Monday, February 14, 2011

Jeopardy Watson Rallies

Jeopardy Watson Rallies

Two men stood on the bright blue set of “Jeopardy” Monday night, on location in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., to begin a three-day competition against a celebrity contestant: an IBM super computer named Watson.

“You are about to witness what may prove to be an historic competition,” said the host, Alex Trebek. “An exhibition match pitting an IBM computer system against the two most celebrated and successful players in ‘Jeopardy’ history.”

In the first half of the competition, Watson raced ahead of the past Jeopardy champions, Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings. It had $3,000, then $3,600 and then $4,000 while the humans lingered down in the hundreds.

Mr. Trebek cooed out a question: “’Bang bang’ his ‘silver hammer came down upon her head.’”

“What is Maxwell’s silver hammer,” Watson’s computerized voice replied.

Watson reeled off one correct answer after another. But then the computer started to slip, and Mr. Rutter — who holds the shows record for the most winnings at $3.25 million—came roaring back.

Watson even made a few mistakes.

“Stylish elegance, or students who all graduated in the same year,” the question read.

“What is chic?” Watson replied.

Wrong.

“What is class?” Mr. Rutter said.

Right.

At the end of Monday’s round, Mr. Rutter and Watson were tied at $5,000 each. Mr. Jennings, who holds Jeopardy’s longest winning streak of 74 games, slunk off into the Wheel of Fortune time slot with only $2,000. The winner of this three-day competition will be awarded $1 million.

(Watson fans should nevertheless take heart: as Times technology reporter John Markoff writes, as computers get more agile in mimicking what humans do, the impact could be significant.)

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