ONE COMPUTER CHAMPIONS Three game show contestants stood by their buzzers ready to play Jeopardy But something was unusual in this episode one of the players was not human A computer screen perched in between two men wearing suits The display showed a picture of a glowing planet Earth This was Watson Game show host Alex Trebek walked out onto the set You are about to witness what may prove to be an historic competition he said to the audience An exhibition match pitting an IBM computer system against the two most celebrated and successful players in Jeopardy history Watson had some tough competition Ken Jennings held the record for the most Jeopardy victories with a 74 game winning streak Brad Rutter had won more than 3 million on the show more than any other Watson center plays Jeopardy against human champions Ken contestant Could a computer defeat these two Jennings left and Brad trivia experts Rutter right
Watson does not have a squishy pinkish gray brain made of cells and neurons Instead its intelligence comes from a room full of whirring machinery 750 powerful computer servers linked in a high speed network cooled by large refrigerator units The servers provide 15 terabytes of memory and the computing power of 2 800 regular computers During the Jeopardy game Watson was not linked to the Internet Instead it accessed millions of pages of research material loaded onto its servers books movie scripts encyclopedias and more How could Watson possibly get an answer wrong with so much information at its disposal The tricky part for Watson was not recalling trivia it was understanding the clues Learning Natural Language Anyone who has ever tried to learn a new language knows words can be tricky Some words and phrases mean more than one thing For example consider these two sentences An athlete runs on a track and A car runs on gas The meanings of run and on are different in each sentence After all the car is not scampering across a pool of gas It is very difficult to teach a computer which meaning applies in any particular sentence Scientists who work on artificial intelligence A refer to the sentences people speak every day as natural language Typically computers follow instructions in programming languages which are written in code In these computer languages the words must be very precise Each word or symbol means one thing But most people do not know how to write code Therefore a computer that can understand natural language makes communication between people and machines easier and more straightforward for everyone 6
Trivia Time In the game of Jeopardy players are told the answers and each response must be in the form of a question Here are some samples from Watson's appearance on the show The top row gives the categories and the bottom row gives the answers Can you beat the computer by figuring out the questions NAME THE DECADE LITERARY CHARACTER APB ALTERNATE MEANINGS ALSO ON YOUR COMPUTER KEYS FINAL FRONTIERS DISNEYLAND OPENS THE PEACE SYMBOL IS CREATED HIS VICTIMS INCLUDE TICKETS AREN T NEEDED CHARITY BURBAGE MAD A PIECE OF WOOD FROM A IT S AN ABBREVIATION FOR THIS EVENT A EYE MOODY SEVERUSTREE OR TO PUNCTURE FOR GRAND PRIXAUTO BLACK HOLE S BOUNDARY SNAPE HE D BE EASIER WITH SOMETHING FROM WHICH MATTER RACING TO CATCH IF YOU D JUST POINTED CAN T ESCAPE NAME HIM Correct response What are the 1950s Correct response Who is Voldemort Correct response What is a stick Correct response What is F1 Correct response What is on event horizon Watson Watson Watson Unsure Watson Unsure Watson Unsure Correct Correct
