Watson the IBM super computer beats Jeopardy's top champions!

idiot savant

 

Even I know Toronto's not in the US.

A triumph of engineering, to be sure. Still, I wonder how smart a human could be, given the same education budget as Watson.

There'd have to be at least one class in reflex training, to be able to hit that little button so fast.

 

Why can't people appreciate the human achievement in creating a super computer that can rival the best Jeopardy constant?

 

We all thought IBM was dead. Evidently they still got the stuff.

 

Righto on that Toronto answer. Where was the curtain with the wizard pushing and pulling the knobs and buttons because that's the only way Watson could have screwed up the final Jeopardy answer.

 

it was clearly fixed.

 

All needed research for the next gen human... cyborgs...

 

Resistance is futile...

 

Maybe we should take note that an objective outside observer thought Toronto was a US city based on all the data it had.

Watson thinks Canada is the 51st state.

 

As Emo Philips said, "A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing."

 

Trivia question.
Why was the computer in "2001 A Space Odyssey" named HAL?

 

Obviously you dont know anything about computers. IBM is very much alive. Just because you don't see IBM at walmart, best buy or frys doesn't mean it's dead. You don't see Cray computers at retail stores does that mean it never existed?

yeah right, 15 engineers, 4 years and millions of dollars just to fix a question. Companies spent millions of dollars developing PHEV just to make us believe that a car can get over 100mpg.

1 letter ahead of IBM?

 

Thats the correct urban legend .

 

i was beating the computer at home, and the other 2 contestans who have never lost couldn't even come up with the answer when the computer was wrong. fixed.

 

Then you only know of the largest Toronto, which is in Canada.... Why is it that people forget that there are invariably cities with the same names?? I have an aunt who lives in Vienna, Austria....but in GA, I have passed a Vienna (I've also passed a Hollywood, GA too). I watched a segment on the news about a Toronto, Washington. There's also a Toronto Kansas and a Toronto South Dakota.

As for this computer....meh, it's only as good as its programmers. It should be able to recall all the data that was programmed in: unless it has a power failure or memory crash!

 

The thing has like 15TB of memory, I guess they decided to load he sum total of human knowledge into RAM.

 

Yep. Although IBM has downsized from its peak (at some points by a lot) and has virtually no relevance in the consumer space anymore (they sold off their PC business), their stock is near all time highs. IBM hits new high on upbeat results - MarketWatch mentions an all-time high of 155.69 but from looking at International Business Machines Stock Chart | IBM Interactive Chart - Yahoo! Finance, the upper end of the 52 week range is $166.25.

IBM About IBM - United States mentions they have 399K employees.

I missed the first ep because I thought I wasn't interested, at first. I have to say, the match and the PR videos they aired are really great publicity for IBM.

 

The software and the programmers are the key. It's difficult for computers to parse and "understand" human language.

I'd wager those who either have studied computer science or do programming for a living should have a good appreciation of IBM's achievement.

There seems to be a good discussion going on at http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=464731.