
Creators: Watson has no speed advantage as it crushes humans in Jeopardy - evo_9
http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2011/02/creators-watson-has-no-speed-advantage-as-it-crushes-humans-in-jeopardy.ars
======
cma
Here's the meat: "They're not waiting for the light to come on," Welty said;
rather, the human players try to time their buzzer presses so that they're
coming in as close as possible to the light. Though Watson's reaction times
are faster than a human, Welty noted that Watson has to wait for the light.
Dr. Adam Lally, another member of Watson's team, noted that "Ken and Brad are
really fast. They have to be."

What a deceptive little statement. If you set the "attempt answer" bit in
Watson before the light comes on, and you have the humans attempt to press it
as soon as allowable, they will never beat Watson.

Actually, they may beat him a few times per hundred-thousand attempts
(assuming Watson gets the "light" and buzzes in via tens-of-microseconds-scale
ethernet), but would have to be willing to tolerate what would normally be an
unacceptable error rate (if you press early, you can't press again for ~2
seconds if I remember right).

~~~
naveensundar
_If you set the "attempt answer" bit in Watson before the light comes on, and
you have the humans attempt to press it as soon as allowable, they will never
beat Watson._

There were at least a couple of questions for which Watson had 90%+ confidence
for the right answer and also way above its buzz threshold but could not buzz
in.

~~~
markszcz
Heres one with 65% confidence:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR2_M8kL_3o&t=3m58s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR2_M8kL_3o&t=3m58s)

97% confidence:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR2_M8kL_3o&t=4m26s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR2_M8kL_3o&t=4m26s)

------
zach
Well, opinions differ then, because Ken Jennings said halfway through an NPR
interview yesterday Watson has the "advantage of speed which no human reflexes
can match."

Plus, come on, everyone who watched the match so far knows they're just trying
to put some spin on this. The reason why humans don't wait for the light is
because their nervous systems are too slow!

Watson doesn't have that problem. If timing and rhythm were so important, they
would have Watson do that too. But we all know they don't need to.

~~~
markszcz
Speaking of reflexes, it reminds me of those games where your supposed to
click/hit a button once it says go. I did a quick search and found this pretty
simple flash reaction game: <http://www.opendb.net/media/content/426.swf>

Best I could do was .26 seconds =/

I bet someone with a Lego Mindstorm set could whip up a robot that would do
this much faster.

~~~
hackernews
Got .03 here

But that was after I figured out that you could just continually click the
button and score much lower. Advantage humans.

~~~
gregpilling
You should have kept trying. I got .01 second by using your technique.
<http://i.imgur.com/PG92y.jpg> . I recently had to go to a nerve specialist
and we talked about the speed of the electrical pulses that go through your
body. He told me that it is nowhere near the speed of electricity in wire -
more on the order of meters per second, not miles per second.

------
there
i wish watson had to do speech/text recognition of the answers. it would slow
down watson's response and put it on par with the human contestants who don't
have the answers hard-wired directly into their brains and still have to spend
time reading or listening to alex.

~~~
MichaelGG
I doubt that OCR on the nicely formatted question screen would slow it down
appreciably.

------
locopati
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that Watson is going to be consistent
for the whole match. A human is going to vary in response time if their
attention drifts just a little or their hand slows (maybe an itch, maybe a
cramp).

