From there:
My bolding. Assuming I’m reading this correctly, this is quite surprising. Watson receives an electric signal indicating he’s allowed to buzz in, and if he has an answer ready he buzzes immediately. I would have expected this to be essentially instantaneous, but apparently humans can still beat him.
It’s an actual, physical, button pressing lever that he uses, rather than an electronic signal.
I Was asking specifically what information was put into his data bank, not where the bank was stored.
I read down thread that answers [questions] from previous games were given to Watson, but this still doesn’t IMHO get at what I’m asking.
It would seem that I’m not the only one that loves me some Kubrick.
If I knew this at one point in time, I forgot it until you posted this.
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Just found out I wont be able to watch Wednesday. But, I think going to orientation for my new job kinda trumps watching Jeopardy.
Good to see J! archive is already on top of it.
There are certain sites I do not need to know exist. Thankfully, however, I knew of J Archive before today.
The information was selected by the IBM team. I have no doubt that much of it came from the internet, but Watson is not hooked up to the internet during the show.
From what I’ve read, the data is stored in natural language format, books, movie scripts, etc, and the machine sorts through that format to locate its answer.
Watson has thousands of terabytes of information stored in its memory. Webpages, documents, books, anything that could have been poured into its memory. The Nova special made it very clear that having the correct information at hand wouldn’t be the issue - it would be processing the clue and utilizing its search algorithms to find the answer. Additionally, one of the bigger obstacles is teaching Watson “common sense/facts”. Teams came up with about 6 million “rules” for it - “things that are dead remain in that state”, and anything else that people generally know/understand but isn’t going to be found in a book of facts.
Right, but how long does it take him to press it? I would not have thought it would take very long.
I can’t imagine it takes much shorter a length of time than it does for me to press the button, and I have the added benefit of being able to anticipate how long it will take Alex to finish.
Final Jeopardy! Answer and Question of Game I
Category: US Cities
[spoiler] Its largest airport is named for WWII hero, its 2nd largest, for a WWII Battle.
Ken and Brad both got it right Chicago,
and Watson answered ‘What is Toronto???’
Huh? the category was US Cities[/spoiler]
Nice wager, Watson. 
Chat with Ken Jennings
http://live.washingtonpost.com/jeopardy-ken-jennings.html?hpid=talkbox1
Actually all three wagers were kinda of strange.
i for one welcome our new computer overloads.
Watson was being kind of a jerk with those wagers.
I call B.S. Somethings not right here. Watson rings in first almost every time. There was a stretch of like 20 questions where he did that. Don’t tell me Ken and Brad didn’t know alot of those answers either.
it’s just not realistic. That and this is basically just one big IBM commercial has me saying: :mad:
So, what was the final result of the first game? (I take it there’s another one, as this runs tomorrow, too?) Feel free to spoiler.
you can see Brad and Ken trying to ring in, but Watson must know exactly the right time to do it
In Jeopardy, it’s not uncommon that all three contestants know the correct response, which has to be frustrating when you don’t have the opportunity to respond because your opponent is faster. Buzzer timing = key. The robot’s reflexes are, apparently, faster than the humans’. Them’s the breaks.
Tomorrow will be a normal game without all the extra filler stuff.
Watson does seem to have an advantage on the buzzer. I wonder how he knows when Trebek stops talking since he can’t hear?
Scores for 1st game:
4,800 Ken 35,734 for Watson and 10,400 for Ben.
I saw on another board where someone said the Toronto answer was a joke since he was so far ahead.