On the surface, it”™s just a game pitting a computer named Watson against the top champions of TV”™s game show “Jeopardy!” But win or lose the computer”™s proud creators think their brainchild will be the start of a revolution in human interaction with artificial intelligence.
Watson, named after IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, was built by a team of IBM scientists based primarily in Yorktown Heights and Fishkill who set out to create a computing system that rivals a human”™s ability to answer questions posed in natural language with speed, accuracy and confidence.
In two matches over three days, Watson will play against the show”™s two most successful champions, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, for $1.5 million in prize money to be split between the contestants and charity. Watson, a gracious machine without financial needs, will donate all winnings to charity. The episodes will air Feb. 14-16.
The shows will be a high watermark on a competitive level. Watson”™s creators had to prove the machine”™s capability against lesser opponents before producers for “Jeopardy!” would agree to air such a match, for the game does not merely require a computerized Google-search engine for facts. The show”™s answer-and-question format requires contestants to parse clues, riddles and puns and even detect voice inflection by the show”™s host. In the past, machines have been unable to make such distinctions, but Watson is playing the game at a high level.
“We’re thrilled that ”˜Jeopardy!”™ is considered a benchmark of ultimate knowledge,” said Harry Friedman, executive producer of the long-running game show. “Performing well on ”˜Jeopardy!”™ requires a combination of skills, and it will be fascinating to see whether a computer can compete against arguably the two best ”˜Jeopardy!”™ players ever.”
Just competing can propel advances in the field, say scientists who birthed Watson over the course of four years. “Because of the nature of the game, it”™s going to drive the technology in the right direction,” said Dr. David Ferrucci, whose title is Watson Principal Investigator and who led the Watson research team. “It”™s got the broad domain aspect.”
Watson mirrors human understanding in being nuanced and quickly responsive. The aim is to create more than a game-show champion. “We decided we needed to build a system that can extract knowledge at a much faster rate from enormous amounts of data than human beings or any other computer system can do,” said John E. Kelly III, senior vice president and director of IBM Research
The practical uses envisioned so far seem rather modest. The technology could be applied to help accurately diagnose patients, to improve online self-service help desks, to provide tourists and citizens with specific information regarding cities, and to facilitate customer support services via phone.
But Kelly has larger aims.
“The focus is on man versus machine. But the more interesting challenge is we are trying to produce a deep question-and-answer machine, which will change the way people interact with computers and machines,” he said. “We”™re going to revolutionize, I think, many, many fields.”
