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IBM's Question-Answering System "Watson" Revisited

Posted by timothy on from the can-only-give-you-answers dept.

religious freak writes "IBM has created and made the question answering algorithm, Watson, available online. Watson has competed in and won a majority of (mock) matches against humans in Jeopardy. Watson does not connect to the Internet to answer his questions, but rather seeks answers using many different algorithms then employs a ranking algorithm to choose the best answer." We mentioned Watson last year as well.

11 of 170 comments (clear)

  1. Tune in a half-hour early... by LostCluster · · Score: 5, Funny

    and see students from the MIT Robotics Lab test their machine that they say can avoid the Bankrupts and find that Million Dollar wedge on the Wheel of Fortune!

    1. Re:Tune in a half-hour early... by LostCluster · · Score: 2, Funny

      Elsewhere on the TV dial...

      H&R Block's mainframe system has computed that all of the the offers on Deal or No Deal are bunk, you're always statistically better off sticking with your case through most of the game... but they're still unsure whether you should take Howie's offer to switch your case with the last one left in the hands of the models.

      A tragedy as the Stanford-built computer made to play Russian Roulette was caught not in the lead when time was called in the second round, and was dropped by the random must-drop-somebody spin. It suffered the series first fatal injury as the fall broke it's hard disk. It will not be rebult.

      Amazon.com's entry onto The Price is Right was disqualified from the Human-vs.-Machine Day event after it was learned that it was powered by Mechanical Turk.

      Priceline.com's robot blundered today by deciding to keep the trip to Spain when it declined to play the Big Deal, and had to watch a woman dressed as Clown get the new Chevy Volt on today's Let's Make of the Deal.

  2. I have only one question... by bobdotorg · · Score: 5, Funny

    What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

    --
    __ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
    1. Re:I have only one question... by LostCluster · · Score: 3, Funny

      Was this bird affected by the BP oil spill or not?

    2. Re:I have only one question... by Brett+Buck · · Score: 2, Funny

      I don' t know that... AAAARGH!

  3. I lost on Jepordy by Black+Gold+Alchemist · · Score: 3, Funny

    Against a programmer, oh, and an algorithm, both with a PhD....

    -Weird Al Parodied

    --
    Responsibility is an addiction
    Virtue is a temptation
    Community is a cartel
    1. Re:I lost on Jepordy by Yaos · · Score: 2, Funny

      I took Potpourri, for 100, and my head started to spin.

  4. Re:Well, this is no good by bertok · · Score: 2, Funny

    The real problem is time. Even if you could check one move per Planck time (the shortest possible time interval, ca. 5*10^-44s), you'd still need about 5*10^79 seconds, or about 1.5*10^72 years. For comparison, the universe is about 1.5*10^9 years old.

    You're forgetting that speed and parallelism aren't mutually exclusive!

    If you could somehow convert all of the matter in the universe into a massively parallel computer running at that speed, with each CPU having a budget of ~40 million particles, then you'd have a computer that could play chess perfectly, providing each move in about 24 hours at first, and then probably speeding up a bit as the game progresses and there's less of the state space to check.

    Your homework for tonight is to build two such computers using different methods, and compare the relative merits of each solution. Show your work.

  5. Re:I'll take Ken Jennings for the block... by paeanblack · · Score: 5, Funny

    But, what about that player-to-be-named later?

    They're fucked.

  6. Re:Well, this is no good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    It's impossible to fully all possible games of chess.

    Only if you're trying. On the other hand, I accidentally all possible games of chess.

  7. Re:I'll be impressed by sorak · · Score: 2, Funny

    If it can properly rate if these people are hot or not.

    I think we need a site called "bot or not". You look at someone's browsing history and determine the likelihood that their system is infected.