So, a few things:
- We're totally surprised, in a larger theoretical sense, that a computer could win at Jeopardy.
- We're totally not surprised that Watson, the system built by IBM over the past few years at the expense of millions of dollars, actually succeeded at winning at Jeopardy.
- Computers have better reflexes than humans, as it turns out.
- Deal with it.
The question of "who is better at Jeopardy" aside (trust us, it's Watson), the larger implications for the human race and our computer sidekicks are still unclear. Watson can currently answer simple trivia questions, sometimes couched in puns or minor riddles, with a decent level of accuracy. The answers themselves are no more than a high school student with Wikipedia access could pull off, and Watson has no way of knowing for sure when he's right. He lacks a solid, computer-readable database of "facts" like a Wolfram Alpha, or the incredible reasoning abilities of a human, instead relying on statistical analysis of vast amounts of text. When it comes to Jeopardy, it turns out to be Good Enough, which is actually a pretty incredible achievement in the world of AI, and we're sure we'll be finding out soon what other applications IBM thinks Watson is Good Enough at -- they're thinking everything from healthcare to the financial industry. Still, we're sure some of us clicker-speed-nit-pickers will remain unimpressed. Make sure to check out the Engadget Show tomorrow, where we'll be chatting up the creators of Watson about all this, but for now... 01000011 01101111 01101110 01100111 01110010 01100001 01110100 01110011 00100001
Watson wins it all, humans still can do some other cool things originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Feb 2011 22:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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