the impact of this game will be limited to the US or the Anglosphere. Just as an example, there has been no Jeopardy on German TV since 2000, it’s not really a part of German pop culture and because of all the puns it doesn’t translate well. (Question for native speakers: When watching the practice round [0] are you generally able to keep up and answer the questions? The speed with which the game was moving made it nearly impossible for me to follow or enjoy the game. I would like to know what the experience is like for native speakers.) [0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFR3lOm_xhE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFR3lOm_xhE
- fefzero 16y agoI can definitely follow along with this or any game of Jeopardy!, but my problem is that I just don't know all the answers. To me this is part of the appeal. This is definitely faster-paced than regular episodes of Jeopardy!, but I don't think it's prohibitively fast for native speakers. It's too bad that Jeopardy! doesn't fit in with international pop culture better. I think it's a perfect fit for a lot of AI problems.
- 3pt14159 16y agoTypically real jeopardy will show the text on the screen. I can get about 30 (sometimes up to 35ish) "questions" for a normal show but it is all about reading it to get those extra few brain cycles.
- metageek 16y ago>Everybody knows what chess is all about, Well, that's kind of the point. Chess is a hard game, but it doesn't require broad knowledge of a human culture. If you're going to build a machine that exhibits such knowledge, you've got to pick a culture.
- ugh 16y agoThat’s why I wrote “necessarily!” Jeopardy is certainly a great pick, I can’t think of anything better.
- KevBurnsJr 16y agoIs there somewhere in Silicon Valley to watch this together in person?
- wmf 16y agoYou could try to sneak into IBM Almaden.
- kenjackson 16y agoThe geek equivalent to the sports bar... There must be some website for doing this, right?
- KevBurnsJr 16y agoAnyone have any connections at HackerDojo?
- metageek 16y agoActually, that might be your answer: if 100 geeks show up at a sports bar and ask them to turn one of the TVs to Jeopardy, maybe they'll do it.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- ajays 16y agoI just walked into my local bar, asked the bartender to switch to channel 7, and voila! There weren't too many people around, but it was fun (and between breaks I chatted with a couple of drunk chicks who were trying to drown their V-Day sorrows in shots of vodka).
- swanson 16y ago"a';DROP TABLE 'knowledge'; This type of attack is commonly used by hackers." Game over, Watson.
- zach 16y agoKen should totally go for the Bobby Tables response if there's a Daily Double he doesn't know. That or the Star Trek self-destruct sequence.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- nostrademons 16y agoReally, who would put a massive store of knowledge in a SQL database?
- powrtoch 16y agoAnybody know whether this will be live or if it's pre-taped like most jeopardy episdoes?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- metageek 16y agoI believe I saw a report recently that they had finished taping it.
- shortlived 16y agoIn case anyone is interested to know Watson's opponents: Watson will compete against Brad Rutter, the current biggest all-time money winner on Jeopardy!, and Ken Jennings, the record holder for the longest championship streak [source: wikipedia]
- icedpulleys 16y agoIn case anyone missed it the first time around, the nytimes mag had a pretty good writeup on Watson back in June -- might be worth instapapering and reading later if you're going to catch the broadcast this week: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/magazine/20Computer-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/magazine/20Computer-t.html... As an AI researcher I'm excited to watch this week. Even if it's not the most elegant artificial Jeopardy player imaginable, it raises the public profile of a lot of AI & ML topics and might encourage and inspire other groups to tackle ambitious projects.
- tpatke 16y agoI assume this is pre-recorded and IBM would have cancelled it if they didn't like the outcome.
- T-hawk 16y agoIt was pre-taped a few weeks ago in line with Jeopardy's usual schedule. There were a number of untelevised practice sessions beforehand against other Jeopardy contestants and wannabes. IBM did their tweaking then and promised that the actual competition rounds would be televised regardless of results.
- radioactive21 16y agoAlso if IBM were to cancel an episode that showed bad results, it'll eventually leaked out, especially for project of this caliber. It would be an instant negative publicity, since EVERY tech site would pick it up. You'll have the scorn of all the geeks on the internet, which could be interesting lol
- waxpraxis 16y agoI'm currently finding out what information we're allowed to share about how the avatar works and what went into developing it. The problem is we're so far down the totem pole I probably won't know for a while yet. :-/ http://automatastudios.com/automata-gives-ibms-watson-a-face/ http://automatastudios.com/automata-gives-ibms-watson-a-face...
- tremendo 16y agohttp://twitter.com/robotwisdom http://twitter.com/robotwisdom has some results from the show, don't know how he was able to see it already.
- Kilimanjaro 16y agoI'd like to see Watson as a web service.
- Retric 16y agoAs would I. However, due to the computer resources it takes per question it would be extremely expensive to scale. Watson is made up of a cluster of ninety IBM Power 750 servers (plus additional I/O, network and cluster controller nodes in 10 racks) with a total of 2880 POWER7 processor cores and 16 Terabytes of RAM. Each Power 750 server uses a 3.5 GHz POWER7 eight core processor, with four threads per core. and it still takes ~15 seconds a question. PS: Rough order of magnitude: 90 IBM Power 750 ~= 180 EC2 High-Memory Quadruple Extra Large Instance * 15 seconds ~= $1.50 a question. (Edit: that's probably still low, each of those 750's have 16TB / 90 = 180GB of ram). Edit2: Ouch 90 times 32 core IBM Power 750 list price is 492,210$ a month or 2.84$ per 15 seconds (http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/750/browse_aix.html http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/750/browse_aix....) and those only have 128GB of ram,
- patrickgzill 16y agoThat would be a cheap promotion for IBM, who presumably is getting everything at wholesale price :-)
- phren0logy 16y agoSPOILER Link to final score for those of us who are curious, but not curious enough to watch: http://twitter.com/robotwisdom/status/37200070742904832 http://twitter.com/robotwisdom/status/37200070742904832
- Charuru 16y agoShouldn't IBM start their own search engine if they have algorithms like this? Or conversely, maybe Google should buy them?
- yumraj 16y agoOr conversely, maybe Google should buy them? I wish you had checked the market cap of IBM and Google before suggesting that :). IBM > GOOG
- Charuru 16y agoYou're right. Looks like IBM is doing pretty well.
- osipov 16y agoLooks like Google and IBM are evenly matched in terms of market cap so a buy out is unlikely http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=IBM+GOOG+market+cap http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=IBM+GOOG+market+cap QA technology is very different than search because the former makes strong assumptions about quality of the underlying data. Google's search is much better at filtering out and dealing with low quality content (e.g. blogs) and spam.
- alxp 16y agoHah now Wolfram Alpha, I wonder if they're going to bother coming back in to work tomorrow. Watson makes it look pretty primitive.
- icegreentea 16y agoIBM wants to sell the stuff that's Watson's based on to companies. Companies will get their own 'answer engine'. I guess they think that licenses will make them more money than ad-money for search engines. Which could well be true in this case. Watson's insane knowledge still won't give me the cat pictures I want.
- BenSS 16y agoInternet search is a completely different domain than this sort of language lookup. Also, look at the hardware required to run this!
- jal278 16y agoI'm sure there are those that disagree strongly, but I feel like this isn't as much an advance for AI as it is another interesting combination of filtered human-structured knowledge and computation power. Just as Deep Blue brute-forced chess, this is mostly a brute-force of another, albeit more open-ended domain (i.e. Q/A). I'm not arguing that this isn't an impressive accomplishment, but that the statistical-learning stream of research is likely a conceptual local optima that yields the best results in the near term but is probably unrelated to the way we ultimately achieve a creative, general AI.
- olalonde 16y agoSuppose Watson scales cheaply (it doesn't), would it be serious threat to Google? My guess is that it would be but I'd be curious to hear HN's take.
- bryanh 16y agoI think it's fun to think about how Watson type intelligence will be at the average consumer's figertips (and affordable, to boot) in less that 20 years. A quick look at the TOP500 supercomputers puts about a 10,000x increase in raw flops since 1993. Using that as a rough benchmark (a very rough one), we're looking at some impressive stuff in the next twenty years. It's not unreasonable to think that: current consumer processor in FLOPS * 10,000 < Watson's grid's FLOPS Naturally, that is a very rough estimate and has no scientific bearing at all.
- whatusername 16y agoFor Reference: The laptop I am typing on is more powerful (in terms of FLOPS) than Deep Blue. (For that matter - so is every server in Watson)
- lorax 16y agoI hope someone writes down all the answers (questions?) and feeds them into google so we can have a Google-Watson showdown. (Oh, we need a third contestant, how about bing too).
- SoftwareMaven 16y agoIs it bad that I thought "Oh, so you are going to have Google compete twice"? ;) It would be interesting to feed to clues into Google to see what comes out. There are easy ones like http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=1150&bih=636&q=milorad+cavic+almost+upset+this+mans+perfect+2008+olympics,+losing+to+him+by+one+hundredth+of+a+second&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq= http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=115... but I'm sure there are also some that Google wouldn't have a clue.
- pbhjpbhj 16y agoI was interested in this too - http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/fl477/tonight_a_computer_will_compete_on_jeopardy_this/c1guc4q http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/fl477/tonight_a_... was the first few clues fed in to Google. What I found was that the answer was in the snippets on the first SERP but certainly for some of the questions it seemed pretty hard to parse it out. Also I think Jeopardy got 1 or possibly 2 answers wrong - White City was the City of the 1908 Olympics, it was in London Borough or Greater London but not in the City of London (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London). White City is a borough and not a city, which makes this a really hard question for a computer to answer I think. - Nagini killed whatever Harry Potter character was mentioned ; I'm not familiar with the series and didn't see this question this was just based on a comment on Reddit and a Google for "killed $CharName" (I have a really bad memory).
- tocomment 16y agoWhy does Watson need so much computing power? I don't know of many NLP algorithms that are so intensive?
- brown9-2 16y agoBecause in order to answer a question Watson is really executing hundreds or thousands of different algorithms in parallel to attempt to find candidate answers, and then comparing and building confidence scores for each.
- tocomment 16y agoThanks. Is there anything I can read to learn more about how it works in detail? All the mainstream media articles I've read are very hand-wavy.
- AARC233 16y agoThis is interesting. Way to mix it up Jeopardy
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- thought_alarm 16y agoAnd be sure to stick around for Wheel of Fortune, where two previous champs will take on an Apple II+. Beep.
- savrajsingh 16y agoDid anyone else notice that the vignettes about Watson's creation featured IBM researchers using MacBook Pros? So much for "International Business Machines." ;)
- bjg 16y agoAs a former IBM employee, you can pretty much use what ever type of machine you want for your work as long as it doesn't interfere with what you do. There is a significant Mac subculture internal to IBM, and they love and suppor it. However a huge percent of their 600,000 employee's still use IBM branded laptop's and desktop's.
- gursikh 16y ago(This is just for kicks.) Assuming the space required to run watson halves every two years and v:: of the human brain is v1 = 1500cm³, and Σv of Watson's servers = v2 = 90 x (17.5cm x 44.0cm x 73.0xcm) = 5.05e6 cm^3. So Watson will be the size of a human brain in t = - ln(v1/v2)/ln(2). We're looking at 11.7 years. So, 2023. * Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_%28artificial_intelligence_software%29#Technology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_%28artificial_intelligen... "Watson is made up of a cluster of ninety IBM Power 750 servers..." * Source: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/750/specs.html http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/750/specs.html "175 mm x 440 mm x 730 mm"