[ExI] Watson On Jeopardy

[Darren Greer]

Spike wrote:

>But we don’t know what these things mean to Watson.  So I would call it a
draw <


Point taken.  It was funny. They did a bit on Watson's development during
the get-to know-the-contestants portion of the show which described how he
associates possible answers with the words that appear in the question using
algorithms and then narrows them down and chooses the most likely. I can see
how someone might say this was  a parlour trick. At the same time, it
occurred to me that I answer questions in the same way. For the Lord Of The
Rings question, it was asked who could be found at Barad-dur and was a great
eye. Watson and I got the answer at the same time. I did it by, at chemical
synaptic speeds like the rest of us meat computational devices, by pulling
up Lord of The Rings when I saw Barad-dur, cross-referenced with 'eye' and
got the answer Sauron. Likely Watson associated Barad-dur with the Lord of
The Rings also, cycled through all the characters, the author, all books by
the author, and then likely cross-referenced eye and Sauron as well.


One thing though. When he gets it wrong, he really gets it wrong. One
question asked the name of the place where a train both begins and ends. It
was 'terminus.' Watson said 'Venice.' I found this quite funny, and was
wondering what the algorithms brought up to give him such an answer. I did a
search on the 'net for trains and Venice to see if I could come up with a
strong connection that he might have found in his databanks, but I didn't
find one.


Clearly though, when the words in the question have a wide-range of possible
associations and subtly different meanings, he has more trouble. It makes
sense that he was a whiz with the music and book questions. The Beatles
would bring up a fairly small number of words as associates, and since they
were looking for song titles by providing some of the lyrics, narrowing it
down quickly would be fairly easy. I got the terminus question, not because
I ever use the word (because here in Canada we don't) but because I once
acted in The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde, where the word is
used with great good humour.


This is where Watson falls short, it seems to me. This ability not to just
associate words and literal meanings, but finding them based on their
connotative power which is anchored in personal experience and thereby
stored in more accessible and active memory cells in the brain. Also Watson
thinks only in language where I often think in images. So one word in a
question might bring up an image which I simply have to provide another word
for to get an answer.  That doesn't diminish him anyway. After all he is
winning (or is tied, as Spike pointed out.)

And he certainly got me thinking.


d.




2011/2/14 spike <spike66 at att.net>

>
>
>
>
> *On Behalf Of *Darren Greer
> *Subject:* [ExI] Watson On Jeopardy
>
>
>
> … Watson is an idiot savant, of course. He doesn't know what these things
> mean to us… Darren
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> But we don’t know what these things mean to Watson.  So I would call it a
> draw.
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> I don’t have commercial TV, and can’t find live streaming.  I understand
> they are showing the next episode tomorrow and Wednesday?  I will make
> arrangements with one of the neighbors to watch it.  The news sites say it
> is tied between Watson and one of the carbons, with the other carbon back a
> few thousand dollars.
>
>
>
> Go Watson!
>
>
>
> spike
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>


-- 
*There is no history, only biography.*
*
*
*-Ralph Waldo Emerson
*
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