Although man created them, machines have always threatened humanity's superiority, and many movies, such as The Matrix and I, Robot, argue that they will eventually overtake us. After years of uncertainty, humans will now be able to discover if they can continue to develop increasingly sophisticated programs, or if they should enter into technological isolation. And it will be decided on television. From February 14th to 16th, the classic game show Jeopardy will have a new contestant: IBM's artificial intelligence program, nicknamed Watson after IBM's founder, Thomas J. Watson.
Watson is truly a feat of computer engineering, and regardless of whether or not it triumphs over its competitors, it should be appreciated as a historic piece of technological history. First, Watson analyzes the clue, taking into account any colloquial phrases or homo-phonetic hints. It then chooses its answer by running an enormous amount of algorithms at the same time, allowing each to come to an independent answer. The more algorithms that land on the same answer, the more likely it is that the answer is correct. The algorithmic results are then checked against a database. Watson is then able to rephrase his answers as questions, true to the game's format.
The database itself is absolutely huge. Watson's expanse of knowledge is stored on 90 IBM Power 750 servers with a total of 2880 POWER7 processor cores and 16 Terabytes of RAM (16x10^12 bytes). It is an expansion of IBM's long-term project of DeepQA, which is designed to handle hypothesis generation, massive evidence gathering, analysis, and, in this case, scoring. As can be imagined, Watson is a physically huge machine as well, and the "avatar" the public sees on television is only the front-end of a massive expanse of wires and humming, mechanical boxes on another floor.
Watson was first tested in 2006 by IBM's senior manager of Semantic Analysis and Integration department, Dr. David Ferrucci. At that time, it was only able to get about 15% of questions right, and it took much more than the 6-8 seconds the human competitors needed to think of the answer. To build up its knowledge, a team of 15 IBM staff members and faculty and students at eight different Universities fed it 200 million pages of documents, including plays, novels, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and even the Bible. By 2008, Watson's developers thought it was ready to challenge true Jeopardy contestants. That year, IBM contacted Jeopardy's producers, who agreed to have Watson on the show.
However, before Watson could be on the show, he had to train. By February 2010, it was consistently beating former Jeopardy contestants in mock competitions. On January 13, 2011 Watson beat his future competitors, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, in a practice round. Not one of the contestants, human or machine, answered a question wrong. The winner of the three days tournament will win $1 million, second will win $300,000, and third $200,000. Watson's winnings will be donated to charity, while Rutter and Jennings will each donate 50%.
So what's next for Watson after Jeopardy? IBM's researchers believe that Watson and the technology he represents has the power "to revolutionize many industries," including private banking, telephone operating systems, and medicine. Soon, it will be possible to diagnose diseases quickly and confidently, increasing the level of health care around the world. More data means smarter decisions, which means a better planet, they argue. There is no limit to the good Watson and his descendants can do.
Of course, if you're still worried about computers taking over the world, just remember: the documents Watson uses for his information all come from the minds and experiments of humans.
Watson is truly a feat of computer engineering, and regardless of whether or not it triumphs over its competitors, it should be appreciated as a historic piece of technological history. First, Watson analyzes the clue, taking into account any colloquial phrases or homo-phonetic hints. It then chooses its answer by running an enormous amount of algorithms at the same time, allowing each to come to an independent answer. The more algorithms that land on the same answer, the more likely it is that the answer is correct. The algorithmic results are then checked against a database. Watson is then able to rephrase his answers as questions, true to the game's format.
The database itself is absolutely huge. Watson's expanse of knowledge is stored on 90 IBM Power 750 servers with a total of 2880 POWER7 processor cores and 16 Terabytes of RAM (16x10^12 bytes). It is an expansion of IBM's long-term project of DeepQA, which is designed to handle hypothesis generation, massive evidence gathering, analysis, and, in this case, scoring. As can be imagined, Watson is a physically huge machine as well, and the "avatar" the public sees on television is only the front-end of a massive expanse of wires and humming, mechanical boxes on another floor.
Watson was first tested in 2006 by IBM's senior manager of Semantic Analysis and Integration department, Dr. David Ferrucci. At that time, it was only able to get about 15% of questions right, and it took much more than the 6-8 seconds the human competitors needed to think of the answer. To build up its knowledge, a team of 15 IBM staff members and faculty and students at eight different Universities fed it 200 million pages of documents, including plays, novels, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and even the Bible. By 2008, Watson's developers thought it was ready to challenge true Jeopardy contestants. That year, IBM contacted Jeopardy's producers, who agreed to have Watson on the show.
However, before Watson could be on the show, he had to train. By February 2010, it was consistently beating former Jeopardy contestants in mock competitions. On January 13, 2011 Watson beat his future competitors, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, in a practice round. Not one of the contestants, human or machine, answered a question wrong. The winner of the three days tournament will win $1 million, second will win $300,000, and third $200,000. Watson's winnings will be donated to charity, while Rutter and Jennings will each donate 50%.
So what's next for Watson after Jeopardy? IBM's researchers believe that Watson and the technology he represents has the power "to revolutionize many industries," including private banking, telephone operating systems, and medicine. Soon, it will be possible to diagnose diseases quickly and confidently, increasing the level of health care around the world. More data means smarter decisions, which means a better planet, they argue. There is no limit to the good Watson and his descendants can do.
Of course, if you're still worried about computers taking over the world, just remember: the documents Watson uses for his information all come from the minds and experiments of humans.