Have you ever imagined seeing an artificial intelligent computer win in Jeopardy? Nah, I hadn’t either. Yet on February 14 to February 16, Watson beat both “biggest money winner of all time”, Brad Rutter and “longest championship streak holder”, Ken Jennings in Jeopardy. Watson boasted a win of a million dollars while Rutter and Jennings carried $200,000 and $300,000 respectively. Does that mean the end of humanity is near? Maybe; But for developers and investigators like David Ferrucci it means improvement for future business and a possible, computer that can apply advanced data management and analytics to speak in the natural language and uncover a single reliable insight, in other words it meant success.
It all started on a fateful 2004 dinner, as IBM research manager Charles Lickel, coworkers and the entire restaurant went into silence; Ken Jennings was on Jeopardy, in the middle of his successful 74-game run. After the Deep Blue IBM computer chess championship success in 1997, the IBM had been searching for a new challenge to pit against their computers. Lickel got the idea that Jeopardy might be that new challenge. IBM research executive Paul Horn, in 2005, backed Lickel’s idea and he was eventually able to push David Ferrucci, IBM senior manager of semantic analysis and integration department, into taking the offer. In 2006, Watson was given 500 clues from previous Jeopardy programs.
His score: he got 15% correct.
Now, within a five year span, Watson’s creators and inventors proudly watch their artificially intelligent computer beat the very man that inspired the idea and claim title of ‘Trivia King’. During the competition, Watson received the clue electronically at the same time that the human players were shown the clue. According to the IBM research website, the computer would then make comparisons from the information stored in its database. Its database contains 200 million structured and unstructured information.
So Watson took the winning title, big whoop. What is the point of a computer who can, not only participate, but win a trivia show? For the IBM, it means creating a computer that understands the natural language, the slangs and double meanings, and that can use imagination, the power of deduction and reason – such as a human does. From a radical perspective, Watson is the first sign to the Terminator apocalypse. However, from the perspective of a youth, it goes beyond Jeopardy and Watson; it goes to show the progress that our generations are making and provides hope for future inventions. When Watson won Jeopardy on February 16, it meant success to investigators and developers like David Ferrucci, but to society, it marked a historical achievement in technology and proved that, what was once considered science fiction, can be possible.