Jeopardy meets Watson

Remember Deep Blue, the chess playing computer from IBM, which beat Gary Kasparov. Now IBM is at it again, this time, Watson is the name of the cyborg (developed at a cost of about $30 million). The goal is to defeat two of the greatest human exponents of Jeopardy, the quiz/knowlegde reality show. The duel will be aired on Feb.14, 15 and 16. 

Watson has been sparring the lesser champions of Jeopardy and, so far, been faring with mixed results. See article for details.  No matter, what is remarkable about this achievement is that it is even possible for a computer to play a tight game against humans, given that the clues offered are a mixture of pure facts  to context sensitive cultural events to downright puns.  Watson has some real heavy lifting to do in parsing the clues and narrowing down the choices even if it has brute force access to an extraordinary database. Hats off IBM team!

I can relate to the excitement at IBM around Watson. I tried to take on  a much less daunting task, to algorithmically code the Mastermind game.  It is easy enough to create this game on the computer and make it give feedback, so that you can deduce the answer. However, the opposite, where you make the computer guess the answer (“artificial intelligence”), gives great insight into human “intelligence”. {Note in the original form of the game, you have to find the secret code in eight or less moves}.

More interestingly, what is the real use of building computers like Watson? For a perspective, see David Gelernter’s article. I agree with Gelernter’s observations. Computers with Watson like capability can be the generalist in the age of specialists. What I mean is, science and medicine are so specialized now that it is really difficult for the practitioners to see the big picture, connect the dots, or reach across disciplines to find valuable connections. A Watson like computer, with access to electronic databases that stretches across discplines, can aid humans researchers connect the dots and make important discoveries that could have far reaching benefits. Go Watson!!