
Jeopardy Champion Ken Jennings Q&A about IBM Watson - acangiano
http://live.washingtonpost.com/jeopardy-ken-jennings.html?hpid=talkbox1
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thecoffman
I was actually surprised at how funny he is - many times I find the
personality type that supports being so good at that type of thing tends to be
lacking in social skills (broad generalization of course) but he comes off as
humble, personable and funny. His answer to the _Now do you know how people
felt when they were competing against you?_ question was especially
interesting to me.

~~~
zach
Ken is super-great. He was a fun and friendly guy when I met him at a book
signing. I've become a regular reader of his blog, where he shares random
trivia and his love of cinema, hipster bands and the 1980's era of Games
Magazine.

And if you noticed he's a computer programmer and you're wondering, the answer
is emacs.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Of course it's emacs. He can actually remember all of the commands, functions,
variables, and key bindings.

(Before people get their flamethrowers out, I spend more time in emacs than
any other piece of software I own.)

~~~
jodrellblank
And the rest of your time in a text editor, right?

~~~
SoftwareMaven
I spend so much time in it looking for the "optimal" way to do what I'm trying
to do. I know there's a command for it somewhere!

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acangiano
I love how he handles the, almost guaranteed, defeat with great grace and
humor. For comparison, Kasparov was in tears. Not the same scenario of course,
but I truly admire Kennings' attitude and acknowledgment of IBM's (and
humanity's) accomplishments exemplified by Watson.

~~~
aquateen
I've never heard of Kasparov actually crying after losing to Deep Blue.
Reference?

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stevenbedrick
I don't know about tears, as such, but the NOVA documentary about Watson
included a video clip from the end of the famous Kasparov-Deep Blue game. It
showed him angrily storming away from the table after being beaten; the way
the video was cut, in combination with the narration, gave the impression that
he was something of a sore loser. Note, however, that it was a very short
clip, and there was probably a lot of context that didn't come through.

~~~
AndyKelley
Maybe he was angry because he felt like he wasn't performing at the top of his
game, and that if he did perform at the top of his game, he might have won.
I'd feel pretty angry if that were the case.

~~~
scott_s
Sure. But that's the point of commending someone for handling loss with grace
and humor: it's contrary to their immediate emotion.

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AndyKelley
True, but it's my understanding that he asked for, and was denied, a rematch.

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SoftwareMaven
"""I AM PLAYING A PRIME-TIME GAME SHOW AGAINST A SUPER-ADVANCED ROBOT! This is
the coolest thing I will every do in my life by a factor of a million. The
future is here."""

My kids think I'm a little weird because I think this battle is so cool (I
think the more you understand about the implementation, the cooler this is),
but this statement pretty much sums it up.

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enry_straker
I suspect you meant the word 'ever' not 'every' in your quote.

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portman
Ken Jennings is _FUNNY_.

    
    
        IBM: "There's a lot of you in Watson"
        Ken: "If it goes amuck and kills humanity and stuff so sorry lolz my bad!"
    
        Chat participant: "I read your first in practically a day, I loved it."
        Ken: "I'd like to thank my mom for taking part in the chat!"

~~~
davidmathers
Q: "There was an article in the Post the other day about trivia now being
trivial because of the ability to look up everything in an instant..."

A: "...in a not-too-distant future where nobody knows their state capitals
anymore, maybe trivia geeks will be revered for their even more fantastical-
seeming abilities! We will be like gods to you, carried on litters to your
feasts."

~~~
checker659
Or this one:

"Big congrats to @IBMWatson & the amazing team behind its Jeopardy success.
Watson is the real deal. Now: rematch on Dancing with the Stars!"

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ck2
Did you know it took 4 hours to film the episodes because Watson kept
crashing? Seriously.

<http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2011/02/16/nova_610x363.png>

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presto8
According to cnet[1]: "Correction at 12:04 p.m.: After this story was
published, we heard from PBS producer Michael Bicks that it was not, in fact,
Watson that crashed during the show's taping. He would like to make clear the
following: "I missblogged last night--It was not Watson, but the system that
was the interface between Watson and the Jeopardy computer, completely
separate from Watson, that crashed during the taping."

[1]
[http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20032244-71.html#ixzz1EAdT...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20032244-71.html#ixzz1EAdTWjzp)

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postfuturist
It's unfair that Watson is allowed to basically use it's robotic reaction to
time ring in instantly when the light turns on, but all audio and video daily
doubles are avoided because IBM didn't bother to add audio and video inputs.

If the show is catering to Watson's shortcomings, why couldn't they cater to
human reaction time shortcomings?

Edit: punctuation

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AndyKelley
I don't think your understanding of the situation is accurate:
[http://live.washingtonpost.com/jeopardy-ken-
jennings.html#qu...](http://live.washingtonpost.com/jeopardy-ken-
jennings.html#question-28)

~~~
postfuturist
_Watson can't do this: it only buzzes once it has an answer in mind and a
sufficiently high confidence interval._

Well, they could have programmed it any way they wanted to. It would have been
smarter just buzz in right away given that they knew it would be right most of
the time.

Regardless, Watson dominated because it was confident about an answer most of
the time before the light turned on. If a human also wants to buzz in right
when the light turns on, he or she will always be beaten by Watson. So, the
game again boils down to who buzzes in first, regardless of confidence.

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AndyKelley
I must have misread your original post - reading it again it makes complete
sense.

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stcredzero
_Q: I have already read plenty of doomsday reports for the blue-collar
workforce that this technology could replace customer service representatives,
in-patient counseling, bank tellers, cashiers, etc. Do you think Watson could
replace Alex Trebek?_

I'm starting to wonder what Watson could do with the database of Stack
Overflow.

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Splines
_Enter CLIPPY_

It looks like you're writing an algorithm that is O(N^2)! Would you like me to
optimize it? Let me take a screenshot so Jon Skeet can laugh at you. _click_

 _PROGRAMMER frantically presses CLIPPY's close button_

~~~
stcredzero
I think Watson would kick Clippy's *ss.

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mindcrime
I think a broken Etch-a-Sketch would kick Clippy's arse.

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BoppreH

      Three Words
      Industrial Strength Magnets.
    

Priceless.

The guy's pretty intelligent (duh) and funny. Fortunately, he seems to be
accepting the challenge quite well.

Last thing we need after such an AI breakthrough is someone complaining about
the fairness of the game.

~~~
kunjaan
Ken's answer was hillarious

"They give Brad and me bottled water during every commercial break. I think
you can see where this is going if the machine starts to build a big lead."

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icecommander
I'm more interested in a Q&A with Watson about Ken Jennings

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ilovecomputers
It'll probably read Ken's wikipedia page out loud.

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toddh
"But I wouldn't call this unfair...precise timing just happens to be one thing
computers are better at than we humans. It's not like I think Watson should
try buzzing in more erratically just to give homo sapiens a chance."

Wouldn't it be better to build a distribution of champion level response times
and have Watson draw randomly from that distribution? That would seem more
fair.

~~~
steveklabnik
The first rule of competitive game playing is that anything in the rules is...
game.

Illustrating that the computer has the advantage over humans is the entire
point. Competitive game play is not about 'fair,' in fact, the best players
specifically try to make the game as unfair as possible, within the rules of
the game.

~~~
gojomo
But the rules have already been bent to help Watson in areas where it's weak:

• receives question (and answers) as coded text, rather than having to sight-
read or listen to them

• no audio/video clues

• no categories that require an extra Trebek-explanation

It may even be receiving a direct signal when it's OK to ring in, rather than
assessing Trebek's cadence and the same light-indicator as the human
contestants rely upon.

So other 'balancing' changes shouldn't be out of the question.

I particularly like the idea that the penalty for a moment-too-early buzzing
could be eliminated, and/or treating all buzzes in a small window around the
traditional earliest-allowed moment as simultaneous. That still rewards
quickness, without heavily advantaging the computer's ability to perfectly
synchronize with the buzzing-period.

Once two buzzes are considered simultaneous, the contestant chosen to answer
could rotate in round-robin fashion, or (for maximum drama) be the one
furthest behind.

~~~
jbri
AFAIK, Watson was just using the light signal to decide when to start buzzing
in. Just the light, ignoring when Trebek was going to finish saying something.

Presumably a human could consistently beat Watson to the buzzer by predicting
when the light would go on.

~~~
gojomo
Not sure about 'consistently', though trying to predict the light seems a
reasonable strategy to attempt.

There's a lock-out that applies if you buzz too early, and the variance of the
'beats' between Trebek's finish and the light, if that's a human-mediated
process, may be far larger than Watson's light-fired reaction time.

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matthiaswh
Interestingly, Ken Jennings says about Watson what most people say about
ordinary players:

    
    
       Watson sometimes takes some time to get acclimated to a category, so starting at the bottom gives me a chance to rack up some money before it gets confident.  In theory!
    

Supposedly that was Mr. Jennings' reasoning for jumping around during his
streak, that the other players didn't have quite as long a time as him to
consider the category.

Not sure how tongue in cheek that remark was, though.

~~~
machrider
I guess the difference is, Watson can easily retain the learning that is built
up through a category, even if he hops around the board the entire round. For
humans, the context switch is a lot more costly and a category change can
catch you by surprise.

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jeremymims
A lot of this advantage is from correctly hitting the buzzer in time. When my
college roommate was on the show, he said very often the trick was not buzzing
in early and getting locked out. It was apparent that most contestants knew
the correct answer for most questions. I imagine Watson would not have buzzer
jitters.

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alanh
Great stuff. “An away game for humanity.” Worth the read!

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entangld
Slightly off-topic: Is there anyway Watson could be used to fix Google's
search results? /s

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joejohnson
Ken Jennings is cool. He's a pretty funny guy, too.

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maeon3
To provide a better challenge for both the humans and the machine, you should
be able to buzz in as soon as the question is visible. Watson no doubt is
doing most of the work in the time it takes the humans to load up the question
into their mind.

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korussian
Wait a second, did anyone else catch this?:

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Quote: THE OUTCOME

My understanding is that the shows are taped and you obviously know the
outcome. You made the recent comment on MSNBC that in order to win you had to
play and bet recklessly. Do humans have an advantage in terms of betting (game
theory) Your comment seems to be a tell that a human won, any guidance
appreciated. – February 15, 2011 10:59 AM Permalink

A. KEN JENNINGS : I would say that Watson has the wagering edge--like you say,
it's all game theory and math, and even a cheap PC is pretty good at doing
math at high speeds. That said, a human player might be more willing to take
risks that Watson is too smart to try. In the practice games I saw, betting
big on Daily Doubles and Final Jeopardy seemed like the only way to cancel out
Watson's big buzzer advantage.

* * * *

HE DIDN'T ANSWER THE QUESTION! Is this confirmation that Ken Jennings wins?

