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Ken Jennings talks about losing to Watson, being human after all
In a piece for Slate titled "My Puny Human Brain," former-Jeopardy-greatest Ken Jennings talks briefly through his experience playing against IBM's Watson. If you were hoping for some sour grapes, you won't find it here, but Ken gives a great insight into what it feels like to be an underdog human up against a PR darling supercomputer. "Watson has lots in common with a top-ranked human Jeopardy! player: It's very smart, very fast, speaks in an uneven monotone, and has never known the touch of a woman." Ken wraps it up on an uplifting, humans-are-going-to-be-alright-after-all note, and we seem to have something in our eye...
The Engadget Show - 018: GM's Micky Bly, Watson researcher David Gondek, EN-V demo, Atrix 4G
Humans, allow us to present the latest episode of The Engadget Show -- you won't want to miss it. First up, Josh and Tim Stevens sit down with GM's chief electrical engineer Micky Bly for a frank conversation on the future of automotive technology, chatting about everything from networked vehicles (with a surprise visit from the unmistakable EN-V prototype), electric cars, advancing smartphone integration, and a world without stoplights. Then, Micky announces and demos Chevy's new MyLink infotainment system, in a world-first, Engadget Show-exclusive look at the new technology. Fresh off a resounding victory over mankind, IBM's Watson researcher David Gondek joins Josh and Paul for a breakdown of Watson's Jeopardy domination and an in-depth conversation about machine-learning, artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, and the meaning of love. Last up, Josh, Paul, and Nilay bust out the Motorola Atrix 4G and break down the week in news, including Nokia's Windows Phone announcement, the rise of Honeycomb tablets, and everything worth talking about from Mobile World Congress. This is one you absolutely should not miss. What are you waiting for? Watch it now! Hit up the video stream after the break or download the show in HD below! Hosts: Joshua Topolsky, Nilay Patel, Paul Miller Special guests: Micky Bly, David Gondek Produced and Directed by: Chad Mumm Executive Producer: Joshua Fruhlinger Edited by: Danny Madden Music by: Note! Visuals by: Batsly Adams Opening titles by: Julien Nantiec Taped live at SIR Stage37 Download the Show: The Engadget Show - 018 (HD) / The Engadget Show - 018 (iPod / iPhone / Zune formatted) / The Engadget Show - 018 (Small) Subscribe to the Show: [iTunes] Subscribe to the Show directly in iTunes (MP4). [Zune] Subscribe to the Show directly in the Zune Marketplace (MP4). [RSS MP4] Add the Engadget Show feed (MP4) to your RSS aggregator and have it delivered automatically. [HD RSS] Get the Engadget Show delivered automatically in HD. [iPad RSS] Get the Engadget Show in iPad-friendly adaptive format.
The Engadget Show returns tonight with GM head engineer Micky Bly, Watson's creators, new products, and much more!
Clear your calendars everybody, because tonight at 7:00pm ET, the Engadget Show is back in a big way! GM's head engineer Micky Bly (the man responsible for the Volt) will be on hand for some frank conversation about the future of cars and a bunch of mind-blowing demos to go with it. Oh, and GM says they have a big announcement that they will be making exclusively on the Engadget Show, so be a part of tech history and come join us, won't you? Engadget auto editor Tim Stevens will be joining the fun and we'll also have a very special guest from IBM's Watson team, fresh off the game-show-playing supercomputer's three-day run on Jeopardy. It will be a night to remember, with some incredible chiptunes music by Note! with visuals from Batsly Adams. As usual, we'll be streaming live at 7:00PM from SIR's Stage 37 (a new venue!) and we've got around 350 seats available on a first-come, first-served basis if you want to join us in person. Also, trust us when we say that the giveaways for this taping are going to absolutely blow. your. mind. REMINDER: The Show will be taking place in a lovely new venue, the SIR Stage37 (ie. not the TimesCenter or Cooper Union), located in Manhattan at 508 West 37th Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues. Tickets are -- as always -- free to anyone who would like to attend, but seating is limited, and tickets will be first come, first served... so get there early! Also, because of the nature of the space, we won't be able to do assigned seats so the seats will be first-come, first-served as well (we know, just after you got used to assigned seating!). Here's the updated info on our new ticketing policy that you need to know: There is no admission fee -- tickets are completely free The event is all ages Ticketing will begin at the SIR Stage37 at 5:00PM on Thursday, February 17th, doors will open for seating at 6:15PM, and the show begins at 7:00PM We can't do assigned seating in this venue, so remember that your ticket guarantees you entry into the show, but where you sit is up to you. You cannot collect tickets for friends or family -- anyone who would like to come must be present to get a ticket Seating capacity is limited (we've got room for approximately 350), and once we're full, we're full The venue is located at 508 West 37th St, between 10th and 11th Avenues. (map after the break) The show length is around an hour If you're a member of the media who wishes to attend, please contact us at: engadgetshowmedia [at] engadget [dot] com, and we'll try to accommodate you. All other non-media questions can be sent to: engadgetshow [at] engadget [dot] com. Subscribe to the Show: [iTunes] Subscribe to the Show directly in iTunes (M4V). [Zune] Subscribe to the Show directly in the Zune Marketplace (M4V). [RSS M4V] Add the Engadget Show feed (M4V) to your RSS aggregator and have it delivered automatically.
Conan kills Watson, evening the score (video)
Sure, IBM's Watson is able to beat humans to the buzzer on some lousy television game show. But how does the smarmy supercomputer hold up to the business end of a baseball bat wielded by a jealous husband with opposable thumbs? Click through the break for a taste of sweet, carbon-based revenge.
Watson wins it all, humans still can do some other cool things
In case you missed it, Watson won again tonight. He even got the Final Jeopardy question correct this time, a multi-layered reference to Bram Stroker that he bet $10k on. His final score over the two rounds ended up at $77,147 (Watson has this thing for betting strange amounts that usually end in a 7), while Ken Jennings got $24,000 and Brad Rutter did $21,600 -- both humans saving a bit of face after last round's stunning defeat. Watson will be giving his $1,000,000 winnings to charity. So, a few things: We're totally surprised, in a larger theoretical sense, that a computer could win at Jeopardy. We're totally not surprised that Watson, the system built by IBM over the past few years at the expense of millions of dollars, actually succeeded at winning at Jeopardy. Computers have better reflexes than humans, as it turns out. Deal with it. If you can't tell, we're having a little trouble processing all the emotions brought on by a Jeopardy win from IBM's Watson supercomputer. It's obvious that IBM's DeepQA research program has developed some of the most sophisticated natural language AI known to man. At the same time, Jeopardy questions aren't really that hard. As evidenced by watching these Watson-dominated matches, all three contestants knew the answer most of the time, but Watson was just quicker on the draw. Of course, it's no surprise that computers have quicker reflexes (even with the "handicap" of having to mechanically press the same style of clicker as Meatbag 001 and Meatbag 002), so why shouldn't Watson get to use his inbuilt advantage to the utmost? It seems like a fair fight to us. The question of "who is better at Jeopardy" aside (trust us, it's Watson), the larger implications for the human race and our computer sidekicks are still unclear. Watson can currently answer simple trivia questions, sometimes couched in puns or minor riddles, with a decent level of accuracy. The answers themselves are no more than a high school student with Wikipedia access could pull off, and Watson has no way of knowing for sure when he's right. He lacks a solid, computer-readable database of "facts" like a Wolfram Alpha, or the incredible reasoning abilities of a human, instead relying on statistical analysis of vast amounts of text. When it comes to Jeopardy, it turns out to be Good Enough, which is actually a pretty incredible achievement in the world of AI, and we're sure we'll be finding out soon what other applications IBM thinks Watson is Good Enough at -- they're thinking everything from healthcare to the financial industry. Still, we're sure some of us clicker-speed-nit-pickers will remain unimpressed. Make sure to check out the Engadget Show tomorrow, where we'll be chatting up the creators of Watson about all this, but for now... 01000011 01101111 01101110 01100111 01110010 01100001 01110100 01110011 00100001
The Engadget Show returns Thursday with GM head engineer Micky Bly, Watson's creators, new products, and much more!
Clear your calendars everybody, because tomorrow, February 17th at 7:00pm, the Engadget Show is back in a big way! GM's head engineer Micky Bly (the man responsible for the Volt) will be on hand for some frank conversation about the future of cars and a bunch of mind-blowing demos to go with it. Oh, and GM says they have a big announcement that they will be making exclusively on the Engadget Show, so be a part of tech history and come join us, won't you? Engadget auto editor Tim Stevens will be joining the fun and we'll also have a very special guest from IBM's Watson team, fresh off the game-show-playing supercomputer's three-day run on Jeopardy. It will be a night to remember, with some incredible chiptunes music by Note! with visuals from Batsly Adams. As usual, we'll be streaming live at 7:00PM from SIR's Stage 37 (a new venue!) and we've got around 350 seats available on a first-come, first-served basis if you want to join us in person. Also, trust me when I say that the giveaways for this taping are going to absolutely blow. your. mind. REMINDER: The Show will be taking place in a lovely new venue, the SIR Stage37 (ie. not the TimesCenter or Cooper Union), located in Manhattan at 508 West 37th Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues. Tickets are -- as always -- free to anyone who would like to attend, but seating is limited, and tickets will be first come, first served... so get there early! Also, because of the nature of the space, we won't be able to do assigned seats so the seats will be first-come, first-served as well (we know, just after you got used to assigned seating!). Here's the updated info on our new ticketing policy that you need to know: There is no admission fee -- tickets are completely free The event is all ages Ticketing will begin at the SIR Stage37 at 5:00PM on Thursday, February 17th, doors will open for seating at 6:15PM, and the show begins at 7:00PM We can't do assigned seating in this venue, so remember that your ticket guarantees you entry into the show, but where you sit is up to you. You cannot collect tickets for friends or family -- anyone who would like to come must be present to get a ticket Seating capacity is limited (we've got room for approximately 350), and once we're full, we're full The venue is located at 508 West 37th St, between 10th and 11th Avenues. (map after the break) The show length is around an hour If you're a member of the media who wishes to attend, please contact us at: engadgetshowmedia [at] engadget [dot] com, and we'll try to accommodate you. All other non-media questions can be sent to: engadgetshow [at] engadget [dot] com. Subscribe to the Show: [iTunes] Subscribe to the Show directly in iTunes (M4V). [Zune] Subscribe to the Show directly in the Zune Marketplace (M4V). [RSS M4V] Add the Engadget Show feed (M4V) to your RSS aggregator and have it delivered automatically.
Watson soundly beats the humans in first round of Jeopardy
Well, there's one more round of Jeopardy to go, but the round that began yesterday and ended today was a major win for the silicon contingent. After starting the day tied with Brad, Watson barely let his opponents get in a word edgewise during Double Jeopardy, and broke the $36k mark before Final Jeopardy. Both Brad and Ken were able to double up on the Final Jeopardy question, at which Watson failed miserably, but he appended his answer (Toronto) with plenty of question marks, and bet less than a grand. The final result was Watson at $35,754, Brad at $10,000, and Ken Jennings with $4,800. This round's scores will be added to the scores of tomorrow's round to determine the overall winner, who will walk (or teraflop) away with $1 million in cash.
The Engadget Show returns this Thursday with GM head engineer Micky Bly, Watson's creators, new products, and much more!
Clear your calendars everybody, because this Thursday, February 17th at 7:00pm, the Engadget Show is back in a big way! GM's head engineer Micky Bly (the man responsible for the Volt) will be on hand for some frank conversation about the future of cars and a bunch of mind-blowing demos to go with it. Oh, and GM says they have a big announcement that they will be making exclusively on the Engadget Show, so be a part of tech history and come join us, won't you? Engadget auto editor Tim Stevens will be joining the fun and we'll also have a very special guest from IBM's Watson team, fresh off the game-show-playing supercomputer's three-day run on Jeopardy. It will be a night to remember, with some incredible chiptunes music by Note! with visuals from Batsly Adams. As usual, we'll be streaming live at 7:00PM from SIR's Stage 37 (a new venue!) and we've got around 350 seats available on a first-come, first-served basis if you want to join us in person. Also, trust me when I say that the giveaways for this taping are going to absolutely blow. your. mind. REMINDER: The Show will be taking place in a lovely new venue, the SIR Stage37 (ie. not the TimesCenter or Cooper Union), located in Manhattan at 508 West 37th Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues. Tickets are -- as always -- free to anyone who would like to attend, but seating is limited, and tickets will be first come, first served... so get there early! Also, because of the nature of the space, we won't be able to do assigned seats so the seats will be first-come, first-served as well (we know, just after you got used to assigned seating!). Here's the updated info on our new ticketing policy that you need to know: There is no admission fee -- tickets are completely free The event is all ages Ticketing will begin at the SIR Stage37 at 5:00PM on Thursday, February 17th, doors will open for seating at 6:15PM, and the show begins at 7:00PM We can't do assigned seating in this venue, so remember that your ticket guarantees you entry into the show, but where you sit is up to you. You cannot collect tickets for friends or family -- anyone who would like to come must be present to get a ticket Seating capacity is limited (we've got room for approximately 350), and once we're full, we're full The venue is located at 508 West 37th St, between 10th and 11th Avenues. (map after the break) The show length is around an hour Sprint is also offering 50 guaranteed tickets to The Engadget Show taping to the first 50 entrants who text "ENGADGET" to 467467 or enter online! Standard text messaging rates apply. Click for the Official Rules and see how to enter online. If you're a member of the media who wishes to attend, please contact us at: engadgetshowmedia [at] engadget [dot] com, and we'll try to accommodate you. All other non-media questions can be sent to: engadgetshow [at] engadget [dot] com. Subscribe to the Show: [iTunes] Subscribe to the Show directly in iTunes (M4V). [Zune] Subscribe to the Show directly in the Zune Marketplace (M4V). [RSS M4V] Add the Engadget Show feed (M4V) to your RSS aggregator and have it delivered automatically.
Humans had a good run: Watson to debut on Jeopardy tonight
Today, tomorrow, and the 16th are the fateful days: IBM's Watson supercomputer will go head to head with Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings in this silly, human-devised game we call Jeopardy. It promises to be some kickass TV, at the very least, and a historic event if Watson can prevail over his fleshy competition. The two matches, which are being spread over the three days, were pre-taped, so Ken, Brad, Alex and Watson already know the outcome, but they've done a pretty good job of keeping the secret so far. Hopefully they can keep mum until 7pm-ish this evening (check your local listings for a specific time). Need something to keep you occupied until then? Check out the great Esquire feature on Ken Jennings at the More Coverage link below. Oh, and don't miss our coverage of last month's preview match.
The Engadget Show returns next Thursday, February 17th
Gentlemen and ladies, it's that time again -- that's right, the Engadget Show is back next Thursday, February 17th! We'll have more details for you on Monday, but clear your schedules, cancel your hot dates, put down Dead Space 2, and get yourself to New York City next Thursday. As usual, we'll be streaming live right here on Engadget, but you'll have to trust us when we say you're gonna want to be at this one in person. Stay tuned! If you're a member of the media who wishes to attend, please contact us at: engadgetshowmedia [at] engadget [dot] com, and we'll try to accommodate you. All other non-media questions can be sent to: engadgetshow [at] engadget [dot] com. Subscribe to the Show: [iTunes] Subscribe to the Show directly in iTunes (M4V). [Zune] Subscribe to the Show directly in the Zune Marketplace (M4V). [RSS M4V] Add the Engadget Show feed (M4V) to your RSS aggregator and have it delivered automatically.
IBM's Watson supercomputer destroys all humans in Jeopardy practice round (video!)
So, in February IBM's Watson will be in an official Jeopardy tournament-style competition with titans of trivia Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. That competition will be taped starting tomorrow, but hopefully we'll get to know if a computer really can take down the greatest Jeopardy players of all time in "real time" as the show airs. It will be a historic event on par with Deep Blue vs. Garry Kasparov, and we'll absolutely be glued to our seats. Today IBM and Jeopardy offered a quick teaser of that match, with the three contestants knocking out three categories at lightning speed. Not a single question was answered wrongly, and at the end of the match Watson, who answers questions with a cold computer voice, telegraphing his certainty with simple color changes on his "avatar," was ahead with $4,400, Ken had $3,400, and Brad had $1,200. Alright, a "win" for silicon for now, but without any Double Jeopardy or Final Jeopardy it's hard to tell how well Watson will do in a real match. What's clear is that he isn't dumb, and it seems like the best chance the humans will have will be buzzing in before Watson can run through his roughly three second decision process and activate his buzzer mechanically. An extra plus for the audience is a graphic that shows the three answers Watson has rated as most likely to be correct, and how certain he is of the answer he selects -- we don't know if that will make it into the actual TV version, but we certainly hope so. It's always nice to know the thought processes of your destroyer. Stand by for video of the match, along with an interview with David Gondek, an engineer on the project. Update: Video of the match is up, check it out after the break! Update 2: And we have the interview as well, along with a bit more on how Watson actually works. %Gallery-114391%
IBM demonstrates Watson supercomputer in Jeopardy practice match
We're at IBM's HQ in upstate NY, where IBM will pit its monstrous Watson project (in the middle buzzer spot) against two Jeopardy greats, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Watson has been in development for four years, and this is its first big public practice match before it goes on national TV in February for three matches against these giants of trivia. Unlike IBM's Deep Blue chess project in the 90s, which was pretty much pure math, Watson has to deal with the natural language and punny nature of real Jeopardy questions. IBM, ever the salesman, has thrown gobs of its fancy server hardware at the project, with 10 racks full of IBM Power 750 servers, stuffed with 15 terabytes of RAM and 2,880 processor operating at a collective 80 teraflops. IBM says it would take one CPU over two hours to answer a typical question, so this massive parallel processing is naturally key -- hopefully fast enough to buzz in before Ken and Brad catch on to the human-oriented questioning. We'll update this post as the match begins, and we'll have some video for you later in the day.
IBM's Watson supercomputer will play Jeopardy! on these dates
What are February 14th, 15th, and 16th? We've known it was going to happen for a while, but now we know when to set our DVRs. A rack of servers -- soaked with natural-language processing, armed with a battalion of esoteric pop culture knowledge, and "represented by a round avatar" -- will face off against Jeopardy! millionaires Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter (both profiled in video after the break) for three days starting on Valentine's Day 2011. We're also hearing that Watson will sign autographs after it's done decimating its opponents. It will then donate all its winnings to charity and spend the rest of its natural life dodging paparazzi on an undisclosed beach in the South Pacific. [Photo from Ben Sisto's flickr]
IBM's Watson is really smart, will try to prove it on Jeopardy! this fall (video)
As much as we love our Google homepage, computer search remains a pretty rudimentary affair. You punch in keywords and you get only indirect answers in the form of relevant web results. IBM doesn't seem to be too happy with this situation and has been working for the past three years on perfecting its Watson supercomputer: an array of server racks that's been endowed with linguistic algorithms allowing it to not only recognize oddly phrased or implicative questions, but to answer them in kind, with direct and accurate responses. Stuffed with encyclopedic knowledge of the world around it, it answers on the basis of information stored within its data banks, though obviously you won't be able to tap into it any time soon for help with your homework. The latest word is that Watson's lab tests have impressed the producers of Jeopardy! enough to have the bot participate in a televised episode of the show. That could happen as early as this fall, which fits right in line with our scheduled doom at robots' hands by the end of 2012. Ah well, might as well get our popcorn and enjoy the show.
IBM's Watson to rival humans in round of Jeopardy!
IBM's already proven that a computer from its labs can take on the world's best at chess, but what'll happen when the boundaries of a square-filled board are removed? Researchers at the outfit are obviously excited to find out, today revealing that its Watson system will be pitted against brilliant Earthlings on Jeopardy! in an attempt to further artificial intelligence when it comes to semantics and searching for indexed information. Essentially, the machine will have to be remarkably labile in order to understand "analogies, puns, double entendres and relationships like size and location," something that robotic linguists have long struggled with. There's no mention of a solid date when it comes to the competition itself, but you can bet we'll be setting our DVRs whenever it's announced. Check out a video of the progress after the break.[Via The New York Times]
AT&T's Watson wants you to talk your TV into changing the channel
AT&T's been cobbling together a voice recognition system for decades, affectionally known as Watson. The good news is that unlike most every other voice recognition system out there, AT&T's might be useful for, you know, stuff. AT&T's working on making your plain-language utterances into real-life gadget actions, and has built a voice-operated TV remote to make the idea a reality. Built to operate the U-verse service, AT&T's new mythical remote lets you ask for whatever comedies might be on, or -- in the inexplicable example cited by our source article -- search for movies starring Bruce Willis, all using your voice in regular person sentences. AT&T's also working with other developers to build applications like a yellow pages app for the iPhone. There's no word on when (or if) AT&T will actually offer up the remote for consumer use, or when other applications are due to hit the mainstream, but we must say we're ready for the tide to shift in human-computer interaction, where the computer does the heavy lifting. Because we have some Bruce Willis movies to watch.
Sandvox updated to 1.1
In the Mac-user make-Web-page so-very-pretty no-use-nasty-HTML market, the big kahunas are iWeb, RapidWeaver, and Karelia Sandvox -- guess which one just got revved to version 1.1? If you recall, Karelia came up with one of the most original utilities ever, the Web scraping and search tool Watson, which won it a spot in the "Wow, Apple's new seach app (Sherlock 3) looks... familiar" Hall of Fame. The fact that Karelia introduced an HTML editor not long before iWeb came out is both ironic and unfortunate, since Sandvox is a topnotch tool deserving of more attention.New in 1.1 (from karelia.com) -- 8 gorgeous new site designs New help system Localization to Italian and Simplified Chinese languages A snapshot feature to cleanly save your work in progress Greatly improved Flash file support Standard version $49, Pro version $79, and demo available.[via MacNN]
Karelia: "Lightning has indeed struck twice"
This has got to be frustrating. In an attempt to avoid a repeat of the Watson/Sherlock debacle, the folks at Karelia Software made an earlier-than-originally-planned public beta release of Sandvox available. Sandvox is a super-simple, WYSIWYG web editor that makes web site construction easy and fun. Sound a little like iWeb? I realize that no one has the exclusive rights to web editors, but the timing here is really unfortunate. From the Sandvox blog:"...some of the biggest limitations of iWeb (.mac only, not pluggable, no ability for HTML content) can become strengths for Sandvox. As we move forward past version 1.0, we will be able to further distinguish Sandvox from iWeb by focusing on features that our users demand that will never be a part of the iLife suite." Competition of this sort usually drives the production of better products. I, for one, am looking forward to what Karelia has in store.
Sandvox public beta available
A few years ago, Karelia software released the great Watson, an internet search utility for Mac OS X. Many loved it, and I still use it all the time, in fact. Shortly after that successful release, Apple produced a version of its own Sherlock that bore a strikingly uncanny resemblance to Watson. Eventually, Karelia discontinued development of Watson and sold the technology to Sun Microsystems.More recently, Karelia has begun work on a WYSIWYG web editor for the Mac called Sandvox, and limited beta testing was begun in October. It really looks great and we've been watching its development for a while now. Today, however, the folks at Karelia are getting that sinking feeling all over again.With the rumor swirling that Steve will introduce a new application called "iWeb" at tomorrow's keynote, Karelia have made the public beta of Sandvox available today, a little earlier than they had initially planned. I've only played with it very briefly so far, but some of the templates really look great. Good luck to Karelia.
