I just finished watching the third day of the Watson Jeopardy challenge..The Watson computer handily defeated the two best human champions.   What an amazing experiment..  We don’t have TV hooked up here, so I had to wait till now to see the shows recorded by someone else. I ‘watched’ the three day match real time in Twitter. which was very interesting.. By and large, the reaction was very positive.. .The funny thing is.. many folks grew up on Hollywood’s version of computers . The idea of a ‘HAL’ or a star trek computer is so imprinted on us that many folks don’t get that computers have a hard time understanding written language very well.. and  just don’t ‘know’ things the way we do. Quite a few people have reacted to the Watson Jeopardy challenge in that way.. saying.. ‘of course it will win it’s a computer’.. Others were joking that this is the beginning of the end.. (many references to the Terminator’s ‘skynet’) .. ..

Most just see it for what it is.. ..  an amazing breakthrough..

I am so proud of my friends and colleagues across the company that made this happen. My own contribution was pretty indirect.. i worked on the Power processor chips used in Watson;s  ‘brain’. .. Folks from all over the company helped… in designing the hardware. software I’m particularly impressed and proud of the guys in Research,( Dave F and co. ) who drove the project and developed the deep Q & A algorithms that Watson uses to decode the clues and codify all that information. It is fun to imagine what they are thinking tonight.. !

. I’ve watched the project mature for about 2 years.. I remember seeing some of the first scoring results about 18 months ago that showed how  the machine stacked up against average jeopardy players.. The machine staked up pretty well, but it was well beneath the historical record of games played by some of the all time champs like Jennings and Rutter  .. I  remember wondering if it would ever meet the goal… Then I saw some data a few months back that showed it winning over these guys.. and I just couldn’t believe it.

I’m a huge Jeopardy fan..and a huge fan of computing.. I know how hard a task it is to decode the cryptic clues and codify all that knowledge used to frame the answers… i mean questions.   en imagine the ways that this type of deep computing is going to change the world.  in ways we can’t even imagine…

Really an amazing experiment… What is Watson …?

We’re so proud of you !

night folks, nite sam

-me