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Supercomputer to play on Jeopardy — Parallax Forums

Supercomputer to play on Jeopardy

Spiral_72Spiral_72 Posts: 791
edited 2011-02-18 04:23 in General Discussion
I watched an interesting Nova program on TV I had recorded from the other night (Monday??)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/smartest-machine-on-earth.html

I thought it was about robots, but sadly no. It was pretty interesting though. IBM has created this bathroom sized "Super computer" with ridiculous storage capacity and processing power as the next step in machine learning / AI. The goal for the project was to beat the two current (human) all-time-greatest Jeopardy contestants at their own game.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/01/ibm-watson-jeopardy/

The episodes air on Fab 14-16th, only a couple days away! I hope to watch these :)

The Nova episode was worth the watch IMO.


Enjoy!
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Comments

  • sam_sam_samsam_sam_sam Posts: 2,286
    edited 2011-02-11 08:09
    Do you think that the computer win the game I also saw this on PBS as well I have a poll posted and ask this question

    Here is this link to it

    http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?129476-Do-You-Think-a-computer-win-the-game-Jeopardy!-challenges-best-the-human-minds.
  • Spiral_72Spiral_72 Posts: 791
    edited 2011-02-11 08:46
    Gosh! How did I miss that!?? Oh well sorry.

    I voted on your poll :)
  • WhitWhit Posts: 4,191
    edited 2011-02-11 08:57
    That was amazing! Thanks so much for posting this.
  • Bobb FwedBobb Fwed Posts: 1,119
    edited 2011-02-11 09:51
    Very cool. Jeopardy is now setup to record!
  • HumanoidoHumanoido Posts: 5,770
    edited 2011-02-11 22:53
    Spiral72, thanks for this report. This is so fantastic! It could accelerate AI. Unfortunately we don't have Jeopardy on tv here, so please report the results! But can you imagine, if Watson could tap into the power of the internet? We could do this sort of thing with DIY home robots and home computers.

    Named after IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, the supercomputer is one of the most advanced systems on Earth and was programmed by 25 IBM scientists over the last four years. Researchers scanned some 200 million pages of content — or the equivalent of about one million books — into the system, including books, movie scripts and entire encyclopedias.

    Watson is not your run-of-the-mill computer. The system is powered by 10 racks of IBM POWER 750 servers running Linux, and uses 15 terabytes of RAM, 2,880 processor cores and can operate at 80 teraflops. That’s 80 trillion operations per second.

    Watson scans the 2 million pages of content in its “brain” in less than three seconds. The system is not connected to the internet, but totally self-contained. The machine is the size of 10 refrigerators.
  • Dr_AculaDr_Acula Posts: 5,484
    edited 2011-02-12 02:30
    Watson scans the 2 million pages of content in its “brain” in less than three seconds. The system is not connected to the internet, but totally self-contained. The machine is the size of 10 refrigerators.

    and your mission, humanoido, should you choose to accept it, is to copy that system into the Propeller Tower of Power!!
  • ElectricAyeElectricAye Posts: 4,561
    edited 2011-02-14 12:29
    I think the more and more that people people work on AI, the more and more they seem to be proving that our minds don't work like a computer program. There's some kind of paradigm shift that needs to be done and I bet it will come from the biological sciences, not from AI of this sort. Poor Watson can neither hear nor see. What happens if they show him a work of art or play a little piano music?

    I'm impressed, however, that with the paradigms of old they have made it even this far.
  • Spiral_72Spiral_72 Posts: 791
    edited 2011-02-14 12:44
    THREE HOURS AND FORTY-FIVE MINUTES!!!! I can't wait :)
  • Don MDon M Posts: 1,653
    edited 2011-02-14 13:33
    Great story on PBS. Jeopardy just started here....
  • Don MDon M Posts: 1,653
    edited 2011-02-14 13:57
    I won't spoil it for others as to the outcome today....
  • sam_sam_samsam_sam_sam Posts: 2,286
    edited 2011-02-14 14:47
    I see that only 10 people voted on the poll I have at this post

    http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?129476-Do-You-Think-a-computer-win-the-game-Jeopardy!-challenges-best-the-human-minds.

    4 people think that the computer will win
    5 people think that maybe the computer will win
    1 person think that the computer will not win

    What do you think ??????
  • Bobb FwedBobb Fwed Posts: 1,119
    edited 2011-02-14 15:01
    I voted the other day.
    But really kind of answer is "maybe". That is a really dumb answer! Well of course he might win, we want to know if people think he will or will not win! Put some commitment into your votes!
  • HumanoidoHumanoido Posts: 5,770
    edited 2011-02-14 16:26
    Any news about the outcome of the show? I cannot wait any longer!!!
  • HumanoidoHumanoido Posts: 5,770
    edited 2011-02-14 16:32
    Watson scans the 2 million pages of content in its “brain” in less than three seconds. The system is not connected to the internet, but totally self-contained. The machine is the size of 10 refrigerators.
    Dr_Acula wrote: »
    and your mission, humanoido, should you choose to accept it, is to copy that system into the Propeller Tower of Power!!
    Dr_Acula, if I can fit 10 refrigerators inside, I'll do it!!! LOL!!! Hey, look over here, we are working on a powerful open source Propeller Brain!
    http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?124495-Fill-the-Big-Brain
  • Don MDon M Posts: 1,653
    edited 2011-02-15 13:58
    Watson kicked butt today.... although he missed the final Jeopardy question but he only wagered a small amount as he wasn't sure of the answer. He has $35K+ with the two others at $10K+ and $4800.
  • Spiral_72Spiral_72 Posts: 791
    edited 2011-02-15 14:02
    Don M wrote: »
    Watson kicked butt today.... although he missed the final Jeopardy question but he only wagered a small amount as he wasn't sure of the answer. He has $35K+ with the two others at $10K+ and $4800.


    NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! WHY!!!??? WHY!!!!???? I HAVEN'T SEEN IT YET!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

    just kidding. I guess I shouldn't have read the post eh?
  • Dave HeinDave Hein Posts: 6,347
    edited 2011-02-15 14:50
    It seems that Watson has the advantage because he should be able to hit the button faster than the human players. If all three players can answer 95% of the questions correctly, the one who hits the button first will win the game.
  • bsnutbsnut Posts: 521
    edited 2011-02-15 17:19
    It's not over for Watson, they will play tomorrow.
  • SeariderSearider Posts: 290
    edited 2011-02-15 19:22
    Just think, in 5-10 years, our PDA's will have the same power of Watson, cost a few hundred $ and AI will be more of an everyday thing and less of a novelty.
  • ElectricAyeElectricAye Posts: 4,561
    edited 2011-02-15 19:29
    Alex Trebeck: "Answer - Too many freakin commercials!"

    Watson: "Why ElectricAye can't stand watching Toronto anymore????"
  • Spiral_72Spiral_72 Posts: 791
    edited 2011-02-15 19:49
    Watson cheated..... I dunno how, but it had to to kick butt that bad!

    There's still tomorrow for the human retaliation!
  • Don MDon M Posts: 1,653
    edited 2011-02-16 14:02
    Interesting end to todays play....
  • Beau SchwabeBeau Schwabe Posts: 6,568
    edited 2011-02-16 14:24
    Who's the better computer? :-)

    Watson: "Alex, I'd like to solve"

    Alex: "Huh?, I think you have the wrong game, that's Wheel of Fortune"

    Watson: "No, I'm pretty sure that I would like to solve"

    Alex: "Hmm, well I'm still not sure exactly what you are asking"

    Watson: "I'd like to solve, and answer all of the remaining questions before they are asked"

    Alex:"Danger, Danger, Danger, does not compute, does not compute -- PffffffffTTTT-POP!!!!"
  • ElectricAyeElectricAye Posts: 4,561
    edited 2011-02-16 18:29
    Alex: "Answer: Eight hundred of these will soon do it for a lot less and won't require extensive air conditioning."

    Watson: "What number of people in India will get my job once this show is over?"
  • HumanoidoHumanoido Posts: 5,770
    edited 2011-02-17 01:08
    Watson, the artificial intelligence, won and absolutely blew away the humans which were previous champions (against other humans).
    brain vs watson.jpg
    255 x 485 - 23K
  • ElectricAyeElectricAye Posts: 4,561
    edited 2011-02-17 06:20
    It seems to me that, in the beginning of the Nova program, the IBM guys talked about how speech recognition software had made great strides, but only by the end of the NOVA program do they mention that Watson is getting his clues via text messaging. So why didn't they run Watson with a speech recognition program?
  • HumanoidoHumanoido Posts: 5,770
    edited 2011-02-17 06:42
    ElectricAye wrote: »
    It seems to me that, in the beginning of the Nova program, the IBM guys talked about how speech recognition software had made great strides, but only by the end of the NOVA program do they mention that Watson is getting his clues via text messaging. So why didn't they run Watson with a speech recognition program?
    It's because, while speech recognition has made great strides, it is still subjective to noise, i.e. that which comes from the audience. It is also necessary to have advanced AI for advanced speech recognition. Even if the speech recognition is developed, the advanced AI may be lacking. For example, speak the words reed, read, or red, read, or ahead, a head, etc., and see how long it takes to develop a program to sort out tens of thousands of those word pairs.
  • BeanBean Posts: 8,129
    edited 2011-02-17 11:14
    Yeah, I thought watson was doing speech recognition too. I'm not as impressed now... Not a fair fight.

    Bean
  • HumanoidoHumanoido Posts: 5,770
    edited 2011-02-17 23:50
    Good point. And Watson had only 4 years development time while the human brain has had 6 million years. So some things are not fair on each side. Whenever the machine wins, someone will say it cheated in some way.

    http://games.slashdot.org/story/07/08/15/1224208/10-Years-After-Big-Blue-Beat-Garry-Kasparov
    But most importantly, IBM's team of chess masters and coders modified the system between chess games after analyzing Kasparov's strategy the previous game. That is, he wasn't playing Deep Blue: he was playing Deep Blue being adapted in semi-real-time by a bunch of human experts. And crucially, IBM hid this fact, knowing that it'd be (rightly) considered highly suspect.
    Why is this "highly suspect"? I suppose you might think so if you made the mistake of believing that Kasparov was actually playing against a piece of hardware (the "computer"); but of course he wasnt. Kasparov was playing against a team of chess-knowledgeable programmers; Kasparov was playing against software. The only remarkable thing about the computer itself was its speed--it was fast enough to carry out the laborious recursive brute-force searches for optimal moves in about the same time as a human player would take to decide his move. In theory, you could have done the same thing with a 70s era computer...but the game would have taken forever.

    attachment.php?attachmentid=78378&d=1297933682
  • ElectricAyeElectricAye Posts: 4,561
    edited 2011-02-18 04:23
    6000000 years of development vs.4 ? Isn't it more like 13000000000 years vs. 13000000004? At the very least, AI has been in the works since the 1970's.

    Watson was very impressive. But I noticed poor Ken was hitting that button most of the time, too, just not fast enough.

    http://www.slate.com/id/2284721?wpisrc=newsletter_tis
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