# IBM supercomputer destroys human contestants on Jeopardy **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 14, 2011, 9:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ibm-supercomputer-destroys-human-contestants-on-jeopardy/567579 "2011-01-14T09:25:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Philster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/13edae/32.png) [@Philster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Philster)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2011, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ibm-supercomputer-destroys-human-contestants-on-jeopardy/567579/21 "2011-01-14T20:54:07Z")
Umm… I’m pretty sure that Watson is using natural language speech recognition. I’ve read the following type of comment consistently: _“…Watson is processing vast amounts of context-dependent information presented in natural human speech to arrive at an answer that is based on any number of factors. This is, in a word, absolutely groundbreaking. On a speech and context recognition front, in particular – turning questions that require multifaceted layers of knowledge into answers that rely on a number of variables from any number of sources. The analytics involved are mind-boggling.”_ Cite: [HPCwire: Global News on High Performance Computing (HPC)](http://www.hpcwire.com/blogs/IBMs-Watson-Goes-Where-No-Machines-Gone-Before.html?ref=559) This jives with what I pulled up from IBM’s site and other news articles and bytes today. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2011, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ibm-supercomputer-destroys-human-contestants-on-jeopardy/567579/22 "2011-01-14T21:00:25Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > It would seem to me that if the computer can input the “answer” fast enough could just Google the question faster than any human could recognize that the “question” he/she came up with was correct. I was unsurprised that Kasparov was eventually beaten by a computer and I’m a bit surprised that the computer does not simply wipe the floor with the humans. You are seriously underestimating the difficulty of the problem. Try Googling the questions, or anything, and see how often the “feeling lucky” button gives you something useful. There was an article in the Times Magazine about this program. The two difficult pieces are first understanding the wordplay in the question, and second, deciding how confident it should be and ranking several possible answers. The raw data itself is not much of a problem, except in that you have to have a good way of organizing it. I’ve been on Jeopardy - made it the first time I tried - and it had nothing to do with intelligence. I was born with very good data organization, so I can pull up obscure facts very quickly. That was the key, not brains. In a similar way, computers don’t play good chess because of pure processing power, but rather because of good board evaluation functions and heuristics. The combinatorial complexity of chess is still way to big for brute force approaches. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2011, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ibm-supercomputer-destroys-human-contestants-on-jeopardy/567579/23 "2011-01-14T21:02:14Z")
> [@Philster](#): > > Umm… I’m pretty sure that Watson is using natural language speech recognition. > > I’ve read the following type of comment consistently: > > _“…Watson is processing vast amounts of context-dependent information presented in natural human speech to arrive at an answer that is based on any number of factors. This is, in a word, absolutely groundbreaking. On a speech and context recognition front, in particular – turning questions that require multifaceted layers of knowledge into answers that rely on a number of variables from any number of sources. The analytics involved are mind-boggling.”_ > > Cite: [HPCwire: Global News on High Performance Computing (HPC)](http://www.hpcwire.com/blogs/IBMs-Watson-Goes-Where-No-Machines-Gone-Before.html?ref=559) > > This jives with what I pulled up from IBM’s site and other news articles and bytes today. The hard part of speech recognition is not recognizing the words - my Droid does that pretty well. It is understanding the semantics of the words. That is what the program is doing, and if it is using speech or text as input the problem is no different. ---
**Author:** ![Philster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/13edae/32.png) [@Philster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Philster)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2011, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ibm-supercomputer-destroys-human-contestants-on-jeopardy/567579/24 "2011-01-14T21:14:46Z")
I’m sorry, let’s do this again: “…context-dependent information presented in natural human speech…” I addressed a poster who was ignorant of the fact that natural-language speech recognition was used. The issue at hand was not to discuss nuances, context, etc. It was about pointing out that it wasn’t done via text input. I’ve gone ahead and grabbed a quote that specifically mentions that it’s absolutely groudbreaking… on a speech **and** context recognition front, in particular. Yes, your Droid recognizes words, but not natural-language speech. Just what Watson does here alone is amazing, but understanding the context – the nuances of Jeopardy answers – is one more thing that contributes to it being groundbreaking. And the problem **IS** different if you are using natural-language speech recognition, because it WAS a problem for IBM to get Watson to work against all the problems simultaneously – again: groundbreaking. . ---
**Author:** ![AndrewL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@AndrewL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AndrewL)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2011, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ibm-supercomputer-destroys-human-contestants-on-jeopardy/567579/25 "2011-01-14T21:26:09Z")
> [@Philster](#): > > Umm… I’m pretty sure that Watson is using natural language speech recognition. Not according to this: > **[CNET: Product reviews, advice, how-tos and the latest news](https://www.cnet.com/)** > > Get full-length product reviews, the latest news, tech coverage, daily deals, and category deep dives from CNET experts worldwide. [QUOTE=cnet] The game’s prompts are fed to Watson, whose hardware fills an entire room underneath the auditorium in which the televised “Jeopardy” challenges will take place, in plain text at the same time that they appear onscreen for the human contestants. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![AndrewL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@AndrewL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AndrewL)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2011, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ibm-supercomputer-destroys-human-contestants-on-jeopardy/567579/26 "2011-01-14T21:43:02Z")
Missed the edit window. Another reference: [QUOTE=80beats] The questions were fed in plain text to Watson, but it had to wait the same amount of time to ring in as the human players did. [/QUOTE] [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/01/13/ibms-jeopardy-playing-computer-tromps-human-players-in-practice-round/](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/01/13/ibms-jeopardy-playing-computer-tromps-human-players-in-practice-round/) ---
**Author:** ![mittu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecd19e/32.png) [@mittu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mittu)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2011, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ibm-supercomputer-destroys-human-contestants-on-jeopardy/567579/27 "2011-01-14T22:28:55Z")
Surely that gives Watson an advantage, if Watson is fed the text at the same time as it appears for the contestants then he has a head start whilst the contestants read the question. Clearly the longer the question the more chance Watson has of winning, he begins processing immediately and once 3 seconds have passed he is good to go, provided his confidence is high enough. Speaking of which I wonder what limit they have placed on the confidence level before an answer is given, i.e. will he answer at 50%, 60% or as low as 30%. It doesn’t seem likely that Watson would be using speech recognition to capture the data, if he was it would take 3 seconds from the question being read out before he could answer, he would be beaten by the humans every time (provided they knew the answer). ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2011, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ibm-supercomputer-destroys-human-contestants-on-jeopardy/567579/28 "2011-01-14T22:41:28Z")
> [@mittu](#): > > It doesn’t seem likely that Watson would be using speech recognition to capture the data, if he was it would take 3 seconds from the question being read out before he could answer, he would be beaten by the humans every time (provided they knew the answer). Watson definitely does not get the questions using speech recognition, he gets them as plain text, as others have alluded to. I think some of the confusion on this issue has arisen because a great deal of research into natural language processing (not necessarily _spoken_ language) went into the project. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2011, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ibm-supercomputer-destroys-human-contestants-on-jeopardy/567579/29 "2011-01-14T23:08:12Z")
Are there some posts missing from this thread? I’m pretty sure I posted here following a post by **Chronos**. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2011, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ibm-supercomputer-destroys-human-contestants-on-jeopardy/567579/30 "2011-01-14T23:11:46Z")
Nevermind. I see I posted in a similar thread over CS. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2011, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ibm-supercomputer-destroys-human-contestants-on-jeopardy/567579/31 "2011-01-15T00:18:26Z")
For all those pointing out that Watson doesn’t get the questions by processing spoken language, neither do the human contestants, right? They see the question printed on the screen, and they can surely read much faster that Alex manages to say the words. The state of OCR is such that requiring Watson to have a camera pointed at a television screen would not really add anything interesting to the achievement. It seems to me more and more that Jeopardy should allow contestants to buzz in immediately after the question is started. We can still delay the answer until the question is read (for the home viewers), but making the competition be about who can buzz in the soonest past some arbitrary point isn’t that interesting. ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2011, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ibm-supercomputer-destroys-human-contestants-on-jeopardy/567579/32 "2011-01-15T00:36:38Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > For all those pointing out that Watson doesn’t get the questions by processing spoken language, neither do the human contestants, right? They see the question printed on the screen, and they can surely read much faster that Alex manages to say the words. I didn’t know that human contestants in Jeopardy see the question written down. > [@](#): > > It seems to me more and more that Jeopardy should allow contestants to buzz in immediately after the question is started. We can still delay the answer until the question is read (for the home viewers), but making the competition be about who can buzz in the soonest past some arbitrary point isn’t that interesting. Aren’t you just moving the arbitrary point back a couple of seconds? ---
**Author:** ![Nunzio\_Tavulari](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Nunzio\_Tavulari](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nunzio_Tavulari)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2011, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ibm-supercomputer-destroys-human-contestants-on-jeopardy/567579/33 "2011-01-15T00:45:27Z")
One thing we have to nip in the bud right now. At some point they’ll tell us that this will lead to “thinking computers” that will do our work and give us more leisure time. Ain’t gonna happen. They’ve been saying that automation will give us more leisure time for decades. Instead we have longer work hours and Blackberrys that connect us to the job 24-7. ---
**Author:** ![AnalogSignal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/analogsignal/32/1085_2.png) [@AnalogSignal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AnalogSignal)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2011, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ibm-supercomputer-destroys-human-contestants-on-jeopardy/567579/34 "2011-01-15T00:51:05Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Are there some posts missing from this thread? I’m pretty sure I posted here following a post by **Chronos**. Yes. Watson read them, didn’t like them, and deleted them. Watson got bored of playing Jeopardy and is now playing The Internet. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2011, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ibm-supercomputer-destroys-human-contestants-on-jeopardy/567579/35 "2011-01-15T00:52:42Z")
> [@MEBuckner](#): > > It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. It always phrases its responses in the form of a question. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead. Made me laugh out loud. ---
**Author:** ![Manduck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manduck/32/256_2.png) [@Manduck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Manduck)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2011, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ibm-supercomputer-destroys-human-contestants-on-jeopardy/567579/36 "2011-01-15T01:30:06Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > It seems to me more and more that Jeopardy should allow contestants to buzz in immediately after the question is started. We can still delay the answer until the question is read (for the home viewers), but making the competition be about who can buzz in the soonest past some arbitrary point isn’t that interesting. We used to have a high school quiz show in Canada called Reach For The Top, where the rule was that you could buzz in before the question was finished, but if you did that and your answer was wrong, the penalty was doubled. So whether you buzzed in early or not would depend on how confident you were that you had the right answer. ---
**Author:** ![Sin\_Serially](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Sin\_Serially](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sin_Serially)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2011, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ibm-supercomputer-destroys-human-contestants-on-jeopardy/567579/37 "2011-01-15T01:58:35Z")
In the video supplied the makers of watson (IBM) stated that they had to parse human language. They never said it was the verbal cues though. Where did they say that there was text input? ---
**Author:** ![Philster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/13edae/32.png) [@Philster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Philster)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2011, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ibm-supercomputer-destroys-human-contestants-on-jeopardy/567579/38 "2011-01-15T02:09:15Z")
I stand corrected. ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Downtown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Mr\_Downtown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Downtown)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2011, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ibm-supercomputer-destroys-human-contestants-on-jeopardy/567579/39 "2011-01-15T02:42:38Z")
Old Jeopardy rules (under Art Fleming and Trebek’s first season) allowed contestants to buzz in before the answer was completely read. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2011, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ibm-supercomputer-destroys-human-contestants-on-jeopardy/567579/40 "2011-01-15T03:09:05Z")
> [@Sin\_Serially](#): > > In the video supplied the makers of watson (IBM) stated that they had to parse human language. They never said it was the verbal cues though. > > Where did they say that there was text input? [Here](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/magazine/20Computer-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all) is a NY Times article that goes into Watson and its gameplay in some more detail. > [@NYT](#): > > Technically speaking, Watson wasn’t in the room. It was one floor up and consisted of a roomful of servers working at speeds thousands of times faster than most ordinary desktops. Over its three-year life, Watson stored the content of tens of millions of documents, which it now accessed to answer questions about almost anything. (Watson is not connected to the Internet; like all “Jeopardy!” competitors, it knows only what is already in its “brain.”) During the sparring matches, Watson received the questions as electronic texts at the same moment they were made visible to the human players; to answer a question, Watson spoke in a machine-synthesized voice through a small black speaker on the game-show set. When it answered the Burj clue — “What is Dubai?” (“Jeopardy!” answers must be phrased as questions) — it sounded like a perkier cousin of the computer in the movie “WarGames” that nearly destroyed the world by trying to start a nuclear war. How about a nice game of chess? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ibm-supercomputer-destroys-human-contestants-on-jeopardy/567579.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ibm-supercomputer-destroys-human-contestants-on-jeopardy/567579.md?page=3)