The Science Fiction Review TV,Technology IBM’s Watson beats Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter

IBM’s Watson beats Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter

For all of you geeks that have had your head in the sand, artificial intelligence has hit a milestone. Yesterday, IBM’s Watson trounced these bags of meat known as Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in Jeopardy. If I ruined the result of the match, I apologize, but I figure posting a day after is enough notice for anyone that was following this from the start. For some more background on Watson and behind the scenes info, check out my original post on this. I have to admit that I was rooting for Watson from the start. I was a bit worried when after the first day in the tournament Watson was only tied for first place. I’m not sure what happened between the first and second matches, but Watson rocketed ahead in the second day and never looked back.

I think IBM might have been in a rush to show off their new creation. It was interesting to see the answer confidence levels during the rounds, often revealing some really wacky possible answers. Watson crashed several times during the second day of filming, nothing a regular viewer would notice while watching the recorded match on TV.  One criticism I’ve heard about the match was that Watson was fed the questions electronically rather than relying on voice and character recognition. I have to agree that the electronic delivery could have been an advantage.  Had voice recognition and OCR  functionality been used in Watson, the victory would be quite a bit more impressive. I could clearly see the two mere mortals struggling to buzz in and shake in frustration when Watson was faster. The producers touted the physical buzzer plunger that Watson had to activate, but I still think that Watson had the advantage.

I would be interested to see a rematch in a year but with only inputs into Watson be voice and video of the Jeopardy board. After all, Deep Blue was given a second chance versus Garry Kasparov, so why not give the humans a second chance on more equal footing? It is quite possible that programming algorithms over the year would improve enough so that Watson still would win, despite the reliance of voice recognition and OCR. In that case, the victory would mean that much more. Even if you know the outcome already, I still recommend watching the matches. I already saw the Nova special, so I skipped through most of the background stuff from the IBM folks. Here is a link to my YouTube  playlist that has the three episodes broken into 6 videos. Check it out! Then you can tell your grandchildren how you watched a computer beat humans in Jeopardy for the first time. Then they’ll ask, “Humans were allowed to play Jeopardy back then?”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Please prove you are a human * Time limit is exhausted. Please reload the CAPTCHA.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Related Post

Flash Forward Thursdays on ABCFlash Forward Thursdays on ABC

Flash Forward

Flash Forward

When I first heard of Flash Forward, I was intrigued. Time travel stories always have piqued my interest. This new show isn’t a typical time travel story. One day all of humanity is knocked unconscious, and most of them see what appear to be hallucinations (2:17 minutes worth) of the future. The rest of this pilot episode is the main characters picking up the pieces from the fallout of this event. Can you imagine the scale of destruction if that would really happen? Interestingly enough, by the end of the day everyone is home and contemplating what their visions actually mean. I would think they’d be busy cleaning stuff up for weeks after all of the crashes and looting that took place. I’m not sure if it was poor scripting or what, but quite a few times I felt like I was being spoon-fed information and “insights” as the actors tried to piece things together.

For example, some of the visions were disturbing. They didn’t like what they saw and were afraid the vision of the future would come true. The flipside of this is also touched on, but what about those that had no vision?  Also, how will seeing the future affect the future? It is apparent that some will fight FOR the future, while others will fight AGAINST it. Who will win? Can both sides succeed?  I am waiting to see how the writers can add a unique twist of their own.

Anyway, give it a try and judge for yourself.

Flash Forward – No More Good Days – Full Episode

So who wants to control your own personal robot?So who wants to control your own personal robot?

How would you like to control your own personal robot to do your bidding? The new movie Surrogates, starring Bruce Willis, takes this concept to extremes. In the movie, humans link their minds to a robot and control them directly. This is a bit different than being converted to a cyborg like Ray Kurzweil predicts.

As CNN reports:

“Surrogates” director Jonathan Mostow, whose film credits include 2003’s “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,” said he was drawn to the concept of surrogate robots as an extension of current technology. And, he said, as he met with scientists, he became convinced that something approaching the concept could one day be a reality.

It seems like the concept of “old fashioned” humanoid robots is  finally becoming outdated. I wonder how Isaac Asimov would feel? It is one thing to boss around a robot using the Second Law of Robotics, but actually mind-melding with one, or becoming one is completely different. The main dilemma in Surrogates is that someone found a way to fry someone’s brain before they were able to jack out of the robot they were controlling. This concept is very old, dating back to the old Virtual Reality plots. I was very interested in the movie when I first saw the trailer, but after reading some lackluster reviews, I think I might just wait for DVD.

The critics could be wrong though. Do any of you think I should give it a chance?

Check out the full article via CNN for more information. I found it to be an interesting read.

Amazing agile flying machines from ETH ZurichAmazing agile flying machines from ETH Zurich

I just ran across a cool video of a flying robot playing Jingle Bells on an electric piano. The tempo seemed a bit off, so I clicked through to YouTube to see if there were any more videos. A link for how it works popped up, so naturally I clicked it. Base off of the video, it looks like a human was controlling the robot, so not as impressive as I initially thought. They show some background on “co-pilot” routines that assist the human controllers to keep them from making mistakes. I find this interesting because eventually with AI, these little machines could be completely automated. This reminds me of the creepy surveillance robots from Dark Angel. With special routines to keep these from bumping into obstacles, I can definitely see them flying around our cities sometime in the near future. If you want to see the Jingle Bells video, click through the via link at the bottom. I found this video more interesting though.

via Geekologie