IBM Watson wins the danger, humans Rally back

Super computer IBM, Watson came out victorious during the danger Wednesday, but not before former exposure game samples Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter gathered a formidable defence. In the end, however, humans were no match for Watson, who has won with a benefit of $ 77,147 Commander after three days of play. Jennings has taken second place to $ 24,000 and Rutter was third with $ 21,600. "For one welcome our new computer feudal lords," Jennings jokingly wrote in his final Jeopardy answer during the transmission of Wednesday. The challenge of the risk of three-night was recorded in January at the IBM t. j. Watson Research Laboratory in Yorktown Heights, New York.

As victor, Watson takes home a prize of 1 million dollars, that IBM intends to donate to the vision of the world and the World Community Grid. Jennings and Rutter will donate 50 percent of their winnings to separate charity.

Watson commands then stumbles

At the beginning of the broadcast on Wednesday, seemed as if Watson was about to destroy his rivals human again. But the tide turned with a category that has asked to be the name of an actor/director in film titles. Rutter and Jennings seemed to be jumping on buzzer before knowing the answer; confident they would be able to answer these questions on the spot. The strategy worked, and after the first 15 questions, the score (in terms of clues answered) was Watson 7, Jennings 4 and 3 Rutter. Watson and Rutter also each received a clue.

Watson gets PWNED

Things seemed to be getting worse for Watson during the next 15 clues. The computer managed only 3 answers Watson Jennings ' 6 and 5 Rutter. Watson and Jennings both responded to a question incorrectly during this tour.

Watson has stumbled upon a variety of topics from policy to vague knowledge sections daily price hike of USA Today in 2008. Watson has failed to respond, for example, that Slovenia is only former Yugoslav Republic in the European Union. The computer had Slovenia as one of its three likely answers, but its for sure about the correct answer was not high enough. Watson replied, "what is the Serbia?"--a country which is not in the European Union. Rutter replied this clue and Jennings does not constitute a hazard to guess.

After the first 30 Jeopardy clues Jennings and Watson everyone had correctly answered 10 and Rutter was close behind with 8, with two clues, getting wrong answers from competitors.

Man In danger

Despite the shortcomings of Watson in the danger of regulating the first round, the super computer bounced back during Wednesday's double jeopardy. Watson has taken an initiative Commander with 18 correct answers Jennings ' 7 and 4 Rutter. Watson replied also mistakenly double daily demand during the turn.

After that final was jeopardised where all three competitors responded correctly that Dracula by Bram Stoker was inspired by an account William Wilkinson of the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. '

The takeaway

Now that the battle is over there will be endless discussions about whether this was a fight and if Watson had an advantage or not in its ability to turn on the beep faster and more consistently than Jennings and Rutter. And while it's fun to see the IBM challenge of danger as a classic man vs. machine battle, this competition has never been just about the danger.

Watson is a significant leap in capacity of a machine to understand the context in human language. How IBM has said on several occasions, the goal was to create a self-aware super computer that can run amok like HAL 9000 from 2001: a space Odyssey or Skynet from Terminator. But a question and answer machine as the ship's computer on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

But we're not quite yet. To build Watson, IBM used 200 million pages of content stored on up to 4 terabytes of disk space, as 16 terabytes of memory (reports have varied), approximately 2,800 processor cores and about 6 million of rules to determine the best answers. Watson took 10 racks of servers, each with 10 IBM Power 750 and two large refrigeration unit that was hosted in own room IBM Yorktown Heights campus. Everything for a computer language that can be analyzed via a text file and not through voice-based input as Star Trek computer does.

Voice-activated or not, IBM believes that the technology behind Watson can be applied to a variety of fields, particularly to medicine. The company plans to announce Thursday a joint project with Columbia University and the University of Maryland to create a physician's Assistant cybernetic technology Watson, according to the New York Times. IBM will also work with Nuance Communications to include speech recognition for the new project doctor--a feature that could be ready by the end of 2012.

It is a world of exciting possibilities for Watson technology, especially when in the area of our lives one day we will be able to walk to a computer and say, "Tea. Earl Grey, hot ".

For a look of Watson and philosophical questions puts the existence of this super computer, check out A Smarter Planet blog post by IBM on Jeopardy day 3.

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