Interesting how fast they dismantled deep blue from what i remember...

Well. It's official. Watson won 1 million $.

500.000$ will go to WCG!

Any transparency on what new capabilities will get WCG from this large amount of money?

I'd like to know....

Quote "The string of question marks indicated that the system had very low confidence in its response, I.B.M. researchers said, but because it was Final Jeopardy, it was forced to give a response. The machine did not suffer much damage. It had wagered just $947 on its result." End Quote

So "Watson" didn't screw up on the "Toronto" answer because any Human would have just remained quite. "Watson" did not know the answer but was forced to give an answer anyway which "Watson" knew was wrong due to the multiple question marks along "Watson's" "Toronto????". This is interesting because this tells me that "Watson" is questioning his own response. He was forced to give an answer (Final Jeopardy) and then "Watson" adds question marks at the end of his answer to let everyone know that he thinks that the answer may be wrong. WOW! So if "Watson" wasn't forced to answer, he would have remained quiet and EXTREMELY accurate because "Watson" knew that he did not know the answer!

"Artificial Intelligence" is the "now".

"Watson" blew me away.

The category was U.S. Cities.
The answer consisted of a city w/ 2 airports.
1 named after a WWII hero and 1 named after a WWII battle.
None of the Torontos in the U.S. have 2 airports, let alone 2 named as above.
Maybe they didn't load airports into the database.
I don't know how it missed that one, but I'd bet the IBMers are looking in to it.

I.B.M. explained it this way, and what they said does make sense due to the fact that "Watson" must understand not just language (words) but must be able to interpret the language phrases as well and tie everything together and then weigh it out on "certainty percentages".
If United States was in the question then "Watson" probably would have said "Chicago".

Quote: The way the language was parsed provided an advantage for the humans and a disadvantage for Watson, as well. What US city wasn't in the question. If it had been, Watson would have given US cities much more weight as it searched for the answer. Adding to the confusion for Watson, there are cities named Toronto in the United States and the Toronto in Canada has an American League baseball team. It probably picked up those facts from the written material it has digested. Also, the machine didn't find much evidence to connect either city airport to World War II. (Chicago was a very close second on Watson's list of possible answers.) So this is just one of those situations that's a snap for a reasonably knowledgeable human but a true brain teaser for the machine.

The mistake actually encouraged Ferrucci. It's goodness, he said. Watson knew it did not know that right answer with any confidence. Its confidence level was about 30%. So it was right about that. Moreover, Watson has learned how the categories work in Jeopardy! It understands some of the subtleties of the game, and it doesn't make simplistic assumptions. Think about how Watson could be used in medicine, as a diagnostic aid. A patient may describe to a doctor a certain symptom or a high level of pain, which, on the surface, may seem to be an important clue to the cause of the ailment. But Watson may know from looking at a lot of data that that symptom or pain isn't the key piece of evidence, and could alert the doctor to be aware of other factors.
End Quote



I'm certain that I.B.M. has learned a great deal from the "Toronto" answer but, all in all, "Watson" did do a spectacular job.