“We’re Screwed” for $200 Alex

Two of the large brains on that iconic game show “Jeopardy” played against Watson the IBM computer this week in a battle of the smarts.  Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter are the two humans going head to head with a rack of electronics, under the watchful gaze of Alex Trebek as host.  To quote Trebek on Monday, “You are about to witness what may prove to be an historic competition.”

Computers playing tic-tac-toe have been around for decades, as the programming is not that difficult.  The strategies are simple and the rules are not complex for tic-tac-toe. 

Chess is exponentially several thousand times more complex than tic-tac-toe, but again, there is a limit to the moves possible under the rules.  Deep Blue was IBM’s best player, defeating Garry Kasparov in a contentious series of games in 1997.  Now Watson steps up, playing a well known general knowledge game, in that most difficult of languages:  English.

Since I speak English rather well, I take it for granted.  But I also have enough smarts to know that for someone who is not a native speaker, English is one of the hardest languages to learn with any sort of facility.  In ‘proper’ English, the words whey, weigh and way, all pronounced the same, mean at least three different things.  Context is everything in proper English.  Add the layers of slang, common usage or regionalisms on top of it and English becomes all but impenetrable unless you are immersed in the context of the language.  Watson got around the sound of words by using text as the input, the spelling of the words being different enough to give some clues as to the usage.

To use a simple, declarative sentence:  “You are my female domestic dog” communicated to a computer, makes no sense.  The computer can translate the words, but not the context. 

To a human “You’re my bitch!” means you’re getting a mouth full of knuckles, unless you’re saying that in the proper context or either prison or the House of Commons during Question Period.

Where IBM’s Watson was showing a weakness is in context and in reacting to the other players incorrect answers.  This doesn’t mean Watson is stupid, it merely shows a logic gap playing Jeopardy that can be addressed.

Did Watson kick ass and take names?  Most certainly it did and showed that with some heavy computing power and very clever programming, a computer can git’er done.  Could Watson understand the Larry The Cable Guy cultural reference in the previous sentence and apply the appropriate irony to it?  Not quite, at least in our estimation.  Those who watched the matches closely noticed that Watson’s top three potential answers were either derivations of the correct answer, or so far out in left-field to be in the 907 area code.

More entertaining was one of Watson’s answers that put Toronto in the US.  Again, just a knowledge gap that can be addressed.  You could see Watson going through the history of what squares held the Daily Double, trying to find the spaces.  Jeopardy players most often start at the top of a category and work their way down the list.  Watson bounced around the board, hunting for the Daily Double as quickly as possible to game the Daily Double. 

The second game saw some changes in Watson:  Something was adjusted.  Watson was able to press the buzzer within milliseconds of being allowed to ring in and in the first game, beat Rutter and Jennings like red headed step-children.  The second game, Watson got beat more than a few times with fast fingered humans who didn’t have the answer completely formed, but knew the data and were able to beat a solenoid connected to some sharp programming.  That would be the difference between a human brain ‘knowing’ the answer and a computer working through the math to score the most likely answer, then punching the button.   

Does this mean we must embrace our new computer overlords?  Not quite yet.