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NOVA - Jeopardy Watson REMINDER it's on tonight, tuesday and wednesday

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Fear No Evil said:
I was under the impression you couldn't ring in until the question as read completely.
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yeah. the advantage watson has is that he knows the answer before the humans can even process it, and is already searching, compiling, whatever, before the humans get a chance to buzz in.

the text for him is instant--maybe a few milliseconds. the humans would be stupid to not at least take 1 or 2 seconds to go through the question--whether or not they listen to Alex--before they consider timing their buzzer when allowed to do so.

point being, they aren't ever able to "compile" their answer in the same amount of time that Watson has. I think it's a great advantage--but maybe not great enough...


....because humans kick ass.
 
I was bored. 😀

watson9000.jpg
 
So what's preventing watson from ringing in every question before someone else does, taking a second or so to do a search, then answer the question correctly?
 
KLin said:
So what's preventing watson from ringing in every question before someone else does, taking a second or so to do a search, then answer the question correctly?
Click to expand...

in jeopardy you MUST wait for the question to be read, and then there is a few millisecond delay prior to being able to push the button... if you push to early, you get locked out for a second or so.
 
This is some show of ingenuity... I think the humans will do much better in double jeopardy. The "training" of the expert system is hilarious.
 
KillerCharlie said:
The computer has a huge advantage in reaction time.
Click to expand...

This, definitely.

It would be interesting if they put an intentional 1,000 ms delay in the response of Watson's "button".

See how the results may change.

What would be even more interesting if Watson tries to speak up and complain that his button was rigged! :biggrin:

That said a genius knows the answer before the question is asked. 😉
 
Rubycon said:
This, definitely.

It would be interesting if they put an intentional 1,000 ms delay in the response of Watson's "button".

See how the results may change.

What would be even more interesting if Watson tries to speak up and complain that his button was rigged! :biggrin:
Click to expand...

there is still a mechanical button for watson to push, so no matter what, there is a delay in the pushing...

it would be interesting to compare the reaction times possible by humans vs that of Watson's mechanical thumb...

light goes on
human processes the light going on
human send signal to thumb to press
thumb presses

light goes on
watson processes the light going on
watson sends signal to "thumb" to press
"thumb" presses...

i really honestly wonder.
 
MikeMike said:
there is still a mechanical button for watson to push, so no matter what, there is a delay in the pushing...

it would be interesting to compare the reaction times possible by humans vs that of Watson's mechanical thumb...

light goes on
human processes the light going on
human send signal to thumb to press
thumb presses

light goes on
watson processes the light going on
watson sends signal to "thumb" to press
"thumb" presses...

i really honestly wonder.
Click to expand...

Did not know they had a mechanical interface! :biggrin:

Even still adding delay would make it interesting. :ninja:
 
WoW some of you are making this way to complicated. We don't know how the question is being feed to Watson. Is the question being feed all at once or is it being feed word by word as Alex is reading it? You guys act like the question is given to Watson before Alex is done reading. They really never explained this.

They explained the button and showed it in use. From what I seen I think I could out click Watson. It did not look like he clicked very fast.

Also it is so easy to see that Watson is programmed to try and get the double Jeopardy first so he will ask for the last 2 questions until it is found. Once it is found he then goes back to the easiest questions in each category. Most people will stay on the same category and work their way down.
 
Jeffg010 said:
WoW some of you are making this way to complicated. We don't know how the question is being feed to Watson. Is the question being feed all at once or is it being feed word by word as Alex is reading it? You guys act like the question is given to Watson before Alex is done reading. They really never explained this.

They explained the button and showed it in use. From what I seen I think I could out click Watson. It did not look like he clicked very fast.

Also it is so easy to see that Watson is programmed to try and get the double Jeopardy first so he will ask for the last 2 questions until it is found. Once it is found he then goes back to the easiest questions in each category. Most people will stay on the same category and work their way down.
Click to expand...

they said the question is fed to watson by a person through a text string just as it is being read by Trebek.
 
sdifox said:
they said the question is fed to watson by a person through a text string just as it is being read by Trebek.
Click to expand...

they also stated that Watson has a few separate strategies when attacking the board that it selects before the round.

there are also a few personal experience articles on the web about former contestants playing against Watson when it was in testing/practice...

fast company.com/1726969/how-i-beat-ibms-watson-at-jeopardy-3-times

copy/paste and take out the space, AT doesn't like them thus no link.

re: fast company's links being blocked. It's not Fast Company itself; it's their willingness to let blogger after blogger create pages on their site and post links all over the place. ATOT was being spammed left and right by people selling all sorts of drugs, etc. -DrPizza
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Jeffg010 said:
WoW some of you are making this way to complicated. We don't know how the question is being feed to Watson. Is the question being feed all at once or is it being feed word by word as Alex is reading it? You guys act like the question is given to Watson before Alex is done reading. They really never explained this.

They explained the button and showed it in use. From what I seen I think I could out click Watson. It did not look like he clicked very fast.

Also it is so easy to see that Watson is programmed to try and get the double Jeopardy first so he will ask for the last 2 questions until it is found. Once it is found he then goes back to the easiest questions in each category. Most people will stay on the same category and work their way down.
Click to expand...
Watson gets the entire question at the same time the humans do: as soon as it's on the screen. Alex isn't really reading the question to give it to the players (although his inflection on words can be a clue in and of itself), he's reading it for the viewers and to as a mechanism to give the players time to think. Humans and Watsons alike have finished reading the question long before Alex has.
 
sdifox said:
How does watson know that Trebek has finished reading? Alex said Watson can't hear.
Click to expand...
For the players there's actually a small light in the corner (off-camera) to indicate when they can ring in. I don't believe they've specified how Watson handles it; it's either wired in to Watson, or there's a light sensor watching the light.
 
ViRGE said:
For the players there's actually a small light in the corner (off-camera) to indicate when they can ring in. I don't believe they've specified how Watson handles it; it's either wired in to Watson, or there's a light sensor watching the light.
Click to expand...

It would be interesting to know. Not being able to incorporate other contestants' wrong answer into the decision matrix is definitely a handicap.

I imagine it is wired in since Watson has answered second (and gave the same answer as human) so it has to be notified somehow.
 
sdifox said:
It would be interesting to know. Not being able to incorporate other contestants' wrong answer into the decision matrix is definitely a handicap.

I imagine it is wired in since Watson has answered second (and gave the same answer as human) so it has to be notified somehow.
Click to expand...

It would be interesting to see the engineers' notes on Watson's performance. You KNOW that after that duplicate response, the engineers had egg on their face and will be working on that fix for next year's competition 🙂

That has to be a lot of "ahhhh crap!" moments as these guys watch. I loved the footage of them watching the trial games like when Watson answered "Milk" to the "non-diary" answer. This seems like it was be an awesomely fun and hard job.
 
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