In the end, the humans on “Jeopardy!” surrendered meekly.
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Facing certain defeat at the hands of a room-sized IBM computer on Wednesday evening, Ken Jennings, famous for winning 74 games in a row on the TV quiz show, acknowledged the obvious. “I for one welcome our new computer overlords,” he wrote on his video screen, borrowing a line from a “Simpsons” episode.
From now on, the answer to “What is the name of the computer champion on ‘Jeopardy’?” will be “Watson.”
For IBM, the showdown was not merely a well-publicized stunt and a $1 million prize, but proof that the company has taken a big step toward a world in which intelligent machines will understand and respond to humans, and perhaps inevitably, replace some of them.
Watson, specifically, is a “question answering machine” of a type that artificial intelligence researchers have struggled with for decades — a computer akin to the one on “Star Trek” that can understand questions posed in natural language, and answer them.
Watson showed itself to be imperfect, but researchers at IBM and other companies are already developing uses for Watson’s technologies that could have significant impact on the way doctors practice and consumers buy products.
“Cast your mind back 20 years and who would have thought this was possible?” said Edward Feigenbaum, aStanford University computer scientist and a pioneer in the field.
In its “Jeopardy” project, IBM researchers were tackling a game that requires not only encyclopedic recall, but the ability to untangle convoluted and often opaque statements, a modicum of luck, and quick, strategic button pressing.
The contest, which was taped here at the company’s T.J. Watson Research Laboratory in January before an audience of I.B.M. executives and company clients, played out over three evenings and at the end of the first day put Watson in a tie with Brad Rutter, another ace human player, at $5,000 each, with Mr. Jennings trailing with $2,000.
But on Tuesday Watson went on a tear. By night’s end Watson had a commanding lead of $35,734, compared to Mr. Rutter’s $10,400 and Mr. Jennings’ $4,800.
But victory was not cemented until late in the third match, when Watson was in Nonfiction. “Same category for $1,200” it said in a manufactured tenor, and lucked into a Daily Double. Mr. Jennings grimaced.
Even later in the match however, had Mr. Jennings won another key Daily Double it might have come down to Final Jeopardy, IBM researchers acknowledged.
The final tally was $77,147 to Mr. Jennings’ $24,000 and Mr. Rutter’s $21,600.
More than anything, the contest was a vindication for the academic field of computer science, which began with great promise in the 1960s with the vision of creating a thinking machine and which became the laughing stock of Silicon Valley in the 1980s, when a series of heavily funded start-up companies went bankrupt.
Despite its intellectual prowess, Watson was by no means omniscient. On Tuesday evening during Final Jeopardy, the category was U.S. Cities and the clue was: “It’s largest airport is named for a World War II hero, it’s second largest for a World War II battle.”
Watson drew guffaws from many in the television audience when it responded “What is Toronto?????”
The string of question marks indicated that the system had a very low confidence in its response, I.B.M. researchers said, but because it was Final Jeopardy it was forced to give a response. The machine did not suffer much damage. It had wagered just $947 on its result.
“We failed to deeply understand what was going on there,” said David Ferrucci, an IBM researcher who led the development of Watson. “The reality is that there’s lots of data where the title is U.S. cities and the answers are countries, European cities, people, mayors. Even though it says U.S. cities we had very little confidence that that’s the distinguishing feature.”
The researchers also acknowledged that the machine benefited from the “buzzer factor.”
“It sort of wants to get beaten when it doesn’t have high confidence,” Dr. Ferrucci “It sort of wants to get beaten when it doesn’t have high confidence,” Dr. Ferrucci said. “It doesn’t want to look stupid.”Watson, on the hand, does not anticipate the light, but has a weighted scheme where when it is highly confident it can buzz in as short a time as 10 milliseconds, making it very hard for humans to beat. Less confident, and it buzzed more slowly.said. “It doesn’t want to look stupid.”Watson, on the hand, does not anticipate the light, but has a weighted scheme where when it is highly confident it can buzz in as short a time as 10 milliseconds, making it very hard for humans to beat. Less confident, and it buzzed more slowly.
Both Mr. Jennings and Mr. Rutter are accomplished masters at anticipating the light that signals it is possible to “buzz in,” and can sometimes get in with virtually zero lag time. The danger of course is to buzz too early, in which case the contestant is penalized and “locked out” for roughly a quarter of a second.
Both human players felt that Watson’s button pushing skill wasn’t necessarily an unfair advantage. “I beat Watson a couple of times,” said Mr. Rutter.
Both he and Mr. Jennings took the contest and its outcome philosophically.
“I had a great time and I would do it again in a heartbeat,” said Mr. Jennings. “It’s not about the results; this is about being part of the future.”
For I.B.M. the future will happen very quickly, company executives said. On Thursday it plans to announce that it will collaborate with Columbia University and theUniversity of Maryland to create a physicians assistant service that will allow doctors to query a cybernetic assistant. The company also plans to work with Nuance Communications Inc. to add voice recognition to the physician’s assistant, possibly making the service available in as little as 18 months.
“I have been in medical education for 40 years and we’re still a very memory-based curriculum,” said Dr. Herbert Chase, a professor of clinical medicine at Columbia University who is working with IBM on the physicians’ assistant. “The power of Watson- like tools will cause us to reconsider what it is we want students to do.”
IBM executives also said they are in discussions with a major consumer electronics retailer to develop a version of Watson that would be able to interact with consumers on a variety of subjects ranging from buying decisions to technical support.
The company decided to embark on the challenge of building a machine capable of answering questions using natural language in 2004 after IBM vice president Charles Lickel, witnessed the excitement generated by Mr. Jennings’s winning streak on Jeopardy.
It took several years to find a group of researchers at the company to step up to the challenge. In 2007, Dr. Ferrucci, an artificial intelligence researcher whose expertise was in text retrieval systems, began organizing a group that grew to 25 researchers to build Watson.
He sees none of the fears that have been expressed by theorists and science fiction writers about the potential of computers to usurp humans.
“People ask me if this is HAL,” he said, referring to the computer in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.” “Hal’s not the focus, the focus is on the computer on Star Trek where you have this intelligent information seek dialog where you can ask follow up questions and the computer can look at all the evidence and tries to ask follow up questions. That’s very cool.
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“It sort of wants to get beaten when it doesn’t have high confidence,” Dr. Ferrucci said. “It doesn’t want to look stupid.”
Both human players felt that Watson’s button pushing skill wasn’t necessarily an unfair advantage. “I beat Watson a couple of times,” said Mr. Rutter.
Both he and Mr. Jennings took the contest and its outcome philosophically.
“I had a great time and I would do it again in a heartbeat,” said Mr. Jennings. “It’s not about the results; this is about being part of the future.”
For I.B.M. the future will happen very quickly, company executives said. On Thursday it plans to announce that it will collaborate with Columbia University and theUniversity of Maryland to create a physicians assistant service that will allow doctors to query a cybernetic assistant. The company also plans to work with Nuance Communications Inc. to add voice recognition to the physician’s assistant, possibly making the service available in as little as 18 months.
“I have been in medical education for 40 years and we’re still a very memory-based curriculum,” said Dr. Herbert Chase, a professor of clinical medicine at Columbia University who is working with IBM on the physicians’ assistant. “The power of Watson- like tools will cause us to reconsider what it is we want students to do.”
IBM executives also said they are in discussions with a major consumer electronics retailer to develop a version of Watson that would be able to interact with consumers on a variety of subjects ranging from buying decisions to technical support.
The company decided to embark on the challenge of building a machine capable of answering questions using natural language in 2004 after IBM vice president Charles Lickel, witnessed the excitement generated by Mr. Jennings’s winning streak on Jeopardy.
It took several years to find a group of researchers at the company to step up to the challenge. In 2007, Dr. Ferrucci, an artificial intelligence researcher whose expertise was in text retrieval systems, began organizing a group that grew to 25 researchers to build Watson.
He sees none of the fears that have been expressed by theorists and science fiction writers about the potential of computers to usurp humans.
“People ask me if this is HAL,” he said, referring to the computer in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.” “Hal’s not the focus, the focus is on the computer on Star Trek where you have this intelligent information seek dialog where you can ask follow up questions and the computer can look at all the evidence and tries to ask follow up questions. That’s very cool.”
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