I’m not a fan of Jeopardy, don’t really watch game shows in general though I do miss the show Greed I think it was called, on about 10 years ago for a brief time.
I saw a few notes yesterday on how Watson was going to compete and I honestly wasn’t all that interested for some reason, but I was reading the comments on the story at The Register and someone posted a link (part 1, part 2) to it on Youtube, and I started watching. I couldn’t stop watching the more I saw the more it interested me.
It really was amazing to me to see some of the brief history behind it, how it evolved and stuff, and it was even more exciting to see such innovation occurring still, I really gotta give IBM some mad props for doing that sort of thing,it’s not the first time they’ve done it of course, but in an age where we are increasingly thinking shorter and shorter term it’s really inspiring I think is the word I’m looking for to see an organization like IBM invest the time and money over several years to do something like this.
Here are the questions and answers from the show (as usual I could answer less than 10% of them), and here is more information on Watson.
My favorite part of the show aside from the historical background was when Watson gave the same wrong response that another one of the contestants gave right after they gave it (though Watson was unable to hear or see anything so can’t fault it for that but it was a funny moment).
Thanks IBM – keep up the good work!
(maybe it’s just me but that avatar that Watson has, has a cycle where it shows a lot of little circles expanding, reminds me of War games and the computer in that movie running nuclear war simulations)