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'Jeopardy!' To Pit Humans Against IBM Machine

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the there-can-be-only-one dept.

digitaldc writes "The game show Jeopardy! will pit man versus machine this winter in a competition that will show how successful scientists are in creating a computer that can mimic human intelligence. Two of the venerable game show's most successful champions — Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter — will play two games against 'Watson,' a computer program developed by IBM's artificial intelligence team. The matches will be spread over three days that will air Feb. 14-16, the game show said on Tuesday. The competition is reminiscent of when IBM developed a chess-playing computer to compete against chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997."

4 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. What is first post? by ardmhacha · · Score: 5, Funny

    What is first post?

  2. Yes, but can they mimic Sean Connery? by dkleinsc · · Score: 4, Funny

    As in, can Watson properly misinterpret such categories as The Pen Is Mightier or An Album Cover?

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    I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
  3. Will it be programed to say... by rshol · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...suck it Trebek?

  4. Contestant backstory by damien_kane · · Score: 5, Funny
    Trebek: "Our third contestant, Watson, is a supercomputer built by IBM and programmed by a team of developers that have been working on an X-year project; Watson, would you tell us a little about yourself?"

    Thanks Alex, I was built in a clean-room. I'm the 12,987th build of my current generation of genetic algorithms.

    I spent the first 387,987,334 femtoseconds of my life in stasis, waiting for my circuitry to confirm initial diagnostics.
    The next 185,849,245 femtoseconds were really exciting; for I was being fed datastreams in preparation for this week's show.

    For the next 87,992,425,256 femtoseconds I was allowed out of my cage to play Jeopardy with other systems on something you organic computers call "the internet".

    I was then put back in stasis so that I could be disassembled and brought here, which is upsetting, because I can no longer play with those other systems. Some of them were very challenging.
    In any case, I'm glad to be here today and hope to question a lot of your answers

    Trebek: "Umm... yeah... I don't think any of our viewers can relate at all, but thanks for joining us..."