10 ms·

Ask IBM's Watson Research Team Anything

106 points by ww520 16y ago

goalieca 16y ago
I was rather disappointed that a lot of the top rated questions were knee-jerk or obvious.
- solipsist 16y ago
  I am under the impression that the actual IBM has not responded to any of the questions yet. Any knee-jerk or obvious answers would be from your typical Reddit user.
  - itg 16y ago
    They will answer the ten most popular questions next tuesday. As much as I love Reddit sometimes, a good number of the upvoted questions are disappointing although not unexpected.
    - VladRussian 16y ago
      >They will answer or Watson?
    - VladRussian 16y ago
      >They will answer or Watson?
- kmfrk 16y ago
  That's almost always the case with reddit AMAs that accept the highest-rated comments.
- brunov 16y ago
  Try sorting the questions by "best". The quality seems to improve a bit.
amichail 16y ago
Did this competition hurt Jeopardy in general because it is now obvious that the winner is mostly decided by buzzer skills among top players?
- Kaizyn 16y ago
  No, I don't think so. It was always known that buzzer speed was always an important factor.
  - ghaff 16y ago
    I don't think I realized the degree and I've been an off-and-on regular Jeopardy watcher over the years. I don't see this subtlety as hurting Jeopardy's brand any though. It does make me wish that there had been a better platform for competition of this sort that would have had a more level playing field. (The humans actually had some advantage of anticipating the buzz-in signal so I'm not saying that Watson had all the cards. I'm just saying that a lot of the contest hinged on a factor that inherently could not be made apples-to-apples.)
- Pyrodogg 16y ago
  I'm sure the same thing comes out of Jeopardy "Tournament of Champions" games where a number of very good human players come together. It's just that only regular Jeopardy watchers every noticed those games were taking place. It just seems more pronounced with Watson because it drew in a large crowd of new (but perhaps one-time) viewers.
- nostromo 16y ago
  With three of the best Jeopardy players ever, I thought they might make the questions a bit more challenging. I can see why this might not work in this case because Watson was programmed using regular questions. But I agree, I would have liked to see the skill level rise with the caliber of player.
- tastybites 16y ago
  I doubt it. Jeopardy's a game, not an exam.
mikeklaas 16y ago
I'd rather play "Ask Watson Anything"
- nostromo 16y ago
  I wish they would put him up as a webapp. It may not be economical to have a supercomputer online that can only answer one question at a time -- but they might find enough overlap that he could start caching frequent requests or even queuing requests as necessary. Or better yet, scale slowly by invite only.
  - Tyrant505 16y ago
    Why do you assume he can only answer one question at a time?
    - eggnet 16y ago
      It would have been better phrased as: how many questions per second can watson handle. And I think the answer is, not a whole lot, maybe even less than 1.
- ugh 16y ago
  That would be great. Three days ago there was a comment with a back of the envelope calculation to get to the cost of running Watson: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2218212 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2218212
petercooper 16y ago
This is either a question or a suggestion but.. is there (or can there be) a more technical AMA-type site for engineers and scientists? I like Reddit but I can't help but feel the right person could curate the questions better for technical and scientific stuff rather than relying on the sort of voting patterns Reddit is susceptible to. Frequent intelligently curated but publicly driven (i.e. not just "interviews") AMAs with scientists and teams working on cool stuff would make for great reading. Even AMAs with the tech teams of the startups we all know and love on HN would be a great start. I'd do it (the "if you're gunna complain.." approach) but I'm not well enough connected. Imagine someone like Andrew Warner or pg (who could pretty much get anyone at the table) curating a site like that. It'd be a must-visit to both ask questions and read the answers. UPDATE: Or is this essentially Quora I've reinvented?
- Joakal 16y ago
  Reddit's solution to that is to create your own subreddit and effectively become elitist about what's allowed. Hence a lot of comments as to Reddit demographic issues is met with "remove default subreddits". Quora is similar but catered to a smaller audience I assume. Both places have moderators but I don't know if either can control the answers (On reddit, only moderators can).
  - ugh 16y ago
    That solution doesn’t work for AMAs which will (like this one) inevitably attract much attention.
ghrtjurj 16y ago
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106 points by ww520 16y ago

goalieca 16y ago

I was rather disappointed that a lot of the top rated questions were knee-jerk or obvious.

solipsist 16y ago
I am under the impression that the actual IBM has not responded to any of the questions yet. Any knee-jerk or obvious answers would be from your typical Reddit user.
- itg 16y ago
  They will answer the ten most popular questions next tuesday. As much as I love Reddit sometimes, a good number of the upvoted questions are disappointing although not unexpected.
  - VladRussian 16y ago
    >They will answer or Watson?
  - VladRussian 16y ago
    >They will answer or Watson?
kmfrk 16y ago
That's almost always the case with reddit AMAs that accept the highest-rated comments.
brunov 16y ago
Try sorting the questions by "best". The quality seems to improve a bit.

amichail 16y ago

Did this competition hurt Jeopardy in general because it is now obvious that the winner is mostly decided by buzzer skills among top players?

Kaizyn 16y ago
No, I don't think so. It was always known that buzzer speed was always an important factor.
- ghaff 16y ago
  I don't think I realized the degree and I've been an off-and-on regular Jeopardy watcher over the years. I don't see this subtlety as hurting Jeopardy's brand any though. It does make me wish that there had been a better platform for competition of this sort that would have had a more level playing field. (The humans actually had some advantage of anticipating the buzz-in signal so I'm not saying that Watson had all the cards. I'm just saying that a lot of the contest hinged on a factor that inherently could not be made apples-to-apples.)
Pyrodogg 16y ago
I'm sure the same thing comes out of Jeopardy "Tournament of Champions" games where a number of very good human players come together. It's just that only regular Jeopardy watchers every noticed those games were taking place. It just seems more pronounced with Watson because it drew in a large crowd of new (but perhaps one-time) viewers.
nostromo 16y ago
With three of the best Jeopardy players ever, I thought they might make the questions a bit more challenging. I can see why this might not work in this case because Watson was programmed using regular questions. But I agree, I would have liked to see the skill level rise with the caliber of player.
tastybites 16y ago
I doubt it. Jeopardy's a game, not an exam.

mikeklaas 16y ago

I'd rather play "Ask Watson Anything"

nostromo 16y ago
I wish they would put him up as a webapp. It may not be economical to have a supercomputer online that can only answer one question at a time -- but they might find enough overlap that he could start caching frequent requests or even queuing requests as necessary. Or better yet, scale slowly by invite only.
- Tyrant505 16y ago
  Why do you assume he can only answer one question at a time?
  - eggnet 16y ago
    It would have been better phrased as: how many questions per second can watson handle. And I think the answer is, not a whole lot, maybe even less than 1.
ugh 16y ago
That would be great. Three days ago there was a comment with a back of the envelope calculation to get to the cost of running Watson: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2218212 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2218212

petercooper 16y ago

This is either a question or a suggestion but.. is there (or can there be) a more technical AMA-type site for engineers and scientists? I like Reddit but I can't help but feel the right person could curate the questions better for technical and scientific stuff rather than relying on the sort of voting patterns Reddit is susceptible to. Frequent intelligently curated but publicly driven (i.e. not just "interviews") AMAs with scientists and teams working on cool stuff would make for great reading. Even AMAs with the tech teams of the startups we all know and love on HN would be a great start. I'd do it (the "if you're gunna complain.." approach) but I'm not well enough connected. Imagine someone like Andrew Warner or pg (who could pretty much get anyone at the table) curating a site like that. It'd be a must-visit to both ask questions and read the answers. UPDATE: Or is this essentially Quora I've reinvented?

Joakal 16y ago
Reddit's solution to that is to create your own subreddit and effectively become elitist about what's allowed. Hence a lot of comments as to Reddit demographic issues is met with "remove default subreddits". Quora is similar but catered to a smaller audience I assume. Both places have moderators but I don't know if either can control the answers (On reddit, only moderators can).
- ugh 16y ago
  That solution doesn’t work for AMAs which will (like this one) inevitably attract much attention.

ghrtjurj 16y ago

Click on our website: ==== http://vurl.me/YDW http://vurl.me/YDW ==== Christan Audigier bikini $23 Ed Hardy Bikini $23 Smful short_t-shirt_woman $15 ed hardy short_tank_woman $16 Sandal $32 christian louboutin $80 Sunglass $15 COACH_Necklace $27 handbag $33 AF tank woman $17 puma slipper woman $30 ==== http://vurl.me/YDW http://vurl.me/YDW ==== ----- ~ ¤ ╭⌒╮ ╭⌒╮ ╭⌒╭⌒╮╭⌒╮～╭⌒╮ ,））））,''）~~ ,''~） ╱◥█◣ ╱◥█◣ ｜田｜田｜｜田｜田｜ ╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬

deleted 16y ago

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deleted 16y ago

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