newjerseynewsroom.com

BY BOB HOLT

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

"I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords."

Borrowing the line from "The Simpsons," that's all Ken Jennings had left to offer on his video screen at the end of his match with IBM computer Watson this week on "Jeopardy!."

Watson is a computer that can understand questions posed in natural language and answer them.

Watson showed itself to be imperfect, but researchers at I.B.M. and other companies are already developing uses for Watson's technologies that could have a significant impact on the way doctors practice and consumers buy products.

The final tally of a three day, two game playoff was $77,147 for Watson to Jennings's $24,000 and all-time "Jeopardy!" money winner Brad Rutter's $21,600.

The New York Times reminds humans that Watson was not without his flaws. On Tuesday evening during Final "Jeopardy!", the category was U.S. Cities and the clue was: "Its largest airport is named for a World War II hero; its second largest for a World War II battle."

Watson even showed comedic timing when it responded; "What is Toronto?????"

Both Jennings and Rutter are accomplished at anticipating the light that signals it is possible to "buzz in," and can sometimes get in with virtually zero lag time. The danger is to buzz too early, in which case the contestant is penalized and "locked out" for roughly a quarter of a second.

Watson, on the other hand, does not anticipate the light, but has a weighted scheme that allows it, when it is highly confident, to hit the buzzer in as little as 10 milliseconds, making it very hard for humans to beat. When it was less confident, it took longer to buzz in. In the second round, Watson beat the others to the buzzer in 24 out of 30 Double "Jeopardy!" questions.

After crushing the humanoids on "Jeopardy!" this week, Fast Company reports Watson took home $1 million in prize money. Half the money will go to the World Vision, a nonprofit that helps children in poverty, the other half to World Community Grid, IBM's humanitarian supercomputer.

Jennings voiced his own opinions about the match in an editorial for the New York Daily News. He agreed that the key to Watson's dominance lies in the famously tricky Jeopardy buzzer.

And Watson had the advantage of playing two humans at once. Because of Watson's superhuman timing, it answers nearly all of the clues it decides to attempt. The remaining two human contestants then have to fight over the leftovers.

In an average "Jeopardy!" game, Watson gets stumped many more times than top-level human players do, and relies on its buzzer advantage to pick up the slack. When asked what grasshoppers eat, it once confidently answered, "What is kosher?" — and later claimed that the Russian word for "goodbye" was "cholesterol." In a practice round I watched, Watson was asked what paper towel brand is pitched by a lumberjack. The computer was torn between two answers: "Brawny" and "Jesus Christ."

Jennings concluded, So take heart, fellow carbon-based life forms! Watson may be an intimidating quiz show presence, but it needed more than smarts to get the win. It also needed superhuman reflexes, a divided opposition and a little luck. Just because a "Jeopardy!" contestant "died with his buzzer in his hand," doesn't mean humanity is obsolete quite yet.

After crushing the two humanoids on "Jeopardy!" this week, IBM's Watson computer took home $1 million in prize money. Half the money will go to the World Vision, a nonprofit that helps children in poverty, the other half to World Community Grid, IBM's humanitarian supercomputer.

Where does the big computer go from here?

The New York Post reports Watson will now head from Hollywood to Harlem to help doctors treat patients.

Dr. Herbert Chase, a professor of Clinical Medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, says Watson will process the patient's ailments and rapidly scan medical journals, textbooks and a host of other reference material in search of a treatment, using the same language-recognition software it employed on "Jeopardy!."

Perhaps our new computer overlords will have some mercy after all.