Jeopardy! to Feature IBM Supercomputer as Contestant

What works at IBM, but isn’t an employee? Stumped? A supercomputer, of course! Quiz questions like these are what we’ll see in February, when one of America’s most-loved game shows, Jeopardy!, features one of its most unique contestants ever, “Watson”. No, it’s not a human being, but rather the result of IBM’s accomplishments in more realistic artificial intelligence.

The goal of Watson (named after Thomas J. Watson, IBM’s founder) is to enable actual interaction with a human in a more realistic way. Imagine, for example, asking a computer a question, either with voice or text, and it provide back actual realistic banter, or an answer to a question. We’re not talking about a computer connected to the Internet here, but rather a computer that can think for itself, and construct its own responses.

That’s what Watson will be doing during the Jeopardy! run, and even as I read about it, I’m still confused as to how a computer will be able to come up with answers on-the-fly, without some sort of major database. Hopefully we’ll learn a lot more leading up to the show, or even after it, when we’ve seen the results.

Watson will be playing against two of Jeopardy!’s most successful contestants, so even if you’re not a fan of the show, it might be worth checking out. After all, it’s not too often you see a computer playing against human opponents on a game show!

“What I see is the potential for computers to help us with our tremendous frustration in dealing with the huge glut of information that is doubling every year,” said Dr Ferrucci. “Just imagine being able to converse with a computer in an intelligent dialogue to help you understand and leverage all that information out there, so that people can focus on solving their problem and not get overwhelmed by information. That is what Watson is about.”